 Hello everyone and welcome to this Moodle Academy webinar What is Moodle LMS? So I'm Mary Cooch, Education Manager here at Moodle HQ, that's the organisation that maintains, develops, promotes, trains in the use of the Moodle LMS. And I have with me today Anna Krasser, who's Education Advisor at Moodle HQ. Anna, if you'd like to say hello. Hello everyone, good to see new faces this time in our webinar. I'm looking forward to hearing your opinion and ideas and thoughts about this event. Welcome. Okay, so just to clarify then, this webinar is basically a webinar about Moodle for people who don't know anything about Moodle. Perhaps you're looking for a learning platform and you've heard the name Moodle. Perhaps your organisation has told you that you're going to have to be using Moodle and you just want to find out more. So the first part of the session will be a short presentation in three parts. And after that, we're happy to answer any of your questions or comments that you raise. So the layout, the overview is like this. First of all, we're going to look at where does Moodle come from? A little bit about the background, its history. And then of course, how you can get Moodle, the different ways that you can have your own Moodle site. And finally, a very important, why you should use Moodle. What makes Moodle special and what can Moodle do for you? You'll notice in the overview that we're not actually talking about how to use Moodle. That's because, first of all, it would take a long time to explain and we just want to do a short presentation and have time for questions. But also because here on Moodle Academy where this webinar is being run, we have free webinars and free courses showing you how to use Moodle as a teacher or as an administrator or manager of a Moodle site. So we don't need to do that. We just want to give you a basic overview of what is Moodle LMS. And so we're going to start, as I said, with where does Moodle come from? Now, in 2023, it is a global learning platform used around the world. But it actually started from just one man in one small area for one small project. And I'd like to tell you the story of Moodle very quickly. And in fact, when we tell a story in English, that's particularly to children, and I'm sure in your native language, you also have a similar phrase. We begin with once upon a time. And this story actually starts once upon a time in the outback. So in the sparsely populated semi arid desert region right in the centre of Australia. And this was in 1969. So a long time ago was born Martin, a little boy who lived in the outback of Australia. In fact, he did have a pet kangaroo as shown on the photograph on the left. And because he lived with his family a thousand kilometres away from the nearest physical school building or village, he, like many other children, had to do his lessons remotely. And so remote learning was happening even over 50 years ago. And in those days, they used to do them with something called the School of the Air. And they used to do them using shortwave radio as the photo on the right. Now, the School of the Air still exists in Australia because there are still people living in the outback remotely. But now, interestingly, many of them, including Martin's own school, use Moodle for their remote learning. Let's fast forward 30 years and see where Martin is. And I expect you've worked out that Martin was the person who began Moodle. It's much more than just Martin now. He is working at the University of Curtin in Western Australia as an internet consultant. These are the early days of the internet and he's very interested both in the technical side of websites and programming, but also in pedagogy, in education. And he decides to do a PhD, a doctorate in scientific education. And he's interested in finding out how using the internet, this new initiative could help the small group of adult learners that he has himself at the university. He's particularly interested in a philosophy or pedagogy called social constructionism where people build their knowledge together. They collaborate together to learn. And so he starts work on designing a website, a program software just to do this, to help his group as part of his thesis, his doctorate. And by 2002, he'd actually got it to a point where he was happy to cut it out on the internet for other people to download it and try it and give him feedback. So that in fact, by the way, was the 20th of August 2002. So you can see that Moodle has recently celebrated its 21st birthday as a matter of fact. And that day, when there were the first people downloading the Moodle software to test it, we're also the first forum discussions because Martin was very keen to have people collaborating, discussing, giving opinions on it. So this was the first part of the growth of a Moodle community. If you're interested, we don't usually talk about this. We just say Moodle. But if you're interested, the word Moodle, it is actually a verb and it was a verb when Martin decided to use it for his software, but he actually turned it into an acronym. Now, we don't use the acronym, as I said, we say Moodle. But I'd like to point out that modular object oriented, dynamic learning environments, modular and dynamic are very, very important aspects of that acronym and of Moodle. Moodle is modular in that it is made up of different modules, plugins, activities, add-ons, whatever you want to call them, elements that you can use. You can choose and use for your learning or your training. And you can add on or bring in extra ones, which are contributed by other people or organizations. Also, it's dynamic because you can customize and adapt Moodle to use for your own particular learning purposes or needs, as we'll explore soon. So let's fast forward to today, 2023. And Moodle is actually used all around the world. And