I’ve downloaded this from PacktPub; purports to be a book full of ideas for using Moodle effectively in learning and teaching. It’s by William Rice    who blogs on moodle.org; it’s a 5.6MB download, 193 pages, divided into 10 chapters covering the principal Moodle activities. It’s up to date, as he deals with Moodle 1.9 which we don’t yet have from CLEO. I must confess the first few chapters covering forums/chat/quiz/lesson/choice didn’t particularly grab me but that’s because at Our Lady’s we’ve been making innovative use of these for a while now, but I do like the way he not only suggests teaching ideas but also explains how to set up each activity, with screenshots and examples.  So the book is not just  how to moodle – it’s how to moodle effectively. The later chapters on wikis, glossaries and workshops I found more useful as he really highlights here the interactivity of  Moodle  and its value in student collaboration . Apparently there’s a learning pyramid that says students only retain 5% of what they’re told, 10% of what they read but 50% of what they discuss. Where a forum facilitates discussions between students and teachers,  and a collective wiki enables whole classes to combine their learning, he suggests setting up individual student wikis for them to edit as they progress and for the teacher to comment on (engaging in a Socratic Dialogue, apparently!) and also suggests making the Glossary more than just a bank of words set up by the teacher. Students could add their own words which they feel might help classmates; classmates could rate them on how helpful the definitions are; they could (providing the teacher alters the settings to make them invisible to others) equally input possible test/plenary questions at the end of a topic, which the teacher could then pool together as an assessment. On the subject of assessment I particularly liked the chapter on workshops. If all you want is for students to upload their work, you might as well use the assignment module. According to the Learning Pyramid, teaching others gives a  90% retention rate – so if you want them to view, assess and rate each others work -and tick that ‘peer assessment’ box – then a workshop is ideal.  I would recommend the book even if you have used some of the features he discusses, as there is bound to be something there you might not have thought of. I almost wish I’d bought the paper version now – to ‘have and to hold!’