Misplaced one of my assignments in the blog.  Please note my reflection into the proper section: Assessment.

I should probably reedit that to read “Done Thinking About The Proposal”.  But the past few week’s exercise has been a struggle as I try to put it into context of my young Grade 2-3 students.

“Why do my young Grade 2-3 students need a Moodle?”

As I say this, the answer couldn’t be more obvious — yet it seemed to escape me for a while.   As I conducted my research and I thought through the process while watching the rather unsuccessful Wimba session earlier this week, it finally hit me so hard — I wondered where I was the entire time.  Eureka.

The past few years I’ve been playing with Wikis.  How to get neat wikis up with students.  I was quite successful in my approach as I reiterated on the approach year after year.  Then last year, my Grade 2/3’s where challenged with the basic prerequisite of using a wiki, “are you able to read/write?”  This ultimately became a stumbling block, that just needed to be adapted to.  If kid’s couldn’t write full sentences, then they tried.  The beauty of the wiki was that it was collaborative.  It allowed anyone to jump in, no matter what level.  Students helped students — and parents were involved in the process.  I had even extended it to another classroom.  Imagine that, working across the internet with another classroom.

But there were problems.  Everyone could see everything.  It was difficult for me to setup course pages without it being effected by an eager student who accidentally edits or deletes a page.  Sure, I can reverse the whole process — but what a pain.

*Trumpets blare* — Moodle Time.  Imagine instead of having just one or two classes we had five.  Then we’d need a system to manage the students.  But imagine that I could have all my course content online, while collaborating with other teachers on a unit that we all teach over and over again.  What if we made it about interactivity — and creative process — collaboration… using the wikis, and having students work with one another?  Wow.  I might be dreaming a bit, but if there is one thing that my students never stop doing is amazing me everyday by raising to the challenge.

I remember quite vividly a teacher telling me that the Wikis wouldn’t work with the 3/4’s.  It worked really well (it took the second try to work.. but it was beautiful).  Onwards with the challenge!