the interface, so the wording of Moodle, where you press the buttons or where your instructions for logging in or for going to different areas are translated in over 100 languages. So you can actually be in a country and use Moodle in your own language. And it is available in all the countries of the world, over 242. And yes, I know when we say that, there are always people who say, are there 242 countries in the world? It is political. It depends on your definition of country or state. But believe me, it is everywhere. And there are over 160,000 Moodle sites, sites that use Moodle around the world. That we know of. Because as I'm going to explain, Moodle is entirely free. So no one has to tell us if they use it. There could be millions of Moodle sites around the world that we don't know of. These are the only ones which have registered to tell us. The organization, which we call Moodle HQ, that makes and maintains Moodle, has headquarters in Australia and Spain. So we're in the southern and the northern hemisphere. But in actual fact, although the Spanish headquarters in Barcelona is a physical building, in Australia, since COVID, they realized, as many of us did, that we're happy to work remotely from home. And so the Australian headquarters is an occasional shared office space. And in fact, we have the Moodle HQ team. We work remotely from many parts of the world. You have here a map of the world. I am in England, Anna is Greece, and we have people in 23 countries using Moodle, using the Moodle software. So Moodle is global, but I want to make a few points about Moodle and the use of Moodle. Yes, Moodle is used in large prestigious organizations around the world. The University of Cambridge, La Sorbonne in Paris, UNESCO, and the United Nations also use versions of Moodle. Shell, the petroleum company uses Moodle, and many others. These are just examples. But despite being a global organization, and for example, we have a whole entity, Moodle US, we have Moodle India, we take our responsibility towards educators, teachers, learners. We take it very seriously. And Moodle is what we call a B Corporation, which means that it is a business that runs on ethical lines that is aware of the environment, conscious of the environment, and on equitable learning. And I want to stress the equitable here. Moodle can be used from the largest to the smallest of organizations. You can use Moodle as one individual teacher, as a homeschooler in a small elementary school, all the way up to those large organizations. But we never lose sight of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number four, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. So you see here, there is that word equitable. And how do we do that? How can we ensure inclusive, equitable quality education? And how can we do it for all, for everyone? Well, first of all, I want to clarify and explain that Moodle is entirely free. You can just get Moodle and use it. You don't need to ask permission. You don't need any license. Moodle is also open source. That means that the code that was used to make Moodle originally Martins, but now contributed by many, many other developers, which is PHP mainly, is available for anyone to adapt. If so, if you know how to code, you can just get the code and change the Moodle to use it exactly how you want. Now, additionally, we have a Moodle app. I'm looking for my phone here. We have a Moodle app. So we have an app to your smartphone or your tablet, which is entirely free again. You just go and get it from whichever app store you use, or there's even a link if you're unable to get to an app store. And what is really useful about this, which is mainly for students, is that if you are in an area where internet connection is poor or not stable, for example, some areas of India or Africa or some areas in South America, then if you use the app, you can download your tasks, your assignments, you can do them offline. And then the next time that you can get onto the internet somehow, you can sync your assignments, your other tasks, back onto the Moodle website to continue your learning. And this is a very, very powerful and free feature. But in fact, you don't even need the internet to use Moodle. We have offline Moodle access. There is something called a Moodle box, which you can get. And it is literally a box, a Raspberry Pi is one example. And this can be used within the building to spread out the learning in that particular building. Now, for instance, prisons, there are several prisons, penitentiary institutions that find this very helpful because prisoners have either no access to the internet or very restricted access. And yet we still want them to learn. And so by using Moodle box, you can have offline Moodle within your building, your institution. Also, for example, we have case studies where it is used in small elementary schools in India, in villages in India, for example, to help with their learning. So we go from global to very small and precise. And it is free and very, very possible to use with difficult internet access or no internet access. So I'm just going to stop there because that's basically the background and the philosophy of Moodle. Before we move on and we answer the next questions, is there anything in the chat that we need to cover, Anna? So far, the chat is quiet so we can move on. OK, that's great. I was thinking possibly we might answer many questions as we continue with the presentation, so we'll go on. So now you know where Moodle comes from. You might be thinking, OK, how can I get Moodle? And also, whenever we say that Moodle is entirely free, you don't need permission. You don't need a license. People always ask the question, well, is there a catch? There has to be a catch. OK, well, there is no catch. Moodle is entirely free. You just need to go to