 The year is 2020 and our world has been changed by the coronavirus pandemic code named COVID-19. Situations and events have emerged which, until now, were only imaginable in a Hollywood script. According to the United Nations, COVID-19 is the defining global health crisis of our time and the greatest challenge we've faced since World War II. I'd like to acknowledge that COVID is a challenging time for everybody and it's a shared experience. The impact of COVID is without precedent in our lifetimes. Nothing and nobody has been spared. Every country, economy, business, household and individual has been disrupted in some way. In a matter of months, it is like a tsunami has rolled in and washed away many lives and livelihoods. And then there's the massive impact on education. According to the Harvard Business Review, globally speaking, more than 1.6 billion students have been impacted. This represents around 91% of all students in the world. University campuses have closed their doors. Students are attending lectures and classes virtually. And office workers have been told to work and learn remotely from home. This image depicts a traditional classroom in around the 1850s. It was a byproduct of the Industrial Revolution. Do you think this kind of classroom still exists today? Well, in some respects it does. The school oftentimes is a physical environment. Students are taught in large batches. Classrooms are organized in lines and rows and curricular standardized. So this old school model is somewhat akin to a mass production line in a factory. And now, with the arrival of COVID and social distancing measures, the old school method has been disrupted. Many believe COVID represents a major challenge for education. This is true. However, I also see an opportunity for a paradigm shift which empowers us to rethink the way we learn and work. It's taken a global pandemic to get us thinking differently about education. If it's OK with you, I'd like to talk about some positives. I think it's fair to say that COVID has improved our overall sense of community, collaboration and cooperation. Think to yourself for a moment what perhaps have been some of the benefits of COVID. If any at all, perhaps type those in the chat area there. There's quite possibly things like working from home, remote learning, greater flexibility, less commuting, meaning less emissions. So the environment wins. And overall, an improved work-study life balance that may result in less stress. Again, some of these things may be perceived benefits. So with all this disruption to the traditional education system, how do we as educators continue to deliver quality education? I'd like to bring your attention to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. And goal number four in particular is about quality education. On the same token, Moodle's mission is to empower educators to improve our world. So as Moodle educators, what can we learn from COVID that will enable us to continue delivering quality education? I believe there are seven key pillars which form the foundation of quality education. Whether that be face-to-face, blended or online, this is my model. Resources, communication, collaboration, assessment, accreditation, reporting and accessibility. So in line with those seven pillars, what I've done is handpicked seven tools to help us facilitate remote learning with Moodle. So in essence, it's one tool per pillar. So look at the list of tools there. Which of those tools are you most using at the moment? All right, let's start with pillar one. It's resources. And the chosen tool happens to be H5P. Now, here's just a snippet of some of the many content types that are available through H5P. It's the new kit on the block, and incidentally, it's an open-source content creation tool. The good news for us as educators is that it's super easy to use. And our learners win as well because it's very interactive and engaging. Oftentimes, people ask me if they were to learn just one of these H5P content types, which one provides the best return on investment. Well, I'd recommend you check out the interactive video. So H5P has been part of Moodle since 3.8. And in fact, with 3.9, the integration is even deeper. You can see here, this is Moodle version 3.9's activity chooser. You would select H5P, give the activity name and an optional description. And you can drag and drop or go about uploading a pre-created H5P learning object. Optionally, you can see at the bottom there I've highlighted, you could go to the course Content Bank. This is new for Moodle 3.9 as well. So you could stockpile H5P objects in your Content Bank. And all, you could come to this page and create one on the fly. So you add, click the Add button and then you select one of the H5P content types and you create it directly inside of Moodle as an activity. Now another way you can go, again with pre-created H5P content, is via the HTML Editor within Moodle, the Ato Editor. So anywhere you see that H5P icon, click it. And then you're able to either link to an existing H5P object or upload one. And then in essence, you're inserting it within perhaps a page or a book or a discussion forum. So on and so forth. A quiz, a lesson. Pillar 2 is communication and the tool is a forum. For centuries, the forum was the centre of daily life in ancient Rome. The site of processions, elections, public speeches, criminal trials, commercial fares and even gladiatorial matches. Likewise, and more recently in Moodle, the forum is an essential place. It's perfect for remote learners because they will be able to ask questions, get answers, share ideas and help others. I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but every new Moodle course automatically gets one activity. And it happens to be a forum. So I think Moodle is trying to tell us something here. The standard forum for general use is very much the Swiss Army Knife of Discussion Forums. It's multi-purpose. I would encourage you to also check out some of the other forum types and see if they are fit for purpose. Pillar 3's collaboration and the chosen tool is web conferencing. Here we are today, web conferencing connecting globally via a wonderful tool. It's all about human connection. And