Moodle reflection
I created a Moodle course with a lot of trepidation and angst. Here I am a 50-year-old elementary school teacher, who is diving head first into this sea of unknowns. The prospect of creating my own LMS was particularly daunting. It was all very new to me. Luckily, Etec 565 helped to alleviate some of the trepidation by including an earlier assignment in Moodle; a quiz, which was a great way to get my feet wet with the system.
I decided to create a couple of modules in Grade 7 Chemistry. Though I wasn’t supposed to use my existing face-to-face (FtF) course as an exact model to create this Moodle, I had to start somewhere. I looked at our school science textbook, BC Science 7 (Grace, Mason, Martin, 2004), which has a great photo of river rafting at the beginning of the unit. I decided I too could create a splashy opening. Coincidentally, my family had taken a rafting trip last July and we had footage of the trip. My husband was interested in the digital story I had created in an earlier unit of this course and together we played with an existing template on our computer. It’s kind of like a movie trailer with jazzy music, stills and video. I included the video in the introduction of the course. It was a way to make chemistry, which can be dry, come alive.
I included quizzes, questions, a PowerPoint, videos and links to further sites that would enhance the understanding of the topic. But I felt an important component of the site was to be interactivity between the students themselves and between the students and me.
In grade 7, the social aspect of school is predominant in a student’s milieu. For many of the students, interacting with peers in the most important part of school. The value of interactivity for learning is also reflected in the literature. Anderson (2008), argues that it is a key component to successful learning. He also states that “interactivity should be the primary criterion for selecting media for educational delivery”.
Through the use of a chat tool and forums I planned on allowing robust interactivity in the course. I included a synchronous chat that was to be used during science class with the parameters that the students had to be talking about science. To keep students on task they were reminded that the chat would be logged so I could review what was happening; if need be. Having this option creates opportunities to teach about the protocols of being a good digital citizen. If there were any instances of cyber bullying, the recorded log is a clear record of any untoward behavior. I also included a fun (asynchronous) forum as an icebreaker to learn a little bit about the student’s values and to offer others to get to know each other. Additionally, I had a general forum for questions and concerns and finally had students work in asynchronous groups to answer a series of questions about a topic. These interactive tools are considered to be higher order thinking within Blooms taxonomy. They also cover many of the seven aspects of Chickering and Ehrmann’s(1996), Implementing the Seven Principles [of good practice/teaching], which included the following principles:
| 1. Good Practice Encourages Contacts Between Students and Faculty | 5. Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task |
| 2. Good Practice Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students | 6. Good Practice Communicates High Expectations |
| 3. Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques. | 7. Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning |
| 4. Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback |
This framework is a good device and reminder for considering all the elements of good teaching practice, be it online or offline. Like my own teaching practice, there can always be improvements within my Moodle course. Nevertheless, I think I was able to address these areas sufficiently.
In order to become proficient with a technology it is important to spend the time to learn it. In the busy lives of teachers it is often difficult to allocate the time to learn the different technologies. Spending time and creating a Moodle LMS was an invaluable allocation of my time. The more times I went to the site, the more proficient I became. If my proficiency with the technology was a bit higher I think I would have tried to make my course look more like a web page, with more interactive graphics and tools. I learned, after a lot of trial and error that sometimes it’s best to become proficient in the basics before attempting to move on to more advanced uses of the tool.
References:
Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University. Accessed online 3 March 2009 http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
Bates, A. W. and Poole, G. (2003) Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. New York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Chickering, Arthur and Ehrmann, Stephen. (1996) “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever,” AAHE Bulletin, October, pp. 3-6. Retrieved November 17, 2010 from http://www.tltgroup.org
Grace, Eric and Mason, Adrienne. (2004) BC Science 7, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd.
Henrick, Gavin. A Moodle Guide for Teachers with Moodle 2 (nd) Retrieved from http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/ November 30, 2012