this site, download.moodle.org, and you can get Moodle. But it is entirely free. And in fact, many universities or larger companies just do exactly that. They get Moodle. They use it for free. We might not even know they're using it. However, to do this, you do need to understand a bit about servers and databases and SQLs and things which I don't understand. So there are other ways which you can get Moodle. And these involve payment at some level. So let's take a look at those because the fact is there is no one-click installation. It's not like an app on your phone. You can't just press a button and get Moodle. And in fact, the Moodle app that you can have on your phone only works when you already have a website, a Moodle website. You can't just get the Moodle app. That is not full Moodle. So how can you get Moodle if you're not particularly technical? Well, Moodle HQ, that's us, the people who make Moodle, we offer what we call Moodle Cloud. And you just need to type into the internet Moodle Cloud. And this is a kind of a one-click installation. You tell them what name you want to give your Moodle Cloud site. And you will then get 45 days of a free trial of Moodle. It's pretty much standard Moodle software with a few limitations, but not many. And if you like it so you can do anything you want with it for 45 days. And if you like it, then you continue with several packages at different prices, depending on how many users you want and what you want to use it for. And this is perfect for smaller or medium-sized organizations, schools, companies, and so on. So that's Moodle Cloud. But as I said, because Moodle is free, anyone can basically use it and set it up. So you can, in theory, you can go and search the internet and find a web hosting company who will set up Moodle for you. In fact, it may be that you are in an organization that uses a particular web hosting company. That's fine. We have no control over them. So we don't know the quality. They could be very good and serve you very well. You could have quite a poor experience if they're not Moodle experts. So what we recommend, if you want more customizations and more options or a larger site, is what we call Moodle certified partners and service providers or Moodle partners for short. And these are web hosts, just like you might find on the internet, but we have actually checked them. We vetted them for the quality of the services they offer for their Moodle hosting or training and so on. And we know that they're experts. And so we then allow them, and this I'm coming into another question now, we then allow them to host Moodle officially certified or verified by us. Okay. Now, this leads me on to another question that people tend to ask, which is, right, if Moodle is free and I don't need to use a hosting company, how do you make your money to continue developing Moodle? All those people around the world, those developers, Mary and Anna, how do you make money? Okay. So first of all, our Moodle certified partners and service providers, they give us 10% of their revenue in return for being able to call themselves Moodle certified partners and service providers. In fact, if you go with one of these, you have an added option. If you're a business and not an academic institution, you have an added option of something we call workplace. This is a special version of Moodle that is better suited to corporate or enterprise learning rather than academic learning schools, colleges and so on. So that's one way because the fact is that how we get our money, well, you are allowed to make donations. You're more than welcome to donate to Moodle and we have links on our sites for donations. But one way is the fact that, oh, incidentally Moodle Cloud, the money comes directly to Moodle HQ. So if you use Moodle Cloud or Moodle certified partners, then that money comes to Moodle HQ because the word Moodle is a trademark. So we can use Moodle to advertise Moodle Cloud because we are Moodle HQ and you can pay us. Our Moodle certified partners and service providers can advertise using Moodle. And as I said in return for that, they give us some of their revenue. There are over 100 Moodle partners around the world. But it does mean that other organizations or businesses are not allowed to say Moodle hosting, Moodle installation, Moodle training in their advertising, which is very useful to be able to name the product that you want to sell. So you have three ways of getting Moodle. If you're not capable of downloading it yourself on a server or you don't want to. And we recommend Moodle Cloud and Moodle certified service providers. I'm going to stop there because hopefully I've explained how you can get Moodle and how it works, even though it's entirely free and open source. Are there any questions before I explain why you should use Moodle and what it can do for you? Yes, actually, we have some interesting pattern discussion in the talk. Well, I can't see the chat, Anna, so I'm relying on you to repeat it. Jonathan asked if we have a satellite office in Philippines. And I explained that we don't have exactly an office there, but we do have a Moodle partner, as you explained. And basically we have Moodle partners, the network of Moodle partners is quite large. And I think they are pretty much everywhere in the world. So look around you, you will probably find. Yes. And I will also share the link to the Moodle partners in a second. Yes. And one of my last slides in the presentation is some useful links, including the link where you can go to find out more about Moodle and find your own Moodle partner in your country. So, yeah, that's great. Thanks, Anna, for that. Anything else? Also, keep in mind that the Moodle partners speak your language, so this is very useful and helpful. And Rika said, ask if the Moodle Cloud is a subscription base, which is