Joyce Seitzinger

This weekend I got the nicest email from Jasmin Klindžić, informing me that the latest translation of the Moodle Tool Guide was complete. He and his colleague Tona Perišić Pintek from the University of Zagreb had finished the Croatian translation. And with that, there are now a cool dozen translations.

The power of community around an LMS

I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you to all those Moodlers spending their evenings & nights contributing to their local Moodle community. A real example of Clay Shirky’s cognitive surplus in action:

More value can be gotten out of voluntary participation than anyone previously imagined, thanks to improvements in our ability to connect with one another and improvements in our imagination of what is possible from such participation.

I think the collaboration and open sharing in the Moodle community, is special.

And an active LMS community is an often neglected or underestimated point when organisations are selecting a new LMS. Choosing Moodle, you provide a platform where your users can immediately tap into a group of enthousiastic and open experienced practitioners publishing their experiences on a number of platforms (blogs, wikis, Twitter, Moodle.org, at MoodleMoots). These users share:

• classroom activities & strategies
• course design ideas
• LMS improvement suggestions
• staff development and training plans
• institutional implementation strategies

to name just a few. Moreover, Moodle users know that their experiences, wishes and frustrations are appreciated and listened to by the Moodle developers, because the developers are in the community with them. This symbiosis lies at the heart of Moodle’s success I think. Although other LMS vendors certainly recognise the importance of community, and set up community sites, in my experience these can often feel closed and contrived, with many of the shared artifacts produced by the vendor. I’d love to hear other edtech’s experiences of this, people who have worked in the implementation of several LMSs.

The Cool Dozen

So bravo translators and thanks again for contributing your time and effort to your community! Without further ado, here are the 12 translations of the Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers.

Basque: Moodle Tresnen Gida Irakasleentzat – Maite Goñi (Mondragon Unibertsitatea)

Brazilian Portuguese: Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers – Brazilian Portuguese – Ewout ter Haar (Universidade de São Paulo)

Catalan: Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers – Catalan – Enric Blasco (Universitat Barcelona)

Croatian: Vodič kroz Moodle za nastavnike – Tona Perišić Pintek and Jasmin Klindžić (University of Zagreb)

Dutch: Moodle Gereedschapslijst voor Leraren – Koen Roggemans (Roggemans.net)

French: Guide des Outils Moodle pour Enseignant(e)s – Nicolas Martignoni (Centre Fri-tic)

German: Moodle: Leitfaden für Lehrkräfte – Martin Voegeli (Switzerland)

Hebrew: פוסטר כלי מוודל – Heftsia Ben Artzi

Norwegian: Moodle Verktøyguide for Lærere – Harald Torbjørnsen (Feide)

Portuguese: Guia de Ferramentas Moodle – Lurdes Martins (Portugal)

Slovene: Moodle: Vodnik po orodjih za učitelj – Sarolta Godnic Vicic (Slovenia)

Spanish: Guía de herramientas de Moodle – Victoria Castrillejo (Eledelengua.com)

Remember I’m collecting ALL adaptations (for colour blindness, different pedagogies, institutional versions, etc) on the Moodle Tool Guide page. Please email me (joyce [AT] cats-pyjamas.net) if I haven’t added yours yet.

Flickr Group

We also started a Flickr group to view the Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers in use by the global Moodle community. You are invited to share your pictures too.

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