Are you Christmas 2015 ready?

Christmas TreeHave got everything ready for Christmas 2015?

The answer so far this year – is nothing has been done – YET!! It will be the fastest organised holiday season EVER!!

 

Where possible everything will be click & collect or phone orders.

More on Moodle – a new course on Digital Marketing

Getting ready for back to school…..not long now.  Just as well I have my new course ready to roll out on Moodle.   It is a QQI level 5 course in Digital Marketing.  Search engines, email marketing, writing proposals, all the social media tools and the language of the digital marketing in the 21st century.

Digital Marketing course on Moodle

Still a few finishing touches to the entire course but there is plenty of resources available to get everyone started on the subject.  I have even followed some of my previous tips by embedding my Pinterest board for digital marketing.

Hopefully it will be fun for the learners!

The process of creating the course was faster given my past experiences of creating different courses.  The adaptability of Moodle to facilitate different types of courses is giving me a lot of scope to work with in the future.

Moodle Certified Course Creator

moodle-certifiedAnother piece of paper, thanks to Moodle and my mentor/assessor.

The process of different Moodle courses, assignments, assessments over 8 weeks was challenging at times, not to mention the minimum weekly grade of 80% to be eligible for the next week has rewarded me with a Moodle Certified Course Creator.

The course has given me a wider appreciation of Moodle and the possibilities with the range of tools that can be used for learning.  What a way to be ready for the next academic year?

Sheila McDonald MCCC Award

What can you embed in Moodle?

sample embed webpage

Anything that is already available on the Internet……. YouTube clips, Prezis, RSS and Twitter feeds and even other web pages, allowing you to have all the resources for your course IN your course.  YouTube and Prezi even give you the embed code, if you know where to find it in the first place!  Other education resources also offer embed codes for giving your course more interactivity.

Embed a YouTube video PDF

Embed Prezi PDF

You can create a web page in Moodle and then choose to have it standard or dynamic.  Here’s an example of the code you would add in html view, when editing your web page that would create Google search screen within the web page:

iframe tag sample

Moodle – Better UI/UX

Many users of Moodle consider the long scrolling page of a full course to be a disadvantage in terms of navigation and visual appeal. This technique gives the teacher and learners an improved user interface and user experience.

By using ‘only a bit of HTML code’ otherwise known as a table in plain English to hold shortcuts to web pages (that contain topic/subject resources & activities), it is easier and faster to find your way to the different subjects within a course.  Of course, it makes the front page of the course look very well – rather like the cover of a book.

As a course grows, it may become a victim of its own success – otherwise described as the ‘scroll of death’ may return.  Good design at the start will pay off as your course develops.  Getting fed up of scrolling to the end of a (very long) page (every day for most of the first year using Moodle), I decided there was an improvement to be made to the courses I was using.

Please download the Make Moodle Look Good using HTML- Quick Guide PDF as requested by some at #cesimeet and #cesi40 for the exact steps to make your Moodle course front page look good!  Would love to see your completed front page……

scroll to table

 

Questions to ask before you use social media

Is the target audience defined?  Do multiple visitor categories need to be accommodated?  For example a large company might have customers and investors where as a smaller business might specifically target customers only.  Without defining the target audience, assumptions are made and can often be costly. 

As part of an overall marketing plan the target audience definition should include headings such as age groups, ethnic group, special interest, available disposable income, Internet usage etc.  By working with these headings (traditionally called segmentation), you can better understand your customers and in the true sense of marketing best cater to the needs of your customers while at the same time make a profit for your business.

Having a clear image of the target audience, you can then move on to decide on what will be the best methods of reaching them.  For example, a SMS text campaign is more suitable for younger audiences, particularly if your business offers the possibility of downloading the latest ring tones.

It might also be true that you might have to use traditional media to reach your audience, at least to expose the brand to the market, once this has been achieved then other methods of increasing your market share would become more appropriate.

Ask yourself is the site a help or a hindrance in the process?  For example if the aim of the site to make a sale then the customer should not have to register and complete several processes just to get to the check out. 

There is always another on line store waiting to make the customers like that little bit easier!

Make word clouds

Untitled-6The best tool for creating a word cloud is Wordle.  The more times a word is repeated the more the emphasis.  There are a few tricks also – like how to create the illusion of a space between words.

Shorten a long web address

This is where I will put my ideas into practice by sharing them with everyone!

Shorten a website – why? For use in Twitter where every letter counts.  Try bitly.com – even getting to the site is fast with a short name.

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