"Willing to be disturbed"…Margaret Wheatley

“If we can move through the fear and enter the abyss, we are rewarded greatly. We rediscover we’re creative.” (Wheatley, 2002)

My Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) was a great experience.  After teaching myself Moodle for a past project, I barely knew the basics and definitely lacked technical skills and perhaps more importantly, strong understanding.  My first experience carried forward some insights of organizational issues: preparing material outside Moodle, the need for the ‘big picture’ of the components to fit with each other, and the visual layout and navigation.  Previous MET courses also provided insights.  High school level courses I have viewed on line are rather dismal; they are similar to “correspondence” courses accessed via an online course management system. “Read this, answer that, do this test”.   I consciously include activities other than textbook reading, though reading the text is required. I strive to create engaging (video clips, images, websites etc.) and interactive (discussions, web 2.0 applications etc.) courses that include assessment for learning practices (teacher, peer and self assess, plus opportunities to reflect and revise).  As a practical person and a constant reflector, I did not create a lot content in order to test run the two developed units in a blended environment before creating more.

My Moodle experience was not without its troubles. After creating all my web pages in Amaya, as a first time user, I could not figure out how to load them into Moodle, despite numerous hours of research. I ended up copying and pasting into Moodle webpage creator and reformatting and adding links and images.  I would not use Amaya again but would venture to Dreamweaver.  I did not find the Amaya features to be any better than the webpage creator in Moodle, both lacking formatting options.  The software I know well is SMART Notebook which offers huge flexibility in formatting.  It would be advantageous if I could find some compatibility between the two.

The Wimba classes assisted me in navigating the options while the assessment assignment developed my understanding.  Once I started to use the settings, the language became familiar and now I can apply my knowledge in different situations. Moodle.org and “Using Moodle” by Jason Cole and Helen Foster (2008) added to my resources.  Since my school offers Moodle on the server, I know I will create again with a degree of confidence and some expertise.

“If we can move through the fear and enter the abyss, we are rewarded greatly. We rediscover we’re creative.” (Wheatley, 2002)

Reference

Wheatley, Margaret J.  Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future.  San Francisco: Berrett-Koshler Publishers, Inc.

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