The high school where I work has a website that I realize now is a moodle site, but I never would have known that before I took this class! Teachers can use the site to do all the things we’ve been learning about – posting assignments, on-line quizzes, etc. I never set up my own page because I didn’t know enough about it and I never had the time to learn and set it up. After this past week and all the time I’ve spent playing around with my moodle site, I’m confident that I can not only use the school’s web site, but also create my own effective site to help my students learn better.
One aspect of moodle that I find interesting is its ability to be collaborative. We’ve learned that this is a huge benefit of using technology in the classroom, (Tapscott, 2010) and I see our moodle sites as being an excellent way for students to work together in groups outside of school, and also to do some peer editing of each others work. Typically when I assign a group project, I have to schedule sufficient class time for the students to work together and complete the project in school. With moodle, I can require that they do some of the work at home through the site. This link shows how to set up groups for collaboration and peer editing. http://www.kassblog.com/2008/09/junior-english-as-moodle-site/
Another feature of moodle that I found helpful was the glossary section, but then I started thinking beyond just the vocabulary. I found that I can put a link to the on-line textbook that we use so that students can review vocab and grammar.
This is particularly helpful to me because my students don’t have their own book to take home and use, we just have books that stay in the classroom. I can update the links from unit to unit so that the information is current. No more excuses that they didn’t have a book to study from because all the information is right on my site!
We determined that technology can help our students become more independent learners, and with a moodle site, I can set up projects where students can work at their own pace according to their individual interests. I can create an activity for my students, link the relevant sites, post a rubric, and show the timeline for completion using the calendar – all on moodle!
When I get this all up and running correctly, I can use moodle to accomplish many of the goals I have for incorporating technology into the classroom.
References:
Kassissieh, R. (2008, September 03). Junior english as moodle site. Retrieved from http://www.kassblog.com/2008/09/junior-english-as-moodle-site/
Tapscott, D. (2009). Grown up digital-How the net generation is changing your world. (p. 181). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Susan,
I loved your blog and all the information you have provided. I, too, never have heard of this before this class, but I think it is great how confident you are in creating your own. I wish I felt the same way, but I know that I will become more confident as we do more. I also chose the glossary feature of Moodle, but did not recognize how creative you can get with it. I loved learning something new about this feature and how informational we can truly make this for our students. Great work and thanks for the info! Good luck with the rest of your Moodle site!
I think that is crazy that your school has a website that you did not know was a moodle site until you took this class. It makes me think, how many other teachers are in the same place you were – a great tool at their fingertips but no idea how to use it? Technology will only work to our advantage in education if the educators are educated properly on how to use it. Seeing how complicated moodle is I would think that your school should offer some sort of training on how to utilize the website.
You mentioned some great ways to use a moodle site in your Spanish classes. I agree that the collaboration it allows is extremely valuable. My students just completed a group project where I needed to book time in the computer lab over several days. It still wasn’t enough time. It would have been SO helpful if the groups could have collaborated on these projects while at home. As it was, some students were completing portions of the work at home with no way of communicating with their groups until they met up in class again. I am excited to be able to start utilizing some of the moodle features with my students as I can tell you are as well. Great blog.