 Hello and thank you for coming. My name is Chris Kenneberg and I'm from Dearborn Public Schools. We are a K-12 public school district in Dearborn, Michigan and Kind of what we've done is we started with a simple premise of how do we get students to log in and to learning as quickly and as efficiently as possible and so That kind of started our our journey on a deliberate and thoughtful Implementation of Moodle a lot of times in K-12 What ends up happening is they install Moodle and and then they turn it over to the teachers and so what we tried to do was come up with almost like a recipe and so I'm going to share a little bit of that process and we're going to take ten years of of that process and try to whittle it down to about ten minutes and Okay, so We set out to have some expectations and what we did was we tried to start Defining like some pathways so We had a lot of discussion about what it is that we want the user to see and do when they reach our site Once once they reach our site. How do they access the learning materials? And so we set out to look at a whole bunch of things and And this was about the time of Moodle 2.7 and so prior to that You know, I haven't I had never written a line of code and so with Moodle 2.7 my boss Troy Patterson who's with us here today He said, you know, we want to use Moodle, but we have to make it intuitive for our users There's too many distractions on the home page And we really need to focus it down so that You know, we can go back to that core Slogan that we have from login to learning. How do we get the kids there quickly as possible? so what we did was we had our first attempt during the release of Moodle 2.7 and This is kind of what we came up with we said when they reach our Moodle site We're not going to have all these blocks and three columns and all these Distractions which lead people away from what were actually there for which is to get them into a a class and At K-12 that's very difficult if you have a five-year-old to get them from the home page to the teacher's course so What we said was when they reach our site We want them to log in so that we know who they are and And then what we did was we said three columns is a bit much for elementary kids There's too much going on. There's too much of a cognitive load there for them so what we wanted to do was Basically, this was the start of looking at designing a theme Because we wanted to eliminate that third column And also when they got there, we didn't want them to do anything other than log in so our first attempt Was this and that was the home home page and as you can see the only thing they could do was log in They couldn't get around that we and you know, that's the Detroit skyline there And then once they entered the course again, we went with two columns and we introduced the concept of This icon navigation because we wanted the home page to be the traffic cop to say You know, you can go here. You can go here and this is what you do So we really kind of stripped down that initial home page and we learned a lot of things and then you know, so we got some feedback coming in from the Moodle community as well as our teachers and some of the students and What we were hearing Was they wanted some more enhancements done to the menus so Around the time of Moodle 2.9 we entered in a period of a lot of experimentation so The second attempt was We focused on the same goals that we had for for our first attempt But we wanted to improve the navigation and we wanted to look at user experience more and So what we tried to do were little things like for instance A lot of our teachers have many many topics in their course and when they scroll down the page and They realize that they wanted to add another resource They had to scroll all the way back up click the editing button and then scroll all the way back down to add that resource so we did things like the Turn editing on button we it's location aware So when the teacher Clicked it. It was always visible on the page and when the teacher clicked it It returned them to that same spot on the page And It was about this time that we really started to dive into a lot of PHP coding things that I didn't really know a whole lot about And We we were lucky enough that there was this awesome Moodle community out there and Some of the people like Richard Ollman Gareth Bernard Mary Evans Lots of Emma Richardson lots of people that were in the Moodle forums Kind of helped us through this process. So when we talked about customization and user experience We did things like adding, you know, like a header image. We did a lot of things with Moving the navigations around and Some of the other things that we did Were like for instance course completion or activity completion We wanted that readily visible and built in in a visual way to the theme and so in the upper Corner we did a little radial that would display to the end user those kinds of things There was also a little orange button that would show the user their grades So it would slide down and show them their grade. So this was a lot of experimentation That we were doing With different elements of bootstrap and and those kinds of things and really kind of just Learning about how to better present these things to our end users And then Moodle did something really really good During Moodle 3.2 They released the boost thing and that was like a game changer for us because we had really wanted a two column very clean minimal theme and And that really