it's even more important in times such as these during isolation. So typically web conferencing tools allow us to share certain things, naturally voice, video, screen and files. Invariably there's also the option to chat, poll and some of the tools have breakout rooms and the option to record the session. So which web conferencing tool are you mostly using? Some of you may be using more than one tool. Some may be very new to this. So perhaps Big Blue buttons your conferencing tool of choice. Or is it Teams, Zoom, Adobe Connect or perhaps another. The good news is Moodle has plugins for many of the popular web conferencing tools. Zoom and Teams for example are app based. They do require a subscription. As far as Big Blue button goes, it's not app driven but rather it's accessed like we are today via a web browser. And in terms of setup, you will or your organization will require a web server to get this running. So that's the key point of difference there. In terms of look and feel, this is Big Blue button. We're using it today. You've got a screen grab there. This is Teams from Microsoft. The integration is quite deep with Outlook and Calendar, SharePoint and other applications as part of the Microsoft 365 suite. And all of these conferencing tools incidentally work across desktop, tablet and mobile. We've got Zoom. Zoom is also pet friendly apparently. The pillar four is assessment and the tool I've chosen is the workshop. Workshop is a wonderful peer assessment activity which fosters a sense of cooperation and interdependence. And these are things that really need to come to the fore in our current state, global state. How it works is this. Learners submit their work. They can receive submissions from their peers, which they assess according to a marking guide or rubric, which is likely put together by the teacher or trainer. And as you can see here, there are five phases to the workshop. We've got setup, submission, assessment, grading evaluation and close. And it's up to the teacher if they can predetermine the date and time that the respective phases open and close, or optionally they can come in and manually trigger the open and close of the respective phases. But the idea of a workshop is very stepwise and very sequential. This is a teacher trainer's view of the workshop grades and we can see who has submitted work, who has received grades, who has given grades. Pillar 5 is accreditation and the tool is badges. I ask you this, how do you recognize and reward learner achievement? Badges are a super simple way to incentivize our learners. When learners are motivated, they feel a stronger sense of purpose toward achieving a goal, whether that be completing a Moodle course or an activity within it. So here's a badge that was created earlier. It contains a pretty image. The badge has a name, a description and then a criteria or a set of conditions that must be achieved by the learner to be issued with the badge. When the badges are earned, they embed themselves on the user's profile and then the learner has the option to synchronize the badges to a backpack such as Badger. Because in reality, learners may be attaining badges from various sites and services. So Badger acts as a single repository to store the badges and then perhaps show them off to peers, potential employers that helps people land jobs and earn promotions. And in general, just show their level of knowledge, skill, capability and competence. Pillar 6 is reporting and the chosen tool is learning analytics. Learning analytics helps educators make informed decisions about learning and learners. With remote learning, this is especially important for educators because we need to know whether or not our learners are engaged. In a physical learning environment, that's a little easier to do. Learners are present, they're attending, they're turning up to class or lecture or the workplace. They are performing tasks, they are participating. In a remote environment, that's not so easy to identify. So the idea with learning analytics is learners who are at risk of failure can be identified, educators get notified and that enables them to intervene in a timely manner. And in the first instance, the intervention may be something as simple as a direct message via the Moodle platform. If we drill in a bit deeper here to one of these students who is at risk of dropping out, we can see that the prediction was made via Moodle's inbuilt predictive model. So this is AI and I guess the early stages of machine learning. And the flags are the indicators that allowed the predictive model to be triggered. So we can see the course has not been accessed at any stage nor has the learner written or read to the said course. Pillar 7 is accessibility and the tool is the mobile app. I don't know if you're aware 80% of global internet use is mobile. And with the recent spike in remote learning, it can be predicted many, many more learners will be accessing Moodle via mobile and tablet as opposed to desktop or laptop. The app gives learners the freedom and flexibility to learn anywhere at any time without being bound to a classroom or an office. And here we can see the Moodle mobile app. It's freely available for download from the various stores. We've got three screenshots here of a mobile in portrait mode. And you can see that the app is modern, clean and simply beautiful. Right, so here are your seven imperatives. Go and create a H5P activity. Initiate a discussion forum. And if you're using forums already, perhaps try a different forum type. Trial a web conferencing tool. And if you're using one already, go check out another one. Facilitate a workshop activity. Set up the conditions to issue badges in your Moodle course and enable learning analytics. Download the freely available Moodle mobile app from one of the major app stores. In closing, COVID represents a major crisis for all of us. It is a shared experience. As educators, we are essential workers in the frontline. It is our duty to continue delivering quality education. The old school model has been disrupted. Are you willing to be courageous? If so, then embrace a new model of education with innovative tools such as Moodle, and you will be the hero.