Moodle Course Management System for Librarians

For those of you haven't heard of Moodle, here is a description from their website. "Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)." Basically you install it on a web server and can use it to manage and deliver courses online. That is really an oversimplification, it can be used for many different purposes. The session I attended the Library Technology Conference was hands on and doesn't really translate that well into a blog post, so I am going to concentrate on ways that I think it could be used by SELCO and its member libraries.

Moodle is a very mature open source project which is being used in many educational settings including at the University of Minnesota. It has a low cost to implement and a relatively low learning curve. Moodle could replace at least two third-party tools that we currently pay for. It seems like a direct replacement for Coursewhere, and Moodle can do surveys so we wouldn't need Zoomerang any longer. Here are some of the other ways I think it could be used.

SELCO has been creating a lot of flash based video tutorials for simple topics such as, how to reset a pin, how to use the catalog, and how to use MNLink. They have tutorials on cataloging and Horizon. They have also been producing video content on their SELCOtv site. Moodle could be a one stop shop to aggregate all this content. This content could also be included in various courses on Moodle and augmented into full-fledged online courses, complete with required reading, assignments, activities, and quizzes to measure the expected outcomes/competencies/goals. It could take the place of some of the on-site classes, and would be available to the librarians 24/7. It could also be used to supplement the face-to-face training happening on-site.

Moodle could also be used by libraries to deliver training to their patrons. It could be used to train patrons on the new Aquabrowser front-end to the catalog. It could be used to train librarians on new services available in their library. There was a separate session at the conference on using Moodle as an online forum for book clubs. Moodle has discussion forums, wikis, databases, and the list goes on.

Moodle runs on a standard LAMP(Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack which is a platform that could be easily leveraged for other websites/services. For instance, there are a lot of libraries that are moving to drupal as a content management system for their websites, drupal runs on LAMP. The LAMP stack could be leveraged by any library that wants to do a more advanced website than simple html, or blogger posting to their site.

I've just outlined a few of the uses of Moodle. I'm sure once we started using it in earnest we'd find lots of other uses for it.

Reading for Digital Natives

I recently went to the Library Technology Conference and attended some very interesting sessions. This post will be the first in a series about some of the sessions I found most interesting.

Reading for Digital Natives, presented by Carol Soma, was one of the best sessions I went to. The slides at the previous link are a pretty good outline for the session. I didn't realize how much different the brain of a digital native is from someone like me who is considered to be a digital immigrant. I never really thought of myself as a digital immigrant. I started messing with computers when I was 8 years old, and have tended to be an early adopter of technology, but my son has had his own computer since he was three. My first computer was text only, his can play high-res movies. When I started using the internet, it was text based and you used gopher to retrieve documents from servers and downloaded at 2400 bits per second. His internet is full of pictures, video games, movies, and the text isn't green on a black background. He downloads all that at around 1.6 million bits per second. When I look at all that, I have to admit there is a big enough difference between his experience and mine that I am definitely a digital immigrant, he is a digital native, and none of the following should surprise me.

• The visual cortex in brains today are 20% larger than brains measured 20 years ago.

• If you show a digital native and a digital immigrant 100 pictures, the native will recall 90 of them, the immigrant only 60.

• Digital natives don't notice black and white text. They are attracted to burnt orange, neon green, and red. Textbooks have taken notice and are starting to reflect this.

Slides 7 and 8 show how we scan a page for information versus how the digital native scans a page. For us it takes 7 eye movements and is basically left to right. The digital native does it in 4 eye movement that basically scan the title and make an X on the page. They are scanning to see if anything jumps right out at them.

Digital natives are good at visual skills, mind mapping is a good tool for them. They like to learn things through experience rather than through lectures. It needs to be interactive. They expect things to happen at light speed and be easy, fast, and fun. They don't really "get" revising and rewriting. They are so used to multitasking, that they don't necessarily realize when they need to focus to do a better job. Also because of their multitasking nature, things tend to end up in the habitual learning center rather than in the application/analysis part of the brain. So they can memorize facts, but can't necessarily apply them to other situations.

Some things to keep in mind when dealing with reading difficulties. Intensive reading instruction after age 10 can create lasting changes in the brain. Our current education system tends to put the bulk of its focus on reading K-3, but reading really needs to have a K-12 focus not just K-3. We need to teach reading at all levels and in all areas. We need to have them read aloud and think aloud. Have them predict what will happen in what they are reading. Show them how multitasking actually slows them down. Have them show their work to an audience. Don't rely heavily on PowerPoint, kids use PPT because that is what their teachers want, but it's not a technology they would choose for themselves. Use tools that are familiar to them. Gaming will be more engaging for them. Moodle is good for organizing classroom material online.

Those are some of the highlights of the session. I would encourage anyone who is interested in more information to download the slides. There is a great bibliography at the end. I would pay special attention to the documents by Mark Prensky.

Really? A whole year?

I can't believe it's just a week short of a year since my last post. I kind of go in bursts on these things. Expect a flurry here shortly.

Here is a comment about my previous post. We have since decided to go with Aquabrowser for the new catalog front end at SELCO. I think the project is going well in general, a bit slower than we had hoped but I think that tends to happen with most large projects. Hopefully things will start to accelerate and our timeline won't slip too much.