indeed the case. You are subscribing to a specific program plan. Yes, package plan. And your needs. Of course, this is after the free 45 days. Yes. And yes, I think that's all for now. We can move on. OK, and as I said, hopefully we have time for more questions after this final section, which is why should I use Moodle? What can Moodle do for me? OK, well, first of all, if we go back to the fact that Moodle is free, open source. You can just download it onto your server. Very important to explain that you own your own data. If you have Moodle in your organization, in your building, then everything on it is yours. You are not tied to somewhere like Microsoft or somewhere like Google. It's yours. And Moodle does have very good GDPR settings, settings, privacy officer role, and so on. We take security very seriously. Security bugs are reported and are dealt with very quickly and everything is very well managed. And in terms of bugs, Moodle, the software, is updated regularly in actual fact. There are bug fixes and other updates every single week. If the Moodle administrator knows how to get them, knows how to download them, there are also what we call minor updates every three months. So there's a smaller, slightly updated version of Moodle every three months. But what we also have is a major update or new version twice a year, every six months. You may remember that the first version of Moodle in August 2002 was called 1.0. In a couple of weeks, we will be having Moodle 4.3, so that's where we're up to. So the software is regularly updated and kept very secure. Also another reason for using Moodle, and this again is tied to the fact that it is open source, that it is free, is that there is a huge Moodle community in different languages, not only in English. That's happy to give you support and some questions and make suggestions for free. And I'm going to share the link to that site, Moodle.org, later on. So one question or one concern people often have when using open source software is, yes, but if it's open source, is it reliable? What's the support? Well, you have two options. So you have better support with Moodle because you have the global community giving you free support. But also you have Moodle partners, as Anna said, many over 100 around the world in your country, in your language who will offer you support as part of your paid package, a particular negotiated support package. So you actually have more than in commercial organizations. Now, in terms of teaching, why should you use Moodle? What can Moodle do for you? Well, pretty much whatever you want. You can teach how you want with Moodle. Now, as I said, when Martin was initially making Moodle, he was very taken with the social constructionist philosophy. And so there are activities or modules in Moodle already for collaborating, for learning together, working with your peers. But you don't have to do that. If you want simply to put on a list of video lectures that you have done and you want your learners just to watch them, you can do that. If you want to just simply put worksheets on, you can do that. So Moodle is dynamic and will customize to whichever way you want to teach or you're required to teach or you want your learners to learn. Likewise, with assessment. So there are different assessment tools that allow you to assess summatively. So you can use assignments or quizzes summatively. Formatively. So you don't have to use the grading system. There's also a very powerful peer assessment tool. And in terms of grading, you can use the traditional academic grades, percentages or letter grades. You can design your own rubrics to grade with. And also if your subject is more practical, vocational, you can use skills-based learning or competences because there's also the option of creating competency-based frameworks or skills-based frameworks and adding them in your Moodle courses. Now Moodle calls the learning spaces courses, but I just wanted to point out that the words in Moodle are all customizable by an admin. So if you're in an organization where you don't want to use the word course because it's informal learning, if you are as I used to help an elementary school, they don't know what a course is, you could change the wording to rooms or learning spaces. So all of those are up to you. And in terms of your courses, rooms, learning spaces, they can either be entirely online. So you could use Moodle with learners or trainees hundreds of kilometers away or you could use it as I used to that during the day, you're teaching in a physical classroom and then learners use Moodle in the evenings and at weekends for extra learning. You can also have rigid start and end dates of courses or not, you could just have it continuous. You can also have deadlines for assignments for quizzes or not. So it's very, very customizable to what you want. And I think the best thing to do is to give you a very quick tour of what a standard Moodle site looks like for a learner and for a teacher. And when I say learner or teacher, you could use the words trainee and manager or tutor or whatever you want to call them. The site that you're going to see is a standard Moodle site that you just get such as a Moodle cloud site or if you downloaded it. But it's important to realize that you can have many different themes or colors or backgrounds, anything to match your own branding of your organization. You can either do it yourself or have a friend do it if they know how to do that. Or you can get free options or a Moodle partner will customize your Moodle site for you. So some people are using Moodle and they have no idea that they're using Moodle because it blends in with their own branding. So what you see here is what you get if you were to go and press the button to get a Moodle cloud site. For example, as a learner, and we're going to follow