Boo

2. » Title:
» Moodle 1.9 – Teaching Techniques
» Authors:
» William Rice & Susan Smith Nash
» Reviewer:
» Kent Villard
» Publisher:
» Birmingham, UK: PACKT Publishing
» Year of publication: 2010
» Type of publication: e-book
» URL:
http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/?uiCode=stanford&xmlId=9781849
510066
» Price: Free access through academic libraries; US $14.84 from publisher
» (http://www.packtpub.com/moodle-1-9-teaching-techniques/book )
» ISBN 978-1-849510-06-6

3. » Theme:
From Technology to Solution - Creative ways to build
powerful and effective online courses
» Thesis:
Moodle is an educational platform based on
sociocultural theory with a consistent user interface
that facilitates interaction between students and
teachers in a consistent way with variety of
asynchronous and synchronous resources and activities.

4. » William Rice wrote the first edition of this book to
help teachers launch their first Moodle course.
Susan Smith Nash built on an earlier version and
expanded it to create the second edition. She is
convinced that Moodle is a good environment to
create a positive e-learning experience for
students. The authors use their expertise in Moodle
to describe procedures for the development of
reusable instructional elements for an object-
oriented online course. The authors are experts in
e-learning and Moodle who regularly publishes
texts on their blogs and websites.

5. » The authors’ expertise transpires from the
pages, since the book offers the approach of a
“hands-on-project”. Icons that mark important notes
as well as tips and tricks help the reader to find
relevant information without having to spend a lot of
time. However, the authors state several times that
basic knowledge of Moodle is required in order to
follow their instructions. It should also be noted that
the book is clearly written for people with at least
some knowledge of pedagogy and experience in
teaching. Teachers will find this book a valuable
resource as they prepare the design of their first
online course. It is easy to read insofar as the use of
jargon is avoided, and new terms are always
explained.

6. » Concise introductions and summaries for every
chapter help the reader to review and navigate the
text. The Table of Contents resembles a “to-do” list
for course design. This makes it easy to find topics
of special interest to the reader. The reader will
appreciate to find relevant information in every
chapter on how to work around some Moodle
administrative features to better serve the students
and to get a course to work for an online teacher.
All procedures are described in detail, complete
with step-by-step Moodle screenshots, an
approach that works well for visual learners.

7. » The authors’ enthusiasm for Moodle as a teaching tool
and their wish to convince the novice Moodle teacher
of their unreserved positive opinion about the
software is frequently expressed in the text, which
leaves a teacher with little experience in the field with
the choice to agree or to agree. This may stir up some
scepticism in the reader, since no caveats of Moodle
are exposed in the book.
» Nevertheless, I recommend this book as a reference
for educators, corporate trainers, and university
professors who are new to Moodle course
design, especially because it discusses the student
perspective of the online resources and activities in
detail.

8. » William Rice regularly blogs about e-
learning, Moodle, and Magento
(http://williamriceinc.blogspot.com/).
» Susan Smith Nash is also a blogger
(http://elearnqueen.blogspot.com/)
» Kent Villard blogs about Moodle
(http://moodle.upeiblogs.ca/author/moodle/)

9. » The index helps to find information by keyword. There are
no footnotes in the book, and, unfortunately, there is no
bibliography, although the authors mention a few websites
and scientific articles in the text.
» The book is a good guide for teachers with basic knowledge
of Moodle and confidence in their digital skills. The table of
contents is a to-do list of sorts, and the reader will find
insights about pedagogical issues related to the Moodle
activities as well as some tips about best practice for
Moodle teachers throughout the book. Particularly helpful
are the introduction and summary sections of each chapter.
They clearly state what to expect in the content and are an
excellent short guide to each topic.

10. » This book review was prepared by
Diethild Starkmeth in January 2012 as an
assignment for the course M4T-A, offered by
Integrating Technology
http://www.integrating-technology.org/
» Contact Information
Twitter: Dista11
Email: diethild2009@gmail.com