{"id":8,"date":"2016-01-06T17:47:14","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T00:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/danabjornson\/?page_id=8"},"modified":"2016-12-01T00:19:34","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T07:19:34","slug":"introductory-module","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/danabjornson\/introductory-module\/","title":{"rendered":"Moodling Around"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"moodle<\/a>

CC image courtesy of jlconfor on Flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n

For this assignment, students in ETEC565A were permitted to choose from a selection of industry-proven Learning Management Systems (LMS) and were tasked with creating their own from the ground up.\u00a0 Although some students may have some prior knowledge with a particular LMS, I would speculate that most students were relatively new to this\u00a0mode of content delivery.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

To view a tour of my Moodle site, please click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Why Moodle?<\/span><\/h2>\n

I chose the Moodle LMS primarily for two reasons: word of mouth and function.\u00a0 I am fortunate to work with one of the most talented Librarians in the Victoria School District, Geoff Orme.\u00a0 Recently having completed his own Master\u2019s in Librarianship, Geoff unequivocally suggested that I use Moodle over the other LMS platforms and so that made my noodle lean towards Moodle, straight away.\u00a0 Secondly, after being pointed into the Moodle direction, I did some preliminary research into it.\u00a0 What I immediately liked about Moodle was that it was designed exclusively for educational purposes.\u00a0 Although I am not familiar with many of the other LMSs, I have done a significant amount of research with WordPress.\u00a0 \u00a0I soon realized\u00a0that WordPress needed to have Plug-ins added to it to make it functional as an LMS, whereas Moodle did not. I felt that an LMS designed solely for education would be easier to use than a platform that was primarily for blogging.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether or not these reasons for my choice are particularly compelling to other students in ETEC565A, is debatable.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I needed to venture in some<\/em> direction so Moodle was my winner!<\/p>\n

Target Audience and the Organizational Context<\/span><\/h2>\n

In the seventeen years that I have held my contract at Esquimalt High School in Victoria, British Columbia, every teaching year has included teaching both academic Math and Physics.\u00a0 We are a small school of just over 600 students, so that means that I am typically the only Physics teacher and the Math class that I teach multiple times per year is Foundations\/Pre-Calculus Math 10.\u00a0 FPC Math 10 is particularly tricky to teach because there are triple the learning outcomes from Math 9 and there is a Provincial Exam at the end of the course. \u00a0In Grade 10, students may opt to take the \u201ceasier\u201d, Trades Math course (Apprenticeship and Workplace Math), although this route will limit students post-secondary options should they wish to not go into a Trades program.<\/p>\n

When a student finishes their Math 9, we generally recommend that they pick their next math course based off of their standing.\u00a0 Should they obtain over 70%, we recommend FPC Math 10 and for those landing between 50%-70%, we recommend A&W Math 10.\u00a0 In my experience, however, students will often ignore their teachers\u2019 recommendations, and sign up for the harder course, even though they lack foundation math skills to successfully navigate through it. Because of this, students in my FPC Math classes range from incredibly skilled to incredibly not.\u00a0 It is therefore critical for me to be able to differentiate my teaching to cater to a very broad range of mathematical and organizational skills.<\/p>\n

Another consideration that must be acknowledged when crafting a math course, is that a significant number of students arrive with what I call \u201cMath Baggage\u201d.\u00a0 For reasons that I am not clear about, students will associate whether or not they are \u201cgood\u201d at math based on how much time it takes for them to understand a concept. Negative self-talk, coupled with societal voices that reinforce that \u201cmath is hard\u201d and \u201cit is okay to not \u2018get\u2019 math\u201d only serve to create barriers to learning the subject matter.\u00a0\u00a0 Math anxiety is also prevalent among students where the majority of my students will self-report to having \u201csome\u201d to \u201ca lot\u201d.\u00a0 Creating a learning environment that is both effective and<\/em> safe for students to develop in is very<\/em> important to me.<\/p>\n

Lastly, I have chosen to utilize a hybrid, on-line and traditional delivery model of my course. My school is situated in an inner-city section of Victoria.\u00a0 Many of my students experience transient living arrangements, and often in single-parenting scenarios.\u00a0 It is a reality that some of my students only have access to technology at school or at a public library.\u00a0 Ironically, although many students come from lower to lower-middle class households, almost all of them have cellular devices.\u00a0 Paying for their own costs to have a phone via working many shifts a week is not uncommon.\u00a0 Due to the inequity of access to reliable technology, the course that I will be designing will capitalize on certain aspects of on-line learning, but the majority of the content will remain to be delivered from the classroom.\u00a0 Consequently, I am choosing to use Moodle to provide a portal to enrich and reinforce the curriculum as opposed to purely delivering the content.<\/p>\n

Tools and Design Elements: My Educational Rationale<\/span><\/h2>\n

I will now break my site into sections and for each section I will discuss:<\/p>\n