1. Getting Started with Poodll Languages

Poodll Languages is a set of four Moodle activities designed for language learning. Students practise speaking, listening, reading, writing and vocabulary inside your Moodle course, and receive automatic scores and feedback from speech recognition and AI. Teachers save marking time and can see in reports and the gradebook how each student is progressing.

This guide is written for teachers at Moodle sites where the Poodll Languages plugins have already been installed and configured by an administrator.

Poodll Languages is made up of four separate activity plugins:

Unlike the Poodll Media plugins, which add recording tools to Moodle’s existing assignments, quizzes and text editors, each Poodll Languages plugin is a standalone activity. You add it to a course from the activity chooser, like a Moodle Quiz or Forum.

Figure 1.1. The four Poodll Languages activities on a Moodle course page.

Start with what you want your students to do.

The activities also work well together. For example, a unit might open with WordCards to introduce vocabulary, continue with a ReadAloud that uses those words, and end with a Solo speaking task. Section 7 has more ideas.

All four activities are added in the same way.

1. Open your Moodle course and turn Edit mode on.
2. In the section where you want the activity, select +, then Activity or resource.
3. Choose Poodll MiniLesson, Poodll Solo, Poodll WordCards or Poodll ReadAloud.
4. Enter a name and complete the activity settings. The defaults are a good starting point, but always check the language setting.
5. Select Save and display to open the activity and continue setting it up.

Figure 1.2. The Poodll Languages activities in the Moodle activity chooser.

Can’t see an activity? Each plugin is installed separately, so your site may have only some of them. Your role may also lack permission to add them. Ask your Moodle administrator or support team.

When you open a Poodll Languages activity as a teacher, you see tabs along the top that students do not see. They are where you add content and review results.

Some sites show additional tabs, such as Push, Lesson Bank or Assistant, if an administrator has enabled those features.

Figure 1.3. The teacher tabs in each of the four activities.

Tip for teachers: To see what students see, use Moodle’s Switch role to… Student option or a test student account. Some features only behave normally for students. WordCards, for example, tracks learned words only for students.

The most important setting in any Poodll Languages activity is the language your students are learning. It tells speech recognition what language to expect, and it determines the voices available for text to speech.

The setting is called:

• Target/Voice Language in MiniLesson.
• Target Language in Solo and WordCards.
• Passage language in ReadAloud.

Some features also use the student’s native language, for example to show translated definitions or to give AI feedback in a language the student understands. Section 6 explains how these settings work.

Important: If speech recognition seems to mark everything wrong, check the language setting first. An activity set to English (US) will not recognise a student who is speaking French.

Students need an up-to-date web browser and, for speaking tasks, a working microphone. They do not need to install anything.

1. Check the microphone. A headset microphone often reduces background noise and improves speech recognition.
2. Allow microphone access. When the browser asks whether Moodle can use the microphone, choose an allow option, such as Allow while visiting the site. The wording varies by browser.
3. Find a quiet place. Background noise and other voices reduce recognition accuracy.
4. Make a short test. Try a brief spoken task to check that the recording and scoring work as expected.

Figure 1.4. A browser asking for permission to use the microphone.

Not every activity needs a microphone. WordCards activities such as Choose the Answer and MiniLesson items such as Multi Choice can be completed without speaking. Check which tasks you have included if some of your students cannot record.

Poodll Languages uses the Poodll cloud service for recordings, text to speech, speech recognition and AI features. Recordings are stored in the cloud region selected for your site or activity, and activities that record usually have a Days to keep file setting. After that period the recording is deleted automatically.

Schools control which plugins and features are enabled and should have appropriate policies for their learners. If you have questions about storage location, retention, AI processing, consent or privacy, consult your Moodle administrator or your institution’s data protection guidance.

For further information, see Cloud Poodll and Data: Q & A.

• Section 2: Building lessons with Poodll MiniLesson.
• Section 3: Speaking and writing tasks with Poodll Solo.
• Section 4: Teaching vocabulary with Poodll WordCards.
• Section 5: Reading practice with Poodll ReadAloud.
• Section 6: Language settings, speech recognition, AI, grades and reports.
• Section 7: Practical teaching ideas.
• Section 8: Troubleshooting and frequently asked questions.

• Poodll Languages overview
• What languages does Poodll support?
• Introducing Poodll MiniLesson
• Introducing Poodll Solo
• Introducing Poodll WordCards
• Read Aloud Introduction