learner Barbara, I think, she's already been enrolled in some courses. So this isn't her first time on the site. And when she first goes there, she sees what's called a dashboard. And her dashboard shows her a timeline of activities which she needs to complete. So it's very good for keeping herself organized. You can see, for instance, that she has a peer assessment task due. She has an assignment due. And she simply needs to click the button next to it. You workshop summary, add submission, and it will take us straight there so she can meet the deadline. If her courses have deadlines because they don't have to, if the teachers don't want to use them. Something else I like on the dashboard, on the right, the section is called a block draw. And there is a section or a block called recently accessed items. And here is where she can see, where she was studying last on Moodle. And so she can quickly go back to the item or activity that she was looking at the last time she accessed Moodle to continue from where she left off. That also is very helpful, I think. If you can see at the top, as well as dashboard, there's also a link, My Courses. And this is where student Barbara can see all of the courses she is enrolled in. Now, this is a demonstration site, which I'm going to give you access to later. So these courses are on a variety of topics. You obviously possibly would have more specialized or more focused topics here. But for each of these courses that she's enrolled in, you can see percentages, 33% complete, 27% complete. That's because for these courses, the teacher has made certain tasks or activities required. And she needs to complete them in order then to complete the whole course when it will be 100% complete. And perhaps she could get a badge or a certificate even. Those two are options within Moodle. But again, the teacher doesn't have to do that. So you could just have a course that you can access at any time. I also told you about the very useful Moodle app. And so let's just take a look at what this looks like on the app. So here is the app view. This is my Android smartphone. I took these photos last week. So you can see the landscape view and you can see the portrait view of Barbara's Moodle site. And she can do everything as a student on the app that she could do on the main site. And there is a cloud. I hope you can see there is a cloud. And wherever she sees the cloud, that means she can either download the whole course or she could download a particular activity to do it offline if her internet is poor and then re-sync it the next time she goes online. So that's what I was explaining also about equitable learning for all. I think we're going to go very briefly into one of these Moodle courses. So we'll go into the critical thinking, develop your skills course. We'll see the website view because it allows me to make larger, wider screenshots. Now Barbara is, she likes to be very organized. She likes a tidy page. So when Barbara goes to the course, critical thinking, develop your skills, she's already collapsed all of the information, the learning information in the different topics or this teacher calls them modules, their topics or sections in her course. And then she can decide right today I'm going to study module two. So she would just click the arrow to expand it and look at the learning materials, which we will do in a moment. On the left, if she clicks to expand those dots there, she has what we call a course index. And this allows her to see all of the activities in the course. You can scroll this up and down independently of the central sections. You will see green circles. The green circles next to activities tell Barbara that she's done that activity, who's completed it, she doesn't have to worry about that. There is one at the bottom module two quick check, which is an empty circle. And that is saying that she still needs to complete that. So she should go and do that. If there is no circle, glossary of terms, useful video, that activity is not required. So again, she has several ways of keeping up to date with her work. Optionally, on the right, if Barbara clicks the arrow on the right, if it is available, her teacher might have added, and this is the block draw we call extra blocks just for extra information as part of the learning. For example, there is an activity results block. This is a leaderboard basically. This one shows the highest grades in a particular quick check. It could be any of the graded options. And it's just one example of how you can gamify your course as standard using Moodle standard activities. So gamification is possible. There's also course completion status yet another block showing her where she is in the course to make sure that she's always on target. Now, as I said, Barbara likes to keep her central area very tidy. So let's go into module one, the historical background and click to expand it so we can see what learning materials Barbara has to do there. And if we click, well, there's a video and it's very easy to add videos, YouTube videos and so on to Moodle site. She has different activities in what we call cards. These cards will be slightly narrower in the next version of Moodle so that there will be more space. And you see that some of them say done, done. That's the equivalent of the green filled in circle telling Barbara she's done those activities so she can scroll further down the course page and she has module two quick check. That was one with an empty circle telling her she needed to do it and she needs to receive a grade but it has to be a passing grade to complete that activity. At the bottom, tell us how we did is a survey, it's a feedback form that she needs to complete to tell her teacher how she thought the course went and in order to complete that the to-do box says submit feedback. So again, she's