Well its been a long time since I have posted – 7 weeks. Co-incidentally this seems to be the same length of time as our summer school holidays. Unfortunately I have not been slumbering in the sun as some have. I have been hard at work writing 3 Moodle courses and preparing for my new role as eLearning Director at Wellington College, a New Zealand state boys high school.
The last week has been absolutely hectic for me. For the last 2 years the school has been using a Microsoft intranet or Content Management System called Sharepoint. Unfortunately this business targeted system, which is really aimed at getting mainly Microsoft documents online, has not met the creative needs of our dedicated teaching staff. Over the holidays I have developed an independent Moodle site for teachers wanting more. It was offered as one of a range of online options (along with wikis and blogs etc) to a group of teachers working in our Collaboration Webs project. In the space of the last few days interest has grown to the point where we now have 18 teachers wanting to develop courses with more knocking on the door. In just 3 days over 100 students have enrolled in courses and I expect up to 400 within the next 2 weeks. This has far exceeded my expectations.
Feedback from teachers, once shown the potential of Moodle, has been one of “this is exactly what I am after”. One commented that “this will totally change my teaching”. The way I pitched it to teachers was that they could have their own course site with full control over how they wanted to use it. Our other SharePoint system frustrated more than encouraged experimentation and discovery. I emphasised three aspects of the course:
The first was the way they could organise their content and hyperlinks etc.
The second was the huge range of choices in interactivity.
Thirdly, I emphasised that they could monitor student activity
It is interesting that they could do none of these three things with the Microsoft SharePoint system that the College still uses.
Lastly one of the things that I am very conscious of is workload, particularly at this time of year. I have suggested to teachers to just start with one of their classes and upload a few documents that they already use. Once students are enrolled then they can add more content and start using the interactive tools. Keeping things simple and quick at the early stages is important. Of course once a teacher starts using Moodle and discovers its full potential for both teaching and learning then they won’t look back. Without realising it their ICT skills will grow exponentially (sorry I had to sneak in a Maths term there).
Anyway, that is all from me for now. To all the Kiwi (New Zealand) teachers, all the best for the start of the year. And greetings from “Down Under” to all those from overseas who are delving into the exciting and rapidly evolving world of eLearning.
Well my year long elearning fellowship has finally come to an end and I will be back into regular teaching alongside my role as eLearning Director at Wellington College starting next year.
This year has seen me test and research a model of learning which I had used previously with a Year 11 History class. The research explored how student interactivity can be enhanced through the use of a blended learning approach and sought to discover how students could become more engaged in their learning when offered an environment that encouraged interaction and collaboration.
I used a Moodle LMS where students prepared for upcoming classes by engaging with online readings, quizzes, forum discussions and a variety of other resources and activities. They would then come to class and participate in activities including discussion around the content that had been covered. I found that the students were interacting with the content, me and each other with a deeper understanding than they might have previously. One of the most significant findings was that engagement equalised, that is to say that lower ability students became more engaged in discussion now that they felt more confident in their knowledge of course content. I finish my report with a discussion about how I believe that emerging technologies will impact on the future of blended learning and high schools in general.
My completed research report is available for download in PDF format here (2.14MB). It will be made available on the efellows site shortly.
I have also discussed my research project and year in general in an edtalks video which can be viewed below (approximately 7 mins):
If you or your school have decided to start using the Moodle LMS then this post may be of some use to you.
Self Hosting or Managed Hosting?
Although Moodle is a free open source Learning Management System downloadable from Moodle.org, it does require some ongoing technical support if you are wanting to go down the Self Hosting track. Even hosting it on a cheap overseas site such as GoDaddy.com or Bluehost.com can incur problems down the track, particularly if your site attracts a lot of traffic such as multiple users logging on and multiple daily emails. Even if your school hosts the site then you will need to be have some good technical assistance.
One option for self hosting is to contract a Moodle specialist such as Catalyst who can set up the site to your specifications. They can then monitor and manage from off-site. This could initially be the safest self-hosting track
Managed hosting is easier but more expensive. Companies such as Catalyst or HRDNZ are both Moodle specialists and would be the way to go. Just be aware that with managed hosting there may be limitations on the number of add-ons that you can install. I chose the managed hosting solution with my classes as my school chose to use Microsoft SharePoint (Ughhh!) and I wanted something more interactive etc (see my earlier post “Why Choose Moodle” for more on this). Managed hosting initially allowed me to gain confidence with Moodle as a learning tool without worrying about technical issues.
Training
HRDNZ earlier this year started a 12 week MoodleBites Course. One important aspect of this is that you take on the role of a student – it is important to see Moodle from the users point of view as you are constructing your course. MoodleBites also gives you training and tips on the many tools that you can incorporate into your online course. You can also interact with other “students” and ask questions in the discussion forums.
Northtec has been running a course called CeLDD (Certificate in Elearning Design & Development) for the last 2 years.
This course is approximately 12 months but is more comprehensive than MoodleBites. It discusses wider eLearning issues and pedagogy and there are some tasks to complete – it is well worth looking at.
Moodle School is a great website to become more familiar with Moodle. They have free short courses and links to a great range of resources.
Julian Ridden of NSW Australia runs Moodle Playpen which showcases latest moodle developments within a Moodle site. He also has a great Moodle Blog.
Finally, there is an annual conference in New Zealand called Moodle Moot. This year it is in Napier in the second week of these October holidays.
Well hopefully that gives you a few pointers from someone who has been moodling along for 2 years now…
"Schools should explore not only how ICT can supplement traditional ways of teaching but also how it can open up new and different ways of learning" -The NZ Curriculum (p36)
