Andrew Field of Content Generator continues in his quest to make all his games SCORM compliant (and very useful in Moodle!) by releasing a beta version of his retro Teacher Invaders game. When finished, it will be a free generator – designed to give fellow educators an insight into the quality of ContentGenerator.net programs and hopefully encourage them to purchase the more in-depth commercial programs. There’s a sample game here - obviously all the answers relate to elements in Moodle! I shall be making some on a more geographical/linguistic theme this week to test out in our Moodle.

I’ve hacked into three Moodle sites this week… well, ok; no, not really; I got in perfectly legitimately: I just went to the Login page – created myself an account, clicked on the confirmation email and got free access to anywhere and everything on these Moodles. One is a secondary school not too many miles from me; the other two are primary schools. Worryingly, when I had logged into one primary school – in Skelmersdale – I gained immediate access to editing the front page… Naturally I owned up immediately to all three (once I had thoroughly investigated their content) And fortunately for them, these are Moodles in their infancy with very few users and not a lot of content. However, it does highlight the importance of having someone knowledgeable and competent as Admin, and this is where those tempted to go the Moodle way can be dissuaded by the commercial companies who will argue that it is only they who are trustworthy enough to admistrate – and  charge schools thousands to do so. Not true; but it is vital that whoever has Admin rights within the school is aware of the different types of authentication. These three (and how many more?) were set -inadvertently methinks – to ‘email based self authentication’ whereby anyone can get an account simply by filling in the form.  They should have set their authentication to ‘manual’ and only allow in those they wish. I’m a trustworthy CRB cleared educator – but who knows what could be offered to someone unscrupulous who chanced upon these school Moodles?  Even more of a concern: the Skelmersdale primary Moodle I got into is actually managed by a paid company who advertise themselves to schools. (Not a Moodle partner by the way) Here’s the link to Moodle docs - is your Moodle safe?

There’s a useful podcast from the people at Edtechroundup here, discussing VLEs, Moodle and the Scottish GLOW. Well worth a download!

Younger pupils – indeed, older pupils too – love the interaction of an IWB whereby they can get out of their seats and tap, touch or hit the screen to select an answer in a starter or plenary activity. Most of these activitities can be uploaded to Moodle so they are not just available in the classroom.  Apart from HotPotatoes mentioned in another post, here are three of my favourite applications:

Spellmaster: This is a free tool for teachers to create their own flash games. Primarily for MFL teachers, it can be adapted to other subjects too. You download the application -which offers a choice of activitites such as word-matching, edit a file in notepad with the words you want and then upload the whole folder to Moodle. (You will normally need to zip the folder up and then unzip online) You then link on your course page to the swffile of the game you wish the students to access.  Here – on  a Moodle theme! – is a Word-Web I made earlier!

 Languages Online  the Australian site -offers similar downloadable templates  to make fun flash games – again, with the facility to add sound and video. They are free for educators but to work within Moodle you will need to convert the .exe file that is made to a .swf file.  For this there is a simple application e2s exe to swf converter that will do the job. (Thanks to JosePicardo for pointing this out!) You need again to upload the whole folder and then link to the swf file on your course page. Here’s a Moodle Castle Game!

History teacher Andrew Field’s Content Generator games are seriously addictive amongst all ages and will all, in time, be SCORM compliant, allowing the results to be recorded in Moodle’s gradebook.  The games are not free but are incredibly good value  and can be bought as a package for schools.  You make them offline and need to upload into the same area a swf file and an html file. You can fling your teacher, drown him in a sea of sharks, play football or basket ball or even – as in this  Moodle En Garde example here, customise your background to have a swordfight anywhere you like! Penalty Shootout and Fling The Teacher are SCORM compliant and there are instructions for uploading SCORM packages  on his site – and the games were even admired by the Great High Moodler Himself, Martin Dougiamas  – praise indeed!