Image Design by Tonya Mills (tmills0220@yahoo.com)

At the TCEA MoodleMoot earlier this year, I agreed to facilitate a few sessions on Moodle. Though far from an expert, I’ve had a lot of fun learning Moodle and tinkering on the administrative side. Certainly, I’ve learned a lot from MoodleMayhem email list members. My goal in preparing presentations for a two-day series of sessions at the TCEA 2011 State Conference (Monday and Tuesday of that Conference Week) focused on Moodle has really been on finding topics most people don’t present on.

The advice really came from Lori Gracey (TCEA Executive Directory) in an email (for TCEA 2011 presos, not Moodle). It went something like this, my apologies to Lori for the poor paraphrase:

“Yeah, Miguel, why don’t you submit a workshop about the more esoteric stuff?”

Well, at least, that’s what *I* remembered of what Lori said. The problem is that people just don’t want to see the “normal” mundane stuff of Moodle, but learn how to use some of the stuff you don’t see. With that idea in mind, here are three sessions I came up with. I expect they will be approved, but if you like, you can petition Monica Martinez (mmartinez@tcea.org) and say nice things, like, “Wow, it would be a tragedy if Miguel didn’t get to present on this topic!” or “You need to give Miguel a free lunch at Mongolian BBQ for offering to do these!” Yes, it’s shameless, but when there’s no financial renumeration, shameful fame is all that’s left, right?
;->

SESSION PROPOSAL #1
Title: Tinkering with MySQL Moodle Databases

Brief Description: Exploring time-saving Moodle administration techniques, this session will model how to tinker with Moodle using MySQL tools like SQLYog and/or phpMyAdmin. Learn how to make easy modifications!
Longer Description: Ever wanted to make changes to your Moodle data, maybe adjust all enrollment keys for all your Moodle courses in one motion, disable messaging, or adjust user passwords on the backend such as for the administrator? You can do this and more through the magic of MySQL database commands! This session will model how to adjust your Moodle session cookies, perform quick backups of Moodle on a server, duplicating a Moodle instance, and more! This session is not for the faint of heart and requires server admin access to your Moodle.

SESSION PROPOSAL #2
Title: Embedding Multimedia and RSS Content into Moodle

Brief Description: Interested in making your Moodle course more interactive? Learn how to embed media and content from various sources via RSS into your course.

Longer Description: Voicethread, Slideshare, AudioBoo are only some of the many web-based tools you can embed into Moodle HTML areas, including forums, labels, books and more. Each adds a different level of interactivity. In this session, you will learn how to setup your Moodle to be friendly towards media embedding, as well as pull content from blogs, wikis, Moodle forums, image sites, and anything with an RSS feed. Participants will interact with a Moodle setup for them to learn on, although they can certainly apply the techniques to their own Moodle courses.

SESSION PROPOSAL #3

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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