Tag Archives: Moodle

Fussy Kitty: The Working Process with Moodle

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It was interesting watching my introductory unit come into clearer and clearer focus as the weekend approached – sort of like one of those first person perspectives in movies when a character awakens to a group of onlookers. All of the notes and information spread across thin TextEdit windows which I use in my workflow to keyboard and view an open page clutter the bottom of the screen while the open tabs from above get narrower as I continue to open more. What I am trying to say is that a lot of parts had to be collected in the whole of the final product. The ride was intense.

One of the difficulties that I experienced was the difference between the edit screen, the logged-out screen and the screen from the perspective of a guest login. It became obvious to me from the outset that working from the authoring side of Moodle was not always a straight-forward process. The unit headings of my schedule page looked fine with my login, but on the guest login they were crushed into the right column. Lots of times, adding tools was counter-intuitive, and involved checking YouTube for complex work-around to seemingly simple processes. For example, I was surprised to learn that there was no simple way to link different elements within the course. The solution finally worked for me was to copy-paste the URL of the page as I would for an external site (super clunky).

The opposite was also true: what I expected to be complicated turned out to be simple. The large navigational gear buttons that I have at the top of the first section were accomplished very quicky by linking the graphics placed in a table. Unfortunately I was unable to hide the original feature icons without also disabling the link.

The documentation stage a big part of the clarifying process for me. Articulating a rationale for the online delivery of the course, describing decisions on the site’s visual design and explaining how my choice of tools connect to the unit objectives forced me to re-think my reasoning. In some cases I felt confident and justified in my design decisions, and in others I had go back into the site and tweak details. One of my last edits was to change the wording on my objectives. This is the iterative process. Documenting decisions was a good way to activate that process .

No Bad Turns

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It is interesting how creating a unit on Moodle begins slowly, then seems to gain its own momentum. The work flow is no longer linear, where I consult my design, determine the best tools to meet my objectives, learn how to use them, then create an overview, resource or activity. Now I am doing all of those things at the same time – in full throttle.

Activities 2 and 3 in the “Collaborating in Groups” section took a little more time than I had budgeted, but it was fun to explore the creation and editing process in Moodle. I also gained awareness of the difficulties of getting the desired formatting in the visual editor when cut and pasting content into topics, pages and fora. For example, there are numerous places where I can’t add a space or control the text that I highlight for headings. My colleague at work warned me that Moodle can get pretty clogged-up with necessary code imported from other applications. He showed me the icon for removing the code. I’ve switched to writing all my text in simple text mode.

It was also enjoyable creating the case studies of the sorts of characters that many teenagers encounter in group work throughout their school careers. I used the cases in the Oakley et al., (2004) paper and the Song et al., (2007) study for the free-loader and the sucker, then tweaked it to represent a profile that I know many students in my school would recognize. The other two cases were my own creation. My hunch is that most students will identify with these personalities; however I’m a little worried that some will have an aversion response that interferes with the activity. I’ll have to find that out for real in September.

Creating the activities for students to practice geographic inquiry by collaborating on a GIS map did not go as planned. I have to give a nod to ESRI here for emphasizing that introducing too much too soon with ArcGIS will have a negative impact on almost all students, and that a gradual scaffolding process over time works best. I was disappointed because I really want to introduce the inquiry process by providing them with the opportunity for success with the technology in the introductory unit.

The solution came as I noodle around ESRI’s ArcOnline site and discovered the story map Apps with numerous examples of the various tools for presenting GIS maps with images and media. I realized that the 5 steps of geographic inquiry could be applied easily in this format by linking photographs to map locations and creating a narrative. It is one of those serendipidous moments where a road block in the planning necessitates a change that improves the original design.

All of the main elements are now in place for my online introductory unit. I’m off the radar now for 2 days to celebrate my 25th anniversary. When I return on Thursday, it will be polish and documentation time.

Oakley, B., Felder, R. M., Brent, R., & Elhajj, I. (2004). Turning student groups into effective teams. Journal of student centered learning, 2(1), 9-34.

Song, L., Hannafin, M. J., & Hill, J. R. (2007). Reconciling beliefs and practices in teaching and learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55(1), 27-50. doi:10.1007/s11423-006-9013-6 .

Designing Activities for Moodle

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It has been a busy week of completing marks, boxing up my classroom in preparation for the move to the new wing of Kits next September, and beginning to build my Moodle from my UbD goals. There is a clarity and relief with surveying available activity with a clear sense of what understandings and performances that I am intending my students to achieve, and how that will be assessed. It’s like shopping for real estate with full pockets and a precise sense of what you are looking for. It continues to make the process of developing specific activities for this introductory unit quite enjoyable.

I am dealing with my second and third goals this week: gaining an awareness of different approaches to knowledge and learning, and developing 21st Century workplace team-based skills. I familiarized myself with the Constructivist sequencing frameworks that I learned in ETEC 530 last term and decided on the Driver and Oldham model (1986) and elements of the Predict-Observe-Explain model (White & Gunstone, 1992).

My second goal is concerned with students gaining an awareness of their own  epistemology and that expectation that it is most likely different from mine and other class members. Likewise, they need to determine the instructional strategies that have worked best for them in the past while considering new ones, like Constructivism.  I have decided on using the internal questionnaire tool in Moodle as a pre-assessment orientation opener.