New Initiatives

We had a good SELCO board meeting Wednesday night. I received my "23 things on a stick" flash drive, and my name was drawn out of the hat for a DVD player. That was a cool surprise! There was good discussion about the new Strategic Plan for the consortium. I'm particularly excited about the Teen programming component. We also decided to go ahead and take a serious look at creating a new catalog utilizing Endeca.

Endeca is a great product used by a lot of large e-commerce companies. I'm glad everyone seems excited about it, but I think we still need to take a look at the alternatives as well. Solr is a similar open source project that is used by a lot of large e-commerce companies as well. It's not as slick as Endeca, but I think it is worth a look as well. Here are some links if anyone is curious.

Here is a list of sites using it for their guided navigation/search.
http://wiki.apache.org/solr/PublicServers

There are some pretty big sites in that list.
http://reviews.cnet.com/
http://shopper.cnet.com/
http://www.netflix.com/
http://www.archive.org/

I do see some libraries in the list as well.
http://deweybrowser.oclc.org/ddcbrowser2/
http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/index.html
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/digital/resndev/blacklight.html
http://siris-collections.si.edu/search/results.jsp

I also think we should be looking at AquaBrowser as well. They are a more library specific company. They've built a lot of the social aspects into their product. They do things like import LibraryThing tags and reviews, and allow patrons to do tagging, reviewing, and networking. Definitely worth a serious look. Plenty of libraries in their list of customers.

Thing 23. Final Thoughts

This was a good experience. It was a lot more time consuming than I was expecting. I definitely can tell I spent more time on the early things. I did learn quite a bit, especially about the more library specific sites. I definitely plan to play more with LibraryThing.

Thing 22. What Did I Learn Today?

I'm constantly learning new things about technology, that's the nature of having a tech job. What I don't generally do, is ask myself how the library might use whatever I'm looking at. I think about what it can do for the business I work for. So my resolution is to make a conscious effort to start thinking more about how the things I run across could have an application in the library setting.

Thing 21. Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

There are a lot of social networking sites out there. I use meetup.com to keep in touch with the MN MySQL User Group. I use Linked-in to keep track of my former co-workers and colleagues, here is my profile. I notice from my Linked-in connections that a couple of my former co-workers are now in charge of operations at Ning. They are definitely smart people, no wonder Ning has such a great architecture.

Thing 20. Libraries and Social Networks

Facebook and MySpace, I can understand the attraction. They combine a lot of things you used to have to get ala carte. Web space, blog, BBS, IM, its all there. You used to have to get each one of those things individually. MySpace has been used a lot for marketing, especially in the music business. Here is an example. I don't see why you couldn't do the same sort of thing to market your library.

Thing 19. Podcasts

I regularly listen to podcasts. I pull a lot of them down from public radio. Two of my favorites are Wait Wait Don't Tell Me from NPR, and Musicheads from MPR's new music station, The Current. I use Juice to download my podcasts automatically.

One way podcasts could be used in the library would be setting up a podcasting booth. I think that would be a great way to engage teens by enabling them to create content at the library. It wouldn't have to be anything too fancy. A PC with a microphone, audacity, and an internet connection. A booth to put it in that has decent acoustics, preferably something that could be setup and taken down easily.

Thing 18. YouTube & Other Online Video

I really got a kick out this movie. It is both entertaining and informative. I think it really displays how YouTube can be used as a reference in the library. I could also see libraries using YouTube to upload video of various events that happen at the library, or to promote upcoming events.

Thing 17. ELM Productivity Tools

I must admit I haven't used ELM much, so this was a good introduction for me. I really like the NetLibrary, but the books appear to be a bit out of date, at least the tech books are. I didn't know you could do so much with EBSCO. I will definitely be revisiting these resources.

Thing 16. Student 2.0 Tools

The two tools in this Thing seem useful. I especially like how the University of Minnesota Assignment Calculator brought together resources from many other colleges. I would have found this quite useful in college for keeping me on track. I was always the procrastinator who ended up cramming most of an assignment in the night before it was due.

Thing 14. LibraryThing

I thought Library Thing was pretty fun. I just might put my whole collection there. I did have a couple issues though. I had some time-outs when adding books. It is also buggy under Firefox.

I could see libraries using this as a place to put lists of new books. It would then be easy to add the feed to their website. Similar to the widget I added to this blog.

My library is here.

Thing 15. Online Games and Libraries

I decided to skip ahead to Thing 15 because its relevant to what I am doing tonight. I am blogging from the Plainview Public Library as I help chaperone one of their GameFest nights. There are 28 kids ages 12-18 here tonight. Some are playing the Magic: The Gathering card game. Some are on the computers playing Runescape or armorgames.com. There is also a PS3 hooked up to a projector that they are playing Rock Band on. There are 2 other TV's set up with gaming consoles. Lots of fun is being had.

Plainview has had a very successful gaming program. Along with the GameFest nights, they have had various video game tournaments and are about to do another Dungeons & Dragons class. Alice went to the TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium last year and came back with a lot of new ideas, especially for family gaming and intergenerational gaming. The rumor is that its going to be in Chicago again this year, but November instead of July. We'll have to keep an eye on the website to confirm that.

