Well, my second and much more indepth encounter with Moodle has been enlightening and I’m actually finding it fun… and since FUN + REFLECTION = EDUCATION (a saying my UVIC EDCI 353A professor J.A. Dimm would say), I’m going to keep this posting up! Not to mention, it’s a good way for me to remember what I did, and you never know, someone might learn something from my posts as well!

So, yesterday was my attempt to make my Moodle site look pretty. So, with the guidance of a friend (Megan Buyks – recent graduate of MET), I began my splash page! I learned that the basics are:

1. make a table in a label
2. inserts pics with just a few clicks

And whalla! Now I’ll still need to make pages to go with each of my pics (DUI)… but that I know how to do, just need to get my content for them and a way I go!

My first experience with Moodle took me awhile. First, because my internet connection or something wasn’t working properly so that I couldn’t even get into it. When I was finally able to get in, I found some things did not match the intructions we were given. For instance, it doesn’t say Web Page, it just says page.

Overall, the process was not labour intensive. I do need to learn what all the different options are for each of the activities and resources and what they actually do. I still find websites such as this wordpress site to be more intuitive than Moodle is so far. I really want to change the “theme” of Moodle because I think it looks boring which does not reflect what my classroom would EVER look like. I am known for having the colourful, welcoming, “busy” classroom. So hopefully I will soon figure out how to do this.

As for a challenge, it doesn’t seem to fit my teaching style. It seems more like a stack of books placed in rows of desks. I have tables in my real classroom. I have bulletin boards that have specific/fun information. I teach grammar lessons. The students participate in listening, reading, writing, and speaking tasks based on the grammar taught and incorporate various vocabulary components. I guess I want my course page to allow the kids to choose from visual (as opposed to text) boxes… I guess I’ll jsut have to see what I can do/learn in the next month or so.