There are two questionnaires. In the first, I have modified the language and edited Nott and Wellington’s (1993) epistemological survey and added some of my own questions based on Song, Hannifin and Hill’s (2006) “Reconciling Beliefs and Practices in Teaching and Learning” paper. In the second questionnaire, students focuses on personal learning preferences and what they expect of teachers. The final piece of the orientation is a TEDx Talk on Youtube: The Power of Belief – Mindset and Success. This is an excellent video where Eduardo Briceno differentiates between a fixed and growth mindset.

Students have their first opportunity to share their ideas in the forum: “The Nature of Knowledge and Learning.” Here they can clarify the concepts presented, discuss their own beliefs and learning preferences and challenge those of others. In the process, I am hoping that they will gain some awareness and sensitivity to the variety of ways that their classmates and teachers understand why we “do what we do” in school.

It is Friday, and I am about to begin work on the third goal concerning future workplace skills. I have come across some great resources on Edutopia that use the College Preparatory School in Oakland, California. My plan is to use it as a case-based example of collaborative learning. I will use a survey prediction as an orientation exercise where students rank what they think are the most desired workplace skills as determined by a national survey in the United States. I’ve also got an effective article by Oakley et al. (2003) that outlines group roles like hitchhiker and couch potato that I plan to work into the case study activity.

Next week is first goal: demonstrating how geographic thinking empowers people using ArcGIS Online. It’s going to be a busy weekend.

Nott, M. & Wellington, J. (1993). Your nature of science profile: An activity for science teachers. School Science Review. (75)270:109 – 112.

Oakley, B., Felder, R. M., Brent, R., & Elhajj, I. (2004). Turning student groups into effective teams. Journal of student centered learning, 2(1), 9-34.

Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W., & Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Science education, 66(2), 211-227.

Pre-planning for the Online Introductory Module

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June 16:

For the past few days I have been thinking an planning through the introductory module of the of my online Geography 12 course for next September. It will be useful to create it for a fully online course so that I gain that experience, and so that I can see how it can be adapted to a blended format. I’ve spent some time researching more about backward design by reading by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, and watching some of their excellent videos on Youtube (see below). It has been really helpful to hear them explain the design model and field questions from others.

My approach is going to be go back through my notes and reflections of my last attempts at teaching Geography 12 using what I thought at the time was a blended model (pre-MET days) and compare this information with papers I have written in 511, 500 and 512 where I focus on best practices for online PBL.

The introduction will focus on thinking geographically and using the tools of geography. Our school has a subscription to ArcOnline from ESRI Geographic Information Systems. My intention is to have students work collaboratively on project to create an interactive map and learn the functionalities of the tool in the process. The idea is to expose students to industry standard software as a way to situate them into the role of geographers, start to use the language of geography, differentiate between geographic thinking and other forms of investigation (possibly contrasting this with historical thinking), and starting to learn how to be effective team learners.

My timing goal is to have these early pre-planning stages worked out by the beginning of next week (starting June 22), have the rough draft reading for uploading to Moodle by the following weekend, then have the remainder of the week to revise and trouble-shoot. This hopefully factors -in my tendency for under-estimating the time I really need to complete assignments.

Ideally I would like to have been in a group for assignments 2 and 3 but I know that collaboration would be difficult with other commitments that have between now and July 5. I’m writing a proposal for the BC Social Studies PSA in October due on July 1st, which is also my 25th anniversary, and I’ve got to prepare a presentation for the ARIS Summit at the University of Wisconsin on July. Busy times.

The LMS Decision: Weighing the Options

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OK, so I’ve had a look through our four LMS options, gone to their sites, watched the videos, and now I’m sitting here trying to decide on one. Before tonight I was certain it was going to be Moodle because it’s my old friend from the past. I really liked the clean, uncluttered page layout with the blocks showing on the sides and weeks (topics) in the middle. The ability to open only the current week while seeing the others provided a wide view of all content options. I especially liked the ‘recent posts’ and “online” blocks, which again were visible without leaving the main page. My only reservation with Moodle is that I plan to use my experience in 565A to inform an LMS decision for the blended course I’m teaching at my school in September. The rub is that the Vancouver School Board determines an administrator on a first come first serve basis, and a colleague with little interest or skills in technology scooped that title for my school at a ProD day (that sounds petty, I know, but all I see is problems).

Connect is a non starter because I have yet to hear a positive review of it from fellow MET classmates, instructors or in the press. It seems to be the grand daddy monolith of them all, and I get the sense from the documentation that it is difficult to navigate. I have to admit that the Spiro article about the impending death of learning management systems is nudging me towards EdX and Eliademy. Many thanks to Pam, who has already done the tutorial course on EdX and has an excellent review of it on the May 20 entry of her blog. I’m setting aside tomorrow night to do the same. My concern is BC’s  FOIPPA laws and the fact that the data would be on US servers (is this right? can’t tell with the Edge version).

I leaning towards Eliademy. I’m a sucker for clean design after years of trauma with D2L, and who doesn’t love the Finns? It’s functionality seems like a good fit for a secondary blended course, allowing for text and multimedia content, discussions and a quiz options. So tomorrow, I’m going deep on the new open source options and making a decision. I’m interested to hear what considerations or observations that anyone else has had so far.