So, on to the actual assignment. I did Puzzle Pirates, pretty fun but I'm still more of a Runescape person.

Thing 13. Online Productivity Tools

I have setup iGoogle. I don't login to it very often. Mostly just if I'm somewhere and don't have a laptop with me, or am on my ultra-portable PC. It gives a decent starting/aggregation point for the resources I use the most. I can see at as good resource for someone that doesn't have a PC at home and uses mainly library computers.

This is a bit of a re-hash of previous blog posts, but I think the Google calendar app is awesome. You can read Thing 9 to find out how I use it. Plainview Public Library uses it within their website as their events calendar. I think that is one of the great applications for a library. I do have a Remember The Milk login, but I rarely use it. The Google calendar does SMS to/from my cell phone, so I don't really need the other one any more.

I also subscribe to the Lifehacker RSS feed. They are constantly reviewing GTD apps and posting productivity hints. They are a great resource for that sort of thing.

Thing 12. Do You Digg?

Nope, I don't. I don't have anything against it, I just don't use these services. The amount of information I get from the Internet already feels like drinking from a fire hose. Also, these sites can be to much of a time waster for me. I was looking at reddit and pulled me into a 20 minute tangent reading Dilbert, and about movie sequels that were so bad they damaged the original. Not sure about the library application, but definitely can be cheap entertainment.

Thing 11. Tagging and Del.icio.us

I'm a relatively recent convert to del.icio.us. I didn't see the point because I had Google's bookmark sync setup, so I had my bookmarks on all my workstations already. I'm also a bookmark pack rat, and one day I decided I was going to give del.icio.us a try in an attempt to get them better organized and available from any PC without needing to install any software. It's been great. I no longer scroll through pages of bookmarks to find the one I want. It has also saved me from keeping 30 tabs open to websites I thought looked interesting, but I hadn't had the time to give more than a cursory glance. Now, with the del.icio.us toolbar, I just tag them and know that they'll be there when I'm looking for something on that topic.

I can see this being a very good tool at libraries to share commonly used bookmarks, they can be available to any computer in the library. I can also see pulling an RSS feed for a certain tag and putting that as part of the content on the library's website. It's a great way to share interesting items with coworkers and/or patrons.

Thing 10. Wikis

I am a big fan of wiki software. When I started at Fastenal almost 2 years ago, there was very little documentation for my group. One of the first things I did was install MediaWiki(Wikipedia's software) on my workstation and started documenting things about servers, services, and policies as I learned them. After just a few months of doing that, everybody saw how easy and valuable that was, so we decided to purchase commercial wiki software. We chose Confluence which I had used in at my previous workplace. They were already using Jira from the same company for bug tracking, issue tracking, & project management, so it just made sense. I'm a big fan of Confluence, if you are looking for an enterprise class wiki with paid support. Its very easy to use and the permissions can be very granular.

I think all of the examples of libraries using wiki software in this "Thing" are great. There are lots of open source and hosted versions of wiki software out there, so the cost of entry can be very low. It's a great way to get some quick and dirty documentation started, and everybody can refine it.

Thing 9. Online Collaboration Tools

Thing 9. Online Collaboration Tools

For this thing I decided to take it one step further and actually do my blog post from within Google Docs. Did you know you can do that? I've been using the Google apps for a while. I even have a Google Apps For Your Domain account. My wife and I heavily use Google calendars so we can both edit the family calendar, and I also created a separate work calendar. I can either view them one at a time or both together. It's a lot handier to be able to look at our home calendar while I am at work. A lot easier than setting up a dedicated webcam pointing at the calendar on our wall at home. :^) Regarding Google vs. Zoho, I think Zoho has a better feature set, but I'm more likely to use Google because I do so much other stuff in Google already.

I think online collaboration tools can be very useful in any organization, including libraries. I think its a relatively untapped resource that is finally starting to get some traction.

Thing 8. Share Your Creations

I already have a flickr badge on this blog, so I completed a tiny bit of this "Thing" earlier. I guess that will be my thing to share.

I like the idea of SlideShare as a place to share presentation materials. I personally haven't spent much time creating presentations; nothing I can share outside of work anyway. I do tend to download all the presentations I can find after I go to a conference. Some have put them up on SlideShare, most just post them in PDF form on their websites. They are a good reminder of the highlights of the talks I attended.


I've heard good things about Zoho. Mainly that it has better compatibility and a better feature set than the comparable Google applications. It seems to me that showing patrons to these sites could be a good alternative to spending the money to license the Microsoft applications on patron accessible computers.

Lazybase seems like it could be a good place to put some limited use, "throw away" databases. Their web server is throwing errors tonight, so hopefully it's usually a little more stable.


All these tools look to be useful. One thing to keep in mind when using them is the fact that you are putting your information in the hands of a third party. You have to decide what level of trust you have for that organization. You also need to keep in mind that if you are using their free service then there is really no support, and if your data is lost you probably aren't going to get it back. If the tool works for you and you can live with its limitations and risks, go for it.