Whenever a new Moodle release is announced, it’s really useful to be able to test out the new features before upgrading your own site. While your organisation’s development site or Moodle’s own Sandbox site allow you to explore settings and activities as an admin, teacher or student, the experience can be a bit dull if all you have are Course 101, Test Student and Test Teacher.
The School demonstration site, Mount Orange, makes exploring new versions of Moodle so much more meaningful, as you can experiment with realistic courses, students and teachers with pre-built content and data. With each upgrade, sample activities are added, so if you’re currently lacking in or looking for inspiration, you just need to check out the items labelled “NEW IN 2.9” on the Manager, Teacher, Student or Parent pages and log in with the relevant roles. Here’s a flavour of what you will find:
- See how quizzes can now have sections and conditional questions by logging as a student and trying the Grammar Help for your Essay quiz.
- Experience time limit completion conditions in a Moodle lesson by logging in as a parent to a Lesson on assignments – and then learn about overriding settings by logging in with the teacher role.
- Rejoice at the time saved now that you only need to post once in a forum to send a message to all groups by checking out this Group Project forum as a teacher.
- Add an element of competition to your course by including a league-table-like Activity Results block for any graded task, such as Workshop submissions in the Celebrating Cultures course.
Not yet on Moodle 2.9? Then check out the items labelled “NEW IN 2.8/2.7/2.6“ and see how far we’ve come and what you’re missing out on!