very clear what she needs to do to complete it if the teacher's using that. I think now is a good time to look at the course from the teacher point of view. So we're going to leave student Barbara and we're going to go in as teacher, teacher Jeffrey I think and when we access the course as teacher Jeffrey there's a big orange circle with number one and number two. I made these, these aren't standard Moodle, don't worry but there's a point at two important aspects for a teacher in a course. This is the same course and as a teacher teacher Jeffrey by the number one has an edit mode toggle and when he turns it to on he's then able to edit and delete items on the course. Bulk edit, if he clicks the pencil icon there he can select several tasks as activities together and move them, hide them, delete them. Anywhere there is a pencil icon next to some words he can change the wording, the titles and next to the number two that I made is a plus icon. Now whenever teacher Jeffrey scrolls up and down the course with edit mode on he will see plus appear and he just clicks a plus sign wherever he wants to add a new task or activity resource and this takes him to this, the activity chooser we call it these are all the modules that Moodle has as standard there are many as standard there are also others that your administrator can add or you can if you're administrator for example things you might expect like assignments or choice is Moodle's name for a quick poll big blue button is Moodle's inbuilt video conferencing or virtual classroom so you don't need Zoom you don't need Microsoft Teams you have something already in Moodle. Now whenever our teacher clicks to set up one of these activities for example an assignment let's click to set up an assignment as well as the settings you would expect it's name the instructions there are two optional sections one of them on the left is called activity completion and this is where the teacher can define what a learner needs to do for that activity to be checked as complete it depends on the activity for an assignment it might be receive a grade or a passing grade for a poll which Moodle calls a choice it might be to make a choice if it's a forum it might be to post in a forum and so on or they might allow the student just to mark it as complete manually if they've read it for example equally you can also as a teacher on the right add a restriction so an activity is not available until either a previous activity has been completed or passed or until a certain date maybe you're the teacher you put up your PowerPoints for your presentations but you don't want the learners to see them until they've been to the physical lecture in the physical auditorium you can restrict them by user profile or by group and so on if you want to so you can have very very strict control over your course or not and some of you at this point in the last couple of slides might be thinking I don't want any of that I just want to put my worksheets into a space on a Moodle site well you can what you see in this next screenshot is my desktop it's my laptop where I'm working today and the black band on the right is actually my desktop it's a moonscape that's why it's so black and I've put two documents there's a PDF and a Word document and with edit mode on on the Moodle course I just need to click on them selected and drag it anywhere I want onto my Moodle course page and I'm done I can have materials in my course in minutes so as you can see you can go from the very complex to the very straightforward I'm going to leave it there but what I want to share with you is if you'd like to explore or experiment further then of course we have a site Moodle.org slash demo go to that URL we'll put the URLs in the chat Moodle.org slash demo try Moodle try Mount Orange School this is a demonstration site where I took all of those screenshots go and meet student Barbara teacher Jeffrey log in as them and try all of the activities or you can have a completely empty site called Moodle Sandbox where you can practice as much as you want and the site so reset every hour and of course you can have your own Moodle Cloud site for free for 45 days where you can practice on your own without wondering if anyone else in this webinar is on the site at the same time as you perhaps causing confusion so I want to finish by giving you some useful URLs then we will open it up for any questions Moodle.com is the main site or commercial site that is where you go to find more about Moodle its background the Moodle partners you can find your Moodle partners on Moodle.com look for your country look for the services it will take you it will link you to Moodle Cloud also Moodle Academy which is where we are today this has free webinars and courses so that you can learn to use Moodle for free so there is no charge for learning how to use Moodle get yourself a Moodle Cloud site and come back to Moodle Academy and do some of our free courses and Moodle.org is the site where there is the global community giving you free advice and support and that is in many different languages I think over 30 maybe about 40 different languages so you don't have to ask your questions or make your complaints or suggest your proposals in English you can use your own language as well so bookmark Moodle.com Moodle Academy and Moodle.org and I'm going to stock now and we have at least we have a few minutes left for any questions or comments so I'm going to pass over to Anna now okay and let me also open my camera well we do have some questions I didn't answer them in the chat this time Meredith asked where do I find resources for skills-based resources and I want a little bit to clarify Yes please Ansel shared already in the chat the link to Moodle documentation about the competencies but Meredith I'm not sure what you are looking for Moodle does