Get book online at Packt Publishing

Having had the opportunity to read several of Packt Publishing’s books on Moodle, I have to confess how impressed I am with their depth and detail. If I had to rank the books, I’d certainly put the latest book to come into my hands–free copy sent for review purposes–in the top 3 I’ve reviewed.

Full Disclosure: A free copy of all books I review from Packt Publishing is provided to me at no charge. To date, I haven’t had anything negative to say about Packt Publishing books on Moodle, but a free copy of the book wouldn’t be enough incentive to stop me. I do not receive any other compensation–aside from a free copy of the book–to share my reflections about it and feature it on my blog.

That book is Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching by Jeff Stanford. As a bilingual/ESL certified teacher and with a Master’s degree in Bicultural/Bilingual Studies with English as a Second Language Concentration, I was thrilled to crack open the 500+ page tome and run across Jeff’s statement:

[the book]…starts with examples based on what you need for your language teaching and shows which bits of Moodle you need to make them…it aims to provide relevant information for language teachers.

One of the key points that Jeff makes is that while this is a how-to, recipe book, it fundamentally starts out with language teaching at the center. Jeff makes this message clear when he grounds the book in the communicative approach to language learning experience. He also makes a connection to Understanding and Implementing the Communicative Language Teaching Paradigm by George M. Jacobs and Thomas S. C. Farrell; you can read about some of their ideas.

Jeff discusses a few points that I have found invaluable in my own work with Moodle and helping teachers get started; those points include the following:

1. Organization of a Moodle Site from front page to course page.
2. Add-on modules that include those like FLV, Language Online Portfolio Project, MediaCenter (InWiCast), Moodle Mindmap, Mobile Quiz for interacting with student mobile phones (banned in the U.S. for the most part), and NanoGong, which I’ve featured before. He lists other modules he would include as well.
3. Account management – although system administration is a part of account management, many teachers probably have only “course-level” access rather than system administration. This will be increasingly true in larger districts that have Moodle farms managed by Central Office staff with courses for teachers. Nevertheless, it does provide a nice overview.
4. A whole host of other topics are addressed in Chapter 1-2. These are pretty daunting for new Moodlers, especially language teachers who are interested in teaching online.

Of course, it’s worthwhile to jump straight to Chapter 3-Vocabulary Activities and start there. Language teachers might see this as a simple enough place to start. If you’ve ever wondered about what can be done with the Moodle glossary, Jeff provides a lot of examples that are specific to vocabulary learning. True to his promise, Jeff organizes what you can do in Moodle around core vocabulary learning activities that range from the glossary to Hot Potatoes Crossword Puzzles to Chat and other components (e.g. databases, quiz, )available in Moodle.

And, simply, that is the process Jeff follows for the rest of the book. In Chapter 4, he urges the use of MediaCenter and Audacity to help students participate in a dialog…he sets it up in this way:

How can we use Moodle to help students prepare themselves for dialog work? Well, one way is to setup a recording where they hear just half the dialog and they have to provide the other half, using prompt that they can listen to independently. LeRet’s call it Dialog Minus One.. This sort of activity can help students listen carefully and get used to new words or expressions and practice new language functions such as interrupting, inviting, asking questions, and refusing. The big advantage of Moodle is that they can listen in their own time as often as they want.

A list of other topics covered by Jeff include the following:

• Grammar Activities – This chapter (5) is a cornucopia of fascinating uses of Moodle! Unfortunately, I’m not that into grammar exercises, so….
• Reading Activities – This chapter has some interesting activities (using discussion forums for book studies), using questionnaires (i love the override permissions screen since that’s something I have to work with when allowing anyone to make adjustments), using the Lesson module for text prediction, etc.
• Writing Activities – The focus of this chapter is on helping “students produce paragraphs and whole texts.” It includes a whole host of activities with how-to tutorials too complex to describe here.

Overall, Jeff has done a great job of fleshing out language learning activities with specific Moodle uses that shift one’s focus from the technology to language learning. This is a rare approach in the Moodle books I’ve seen which are almost overwhelmed by the technology. Instead, Jeff fulfills his promise to provide how-to recipes and tutorials within the context of the language learning classroom.

That said, the wealth of activities Jeff provides is overwhelming. This text reminds me of the Grammar/Reading/Writing activity books that are organized around what you want to achieve and then illustrated by language activities. Language learning educators will find Jeff’s approach to the subject matter familiar, although the juxtaposition of technology tools available through Moodle and language learning may still cause challenges for neophyte tech users.

I do recommend this book for purchase for Second Language Educators who are investigating Moodle. I also caution them to resist the impulse to implement all the rich activities–view this example available online–the author has included all at once. It may be that a book like Mary Cooch’s Teaching 7-14 year olds might be a better introduction to Moodle in the classroom, Moodle Multimedia as an introduction to various multimedia, Web 2.0 tools, and Second Language Learning as a reference resource for the serious Moodler/teacher.

Of course, those are my top 3 choices of Packt Publishing books on Moodle 1.9!

Finally, I’d be remiss to not mention that this book has been pirated and a Google search will reveal multiple locations where it might be downloaded. I have made the publisher aware of the piracy but…piracy isn’t surprising these days. As to readability in electronic form (PDF), I do NOT recommend downloading the book illegally and trying to wade through it that way…this is a book you’ll want to have next to your desk and add post-its all over!

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure