Exploring and Discussing eLearning in New Zealand High Schools
This video explains Moodle as a set of course building blocks – illustrated with Lego.
It was made last month by Tomaz Lasic who is also the author of videos in one of my previous posts showing how Moodle changed his High School in Perth, Western Australia.
[Note: This video is high quality and you will need to go to full screen mode to view fully]
It has become increasingly relevant for those who are involved in educating others to give quick and simple instruction using screen capture software.
I have just been playing around with free software called Jing which is free software produced by TechSmith which is the same company that sells very popular tutorial software such as Camtasia and SnagIt.
What I like about Jing is that it is simple to both record and publish screen captures. All output is in flash file format and can be either saved to your computer or uploaded to Screencast.com once you have set up a free account. The uploaded videos can produce embed code or link code depending on your preferences.
I have included an example of both below for a simple instruction video of how to upload a file to Moodle:
Embedded video:
Well I have just about recovered from the U-Learn 08 Conference held in Christchurch last week. It is the largest eLearning conference for teachers in the country. The conference more than anything confirmed my belief that we are headed rapidly towards a combination of Collaboration Webs and Mobile tools which will take over our teaching. This year’s Horizon Report confirms that these will be adopted within 1-3 years.
For this reason I will be helping to implement a project at my school to facilitate a shift to the use of Mobile Tools and Connected Learning in the classroom. Currently teachers need to jostle over the limited computer room resources, similar to most schools as we know. We will be dedicating one classroom of laptops to allow 5-6 teachers from a range of subjects and Year levels to have online access on demand. The teachers will become a collaborative team with ongoing professional development in the use of online tools to implement student centred learning. The focus of this project is on developing the staff so that they can become team leaders the following year when we purchase a number of sets of cheap mini laptops such as the Classmate PC (as shown above).
Already there is strong interest in participation in the project. I see it as just one project among many where rapid growth can occur by exploring and modelling what is possible.
Clearly the expectation is that Mobile Phones will become the web tool of choice for most teenagers and possibly adults too. However, until the more web-capable iPhone & T-Mobile become more affordable then we see the use of the mini PC as an affordable choice to help prepare our staff and students for what lies ahead.
Here is a link to my presentation to Department Heads which was use to promote discussion of our “Collaboration Webs Project”:
“Fling the Teacher” has proven to be one of the most popular Quiz tools for my students. In the last 15 minutes of a period the class are invited to go online and are given a reward if they manage to “Fling the Teacher”
Fling the Teacher quiz software is free from Content Generator and is one of a number of types of quizzes which they market – some are free and some can be purchased in bundles.
Fling the Teacher is modelled on the popular game show “Who wants to be a Millionaire” with 15 questions and 3 lifelines. The students answers 15 questions from a question bank – I recommend about 45 questions. The beauty is that you can enter in the questions from easiest to hardest which means that as a student plays the questions get harder.
Try Fling the Teacher below with a quiz on the History topic “Origins of World War II” for the period 1936-41:
It is my belief that the implementation of an interactive Learning Management System such as Moodle is best accomplished using a ground up rather than top down model.
The following two videos show what Belmont City College in Perth, Western Australia accomplished within a short space of time. After 10 months over 50% of teaching staff were using Moodle. The videos (part 1 & 2) step through the process of the schools implementation of Moodle and also demonstrate what is possible for teachers, students and administrators with the Moodle LMS.
This is a great presentation which I thoroughly recommend:
For New Zealand based Moodle and Google Apps - Training Courses & Support: Visit DigiLearn.co.nz