support competencies and you can add a competence framework inside Moodle and create learning plans but I'm not sure if this is what you are asking for if you want to find a way to develop your skills on using Moodle she's saying that she's working on vocational education using Moodle so perhaps competence might be appropriate yes I think that the link that Ansel Angel has is the right one there are skills-based activity that I'm trying to work out how to do If you go to Moodle.org that's the link I gave to the community forums then in whichever language you want you could ask the question give an example of the activity you're trying to do and people will help you if you're happy with English it's called teaching with Moodle and the people in there I facilitate that would be very helpful would be very happy to help you work that out as well good that you think the link is the right one Anna I can't see any of this so if you want to continue Yes Morgan said it was a very good introduction to Moodle Adriane thanks for the webinar Meredith says there are we read that one and I think that we basically have thank replies I don't see any other question okay Enrico came just came up what is the next generation future for Moodle in the pipeline like chat GPT integration maybe well that's interesting because in a few weeks October the 9th I think it is we are releasing a new version of Moodle as I said Moodle 4.3 that will allow you for example to link WhatsApp or Telegram or Slack or a matrix element any of those to your Moodle courses so that you're always communicating with learners there are other features as well I think I'm going to suggest that you keep an eye on Moodle and social media because we will be releasing some videos and some social media articles about what's coming we also very very interested in Moodle and AI there are actually already plugins do you remember we said the M stands for modular modules, extra modules that administrators can add to their Moodle sites which are related to AI so in short that is coming that is we're always very conscious of what is happening in the world at the moment chat GTP and other AI tools and also you can start with some basic things on AI taking some courses we have a course we have in the academy Moodle teaching with AI yes very fresh course and of course there will be several presentations in the global Moodle if you if it happens to come by from Barcelona and the global Moodle you will definitely see a lot of discussions there and Jonathan is asking where do we get some training and certification for educators Moodle academy is definitely the place I would say you can get free training you can also get more specialized training and collaboration with partners as well you can find inside the Moodle academy also certifications and programs of courses and of course we have the Moodle educator certificate if you are interested in that one this is of advanced level of certification that covers all the 22 digital competencies for educators at worth definitely take a look inside the Moodle academy you will find many courses that can make you an expert actually in Moodle either you are an educator or a Moodle administrator or even a Moodle developer indeed yes in fact it's a nice way for me to lead on to the next couple of slides where we'd really like you to get involved with Moodle academy so while you're still thinking perhaps of some final questions if there will be any please help us to grow Moodle academy by contributing to it we have a course and there's a link on the front page on the site home called get involved where you can suggest topics which we at academy can cover in future webinars and courses so if you've joined the webinar but you actually know Moodle you could perhaps suggest to present or help us present webinars and help create courses if you're an expert in Moodle and Anna didn't mention this but this is an important part of Moodle academy some courses are translated so you can go to a course in your language and you will be able to see the course in your language even though it was written in English and we're always looking for volunteer translators who are happy to translate courses into the languages and we have a course called translate Moodle academy which you can take and then help us again this is part of our community as I said the global Moodle community also please if you enjoyed the webinar please help spread the word tell your friends and colleagues that you joined this webinar tell them about Moodle academy and the Moodle educator certification when you complete courses individual courses you can get a batch not in this webinar because this isn't a course this is just for webinars if you take the beginner courses for teachers or admins and others also if you complete a program of courses you can purchase a certificate which is well respected by employers and also once you've developed your skills as Anna said as an educator and you have some experience you can get the very prestigious Moodle educator certification and with a quiz are you ready for MEC see if you're ready for that if there's nothing else pressing I can't see there is just one question despite the multiple thank you from everyone I think Meredith asked if we can suggest academic courses that are really counter specific and I think we are always open to any suggestions all the suggestions are equally reviewed absolutely and also they don't have to be in English we've done webinars in Spanish we have some planned in French and German and so it doesn't only have to be in English yep absolutely okay well if that's everything then thank you all for attending it was a very pleasant session and the recording should be available shortly and it's goodbye from me Mary Cooch and me Anna Carse see you around in Moodle Academy definitely thank you