Technology enhanced learning events - my schedule

Here’s the booklet of demonstrations and workshops (to end of June) that I'm delivering to colleagues at Coventry University.

Using Moodle's Realtime Quiz

I heard about Moodle plugin Realtime Quiz from a colleague so thought I'd give it a go. To learn how to use it, I viewed a YouTube video made by the creator of the plugin, Davo Smith. I found the video extremely useful because it gave a demonstration of Realtime Quiz  in use and it talked me (teacher) through the process. (Videos are great because they can be replayed and I would not have understood the reason for each of 3 options at one stage.) Also, I learnt about the significance of naming a session and easily being able to test it beforehand.

When I set up the questions, they had to be single option multi-choice, so I needed to re-word some of the questions.

I like the fact that you can choose a "No right answer" where an opinion, not a fact is needed. This was useful for asking people about what topic the felt least confident in using and giving a set of options.

Issues in my session

The issues are to do with the way I set it up, not the plugin. It worked beautifully.

The timing, especially having a wordy question in question 2.  (I could have changed individual questions' times and the default time.)

Answering skills

Apart from the wordy question 2, the lowest response was for question 1... this may be because all of the people in the group had tablets (Android or iPad) that were new to them and some had problems. Also on at least one occasion, someone pressed an option accidentally... Realtime Quiz is very unforgiving and takes the first "press", not allowing anyone to change their mind.

Next time

What I would do next time - yes, there will be a next time! 

• Make question 1 a longer response time.
• Build up to more complex questions.
• I had the opinion questions after the scoring questions and stated on more than one occasion that they were not for scoring. I think that worked. I might try alternatives.

I'm not the expert - a cautionary tale

Last week, I was looking forward to presenting to a group of new HE tutors who were just starting their Postgraduate Certificate course. I had been asked to tell them about the technology enhanced learning tools. So, the day before, I went to the location and checked that the computer was working and that the internet could cope with a video that I was going to show. It did.
I didn't twig that the mouse was a Mac mouse; I was just using it as normal. Although I'm familiar with Macs - I have a Macbook pro - I'm not familiar with their mouses.

On the day - I was assembling things and I knew that some of them were on a new memory stick. Here's a way to impress one's new boss - I put the stick into the computer, to show what I'd been doing and the stick didn't work. ALL MY WORK... there was a backup but it was IN A SAFE PLACE... (a euphamism for "I'm not sure where..."). 
After trying several options with the stick and the computer... I suddenly realised that I'd put the stick in the wrong way. This particular slimline stick didn't stop me from putting it in upside down.

In the afternoon, I started to give my demonstration and I couldn't log into the VLE.  And the hundreds of times that I had logged in before... just when I wanted to demonstrate some great features. And I couldn't log in. I had been locked out. In trying to recover, I suddenly noticed the mouse and that it was different (without two buttons) and this didn't help as I wanted to right click. Eventually, I  recovered, but things were a little sticky for a few moments.

So - I need to be aware of a plan B. Not necessarily the stick either. I'm working on it. I need to be aware that if I make any changes, then the backup also needs to be changed too. Also, during a demonstration, to go quickly and seamlessly to plan B, as if that were the plan A.
And to be aware of the many alternatives that are in a room when I present.
The video worked fine by the way. But it showed me that I will never present myself as "the expert", as things are just as likely to go wrong when I'm using the technology. 


During the morning, I had spent some time helping someone by ascertaining whether some software was working. It required me to put in my user name and password to enable publishing to the VLE. Unfortunately the settings weren't correct but eventually I managed to succeed. This may have caused the lock-out.