When thinking about creating a Moodle site for my Grade Ones I have a challenge. First of all, I wonder how this could fit into my F2F classroom with all the other components of technology I already use with the ones and after researching the importance of children developing healthy relationships with their environment ( the importance of real life play/ interactions) I worry about how much time 6 and 7 year olds should be involved with computers? In a MET course I did last fall I wrote a paper with research findings that supports minimal technological exposure and interaction in early primary. I agree. I see learning experiences within environment context so important at this age. With this in mind my Moodle objective will be different than High School or Adult learning. I thought long and hard and I have decided to create a Moodle site to support Gr.1 Social Studies inquiry that focuses on Community. It will be part of a blended learning/teaching approach. It will integrate Language and Visual Arts.
Activity: Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication
For this activity I thought of providing a short video or story and have the class post a personal response to a discussion forum. Then have the students reply to at least three of their classmates’ posts. (asynchronous)
Every year I help my class create a photostory of their favourite place at school. Within Moodle I am structuring a photostory activity that every child will be able to make.This will entail taking pictures with a camera, uploading and recording their story by reading into a microphone. I had also thought about including Voicethread as a oral discussion about community pictures and symbols. (synchronous)
Rationale:
I have structured both synchronous and asynchronous activities as I feel at this age that oral language is an integral part of students’ growth in reading and writing. Writing skills are developing and by the second part of the year students can write a short simple paragraph. Developing confidence through oral presentations and discussions all contribute to their growing literacy. I am hoping to provide some games that are interactive to help develop their knowledge of their local community, as well as of Canada.
Ideally, this Moodle site will extend and support knowledge building. To provide meaningful activities I feel that they need to be a combination of learner-centered, as well as knowledge-centered. The assessment of each of these will be mainly on student participation (individual and peer) and at this primary level, learning the affordances of the tools provided will be a huge learning curve. Content is achieved through building processes throughout the grades and the learning outcomes for this level introduce the general concepts.
Upon refection and after completing my moodle course I realized that it was involving asynchronous communication within the site. Since I will be using this in a F2F environment it will also involve the synchronous element.
Leslie