I have a new appreciation for Moodle course designers. In the past I have been irritated with the layouts or links not functioning, or something being illogically laid out (from my point of view). Now I understand that things are that way due to the limitations of either the course designers’ knowledge or what Moodle is capable of handling. Moodle does not function as intuitively as I would have expected. It is not possible to simply cut and paste images neither from Word, nor from other sections on the same page. Text can be cut and pasted but images need to be imported. Equations also do not transfer over easily. I built a Math 10 course so there were quite a few equations I had and wanted to display. They would not transfer over easily from word. I used a work around by creating an image of each equation and importing them into Moodle. I am sure, with more research, I could find a much more simple method.
Other aspects of Moodle were quite easy to pick up. Moodle Docs for the page found at the bottom of each page was very helpful as was Moodle 2.0: How-To. The forums, quizzes and assignments were quite simple to create. Moodle basically walks you through the process. There was of course some trial and error but on the whole, things worked as I would have expected.
One of the biggest challenges I had was creating a splash page. I had completed what I wanted to include in the unit, with collapsed topics so the front page was very clean and neat looking and then realized I needed a splash page. For some reason I really struggled with this. I think I created a function one in the end but I am still not happy with it. I end the button and links in the table working just fine on the page but they would not show up on the front page. Later I realized that recreating the table, with images and links in the description rather than in the page content would have them show up on the front page. Not intuitive.
I struggled at the beginning with making a digital story. I didn’t know where to start, what story to tell or even what media to use. I stumbled upon a web page, 50+ Web Ways to tell a Story (Tangient, 2015) helping with digital story telling, setting it up like a clinic. It was extremely helpful in giving me direction and even suggested about 20 different apps to try. I was going to fall back on my old tried and true iMovie but really wanted to try something different. I settled on an app called Shadow Puppet Edu by Shadow Puppet Inc, a free download from iTunes for my iPad.
I decided to tell a very brief story of the Earth. Teenagers still have that interest in dinosaurs they had as children even though they never really cover it again in the curriculum. I tried to use creative commons images that related to each date I selected from Earth’s past. Something visual to represent what was written in text. I also chose not to talk and have the information come in short text burst only. This way the music helped to tell the story and also reduced my voice causing a distraction. I used the digital story in the unit on measurement for scale. At the end of the unit I included a project where the students watch the digital story and then create a scaled timeline.
On the whole the app was extremely easy to use. It includes an Educational image search from the Library of Congress, NASA, Met Museum of Art and the Web search looks for Fair use and Creative Commons images!! The app even keeps track and lists all the image credits at the end for you. Simply click on the desired image and it is added to your list. Moving the slides into order is very simple as is adding text. Simply click on the common icons, type, change colours and fonts, done.
The one major draw back I found when using this app was the record or adding sound function. Once sound was added I could not go back and edit any text. Adding sound was the last and final step. It was simply an annoyance for me as I didn’t add voice comments but I can see how the would be a MAJOR issue if someone wanted to talk at the same time as having background music.
There also was not a preview option. I couldn’t watch what I had done so far without it being completed. Nor did I find an option to set how long a slide played for. Now this must have been a miss on my part. Manually progressing the slides while recording the music doesn’t sound like an efficient method. I felt like I was a teenager again, trying to tape-record my favourite song off the radio.
I can see many uses in the classroom for this app. It would be great for student projects. I am not sure, as teacher, I would use it for instruction again, but I will be trying it for student projects.
My Digital Story: A Brief History of Earth
References:
Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf
Mabrito, M., Medley, R. (2008) Why professor Johnny can’t read: Understanding the Net generation’s texts. Innovate, 4(6), August/September. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.299.8529&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Moodle 2.0: How-To. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q3RJOAA9zdF7DB7oQTjaTV2Vk6uu2nlEKVlpXLg2DxM/edit
Moodle Docs for this page (2014). https://docs.moodle.org/26/en/
Tangient LLC. (2015). 50+ Web Ways to tell a Story. Retrieved from http://50ways.wikispaces.com/StoryTools
Wesch, M. (2007a). A vision of students today (& What teachers must do). Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/10/a-vision-of-students-today-what-teachers-must-do
Wesch, M. (2007b). Web 2.0. The Machine is Us/ing Us: Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g