Course Site
My Moodle Course, Conservation Education Resource Pages, can be found here.
Overview: The course contains an overview page with information about the purpose and some background information about the program. My initial intention was to create a resource accessible to grade 2 thru 7, but this proved too difficult. I ended up with something I think is good for grades 5 – 7 (and younger with teacher or buddy support). I’ll continue to work on my html authoring skills to develop more and better content for younger students!
2 complete Modules √
- Marine Invertebrates – the full module could be completed by grades 5 through 7 fairly independently. Primary students would be able to access this module for the multimedia and would also be able, with support, to create a glossary page – the glossary function in Moodle is quite simple to use. Primary students would require further support for the research component. I included some tutorials on research as I know this is an area all students require extra support and teaching.
- Eelgrass Beds – the nursery of life in the intertidal zone – this module is more accessible to younger students due to the chunking of text (in the info pages i created using NVu) and the heavy use of multimedia (I made the eelgrass video). The storytelling activity will need further modification and simplification to be useful to primary aged children.
GUI splash page – √ – I also used the images from the splash page as ‘return to home’ page buttons on the internally linked pages (this is explained in navigation notes on each module home page). Further, in an attempt to simplify navigation for novice users, I ‘hid’ the content/module sections from view as best i could. I had hoped to have the content viewable only by linking through the GUI, but was unable to do so. If i used the eye tool, the content became inaccessible not just unviewable. I settled on using the ‘Show only topic’ button. Not the best since students can still click this to ‘unshow or show’ it. I’d love to learn a better way to do this!
Selective Release – √ – This was tricky… but I tried to do this in three ways:
- The Intertidal invertebrates quiz is ‘available’ from a selected date.
- The course evaluation module is in closed eye or hide mode until I enable it.
- there is a ‘live presentation’ in the invertebrate modules using authorStream scheduled for May 3rd (it won’t really happen that date, but you get the idea!) and also a live chat available on a set date.
Forums – √ – I created several discussion forums including a Q&A forum, a general marine program introductions forum, a ‘look closely and describe’ activity forum and a ‘Chat with a Nat’ chat room plus a live presentation using authorSTREAM. I experimented with different configurations for the forums and have one in group mode – The Eelgrass discussion – two groups – primary students and intermediate students, allowing more advanced questions and discussion by the second group.
Reflection:
Developing this course around a topic of great interest to me has been an excellent, if time consuming and, at times, frustrating learning experience. I had hoped to create some content that was less text intense and, to an extent, was able to do so. I’m still disappointed by the end result in some ways. While the modules are good learning experiences for students in intermediate grades, primary students would struggle with certain aspects – unless they have good support from a buddy or their teacher.
Initially, I felt quite constrained by the Moodle environment since the design affordances are somewhat limited. Further, I had hoped to create a resource website that would be immediately useful in my own classroom, my school and with the teachers I work with in my volunteer capacity as educational director for a non-profit. Moodle isn’t supported in my school district and the non-profit doesn’t have the resources to host it so I felt I wouldn’t be able to actually use the end result.
Sometime during March break, while watching the tour of moodle provided online by John, I learned that the preferred way to develop a course in Moodle would be to use an external publishing program, save to html and upload to Moodle. A lightbulb went on ( or perhaps off!?)… here now was a way to create something that would be immediately transferable to a different environment once 565 was complete! If only I’d realized this earlier on… I had little to no experience with web design programs and so began to muddle my way through.
Unfortunately, I spent a fair bit of time creating some beautifully (I think anyways) designed pages in Word only to find out that, while I can save for the web, Word for Mac doesn’t allow me to add alt text to images and so I was unable to use these pages! I’ve uploaded a PDF example ( tidezones ) of one such page – my goal will be to learn to create this sort of page in a proper web design app. Each tide zone on the page is linked directly to some resource information, a website and/or multimedia that tells a story about the zone (Of course, these links won’t work in PDF, but you get the idea… unfortunately, my html skills, while greatly improved over the past couple of months, still aren’t THERE!).
I explored several programs and eventually landed on NVu and had some (limited) success. This program was quite intuitive and, with only a few missteps and some research and support from classmates on how to load images correctly, I was able to create a few decent pages. Now that I understand this program, I’m sure I’ll be able to transfer the knowledge to other design programs and can recreate my Moodle pages fairly quickly for upload to a ‘real’ Conservation Education Resource Page. Definitely no time wasted here! A steep but valuable learning curve.