jump-started our development cycle My boss he kind of over the the couple of years that we had been working on this He was bringing more people into Our department and we had some other people that could also You know help develop and and write code and so we did we focused on three things The theme we created an enrollment plug-in and then we also built a secure Chromebook app that would allow us You know it kind of helps teachers when they give out a test to know that that that the kids aren't cheating And then we did a lot with the boost theme Holding true to Like the login when they come to our homepage. We want them to log in to get into the course and as you can see All of our themes it's kind of like a calling card for our themes We have that icon navigation because we want the students to go to just certain places But you'll also notice in this Picture we added the enrollment code That was a new plug-in that was developed because Again to get kids from login to learning as quickly as possible What we did was we mimicked Google Classroom They do enrollment really really well when you have a lot of You know, it's not programmed like a college where you pay and you get in Our courses Things kind of pop up and we need ways to get kids right from the home page into the class So the way that our plug-in works is it they type in a six-digit code They click the enroll button and they are present they are enrolled in the course and So so that was You know kind of how we came up with with a better way to get the kids into The courses the other thing that we did was we consolidated all of the menus We moved them into the upper corner and We made them little icons that have like when you roll over them. They tell you what they are But we wanted if we get lost we tell them look up Kind of like a DTE commercial You know when when you see a down power line look up that kind of thing So we put all of the menus in the upper left and What they the menus do is the first one that you click if you're a teacher you get a teacher dashboard and This goes back to getting feedback from our teachers They were saying that when they were in their course and in the boost theme they introduced the little the editing cog and It really threw them for a loop when they left the home page and the menu changed and So what we wanted was one button that kind of laid out and organize the menu for them That drop down some of the things have like little sub menus And so what we did was we laid it all out in a flat panel for them And no matter where they are in their course when they click that button this panel pops up And it allows them to go from place to place The next button in our theme is Again related to the easy enrollment plugin and what that does is You know With the integration when when our theme recognizes that the plugin is installed on your system it displays the the button and It generates auto generates the codes for the the teacher and Whether they give them a group code or just the course code It will you know, put them into the proper place in the course the one thing that I did not mention was again we deal with little kids and a lot of times they open up the Chromebook and It's about all the patience the teacher has just to get them to log in with a username and a password and So once they're in the the Moodle system What we did was we utilize QR codes so the teacher can print out a QR code and The student can click the little button to the left of the enrollment code and it pops up the webcam and The teacher can walk by and just kind of scan a piece of paper and it puts them into the course So whether they use the six-digit code or the QR code that was Kind of our solution to get them from the homepage right into a course and then Again once they're in the course We Remove the blocks We like the blocks but we did not want them always visible and So what we did is in the upper right corner We have a course blocks and again from the previous theme when we were experimenting with different User interfaces and and different things that you can do We utilize that gradebook slider That would drop down and that's exactly what We did with the blocks so the teacher or the student can click the blocks they slide down the teacher now has three columns to work with and We thought that that was a little bit better Interface and so I Guess at this point we would open it up to any questions. I Saw a cue over there It's gonna come and share the stage with you Chris I'm just while the mics getting ready there and if anyone's got any questions I used to be director of e-learning of a three to nineteen academy and I would have killed for a lot of this stuff I mean in terms of just getting kids to be able to log in when they're you know Between five and seven years old is such a hassle and as you say a whole lesson can go by so it's a great work Does anyone have a question for Chris just to raise your hands and someone will come around with a microphone for you There's a question here, please someone's got a mic And I'll point out is after the session they said that the power points would be released We do have some videos that kind of demonstrate some of this, but I we're short on time here Hi, Chris. Um, the the qr enrollment. That's really really cool. Is there is there an equivalent qr login? Idea or or plan or what did you what did you think about that? I I wish but not at this point Any other questions for Chris? Okay. Well, thank you very much Chris Kennyberg