Getting Back to work:
After taking a break from my Moodle after submitting the first part of the assignment, again I struggled to get re-started. I was both surprised and annoyed with my-self for this, I figured I would not have this issue anymore, now that I am more familiar with the process. However, I did have to re-learn a few things that I had already figured out. Fortunately, everything did come back and it was quicker this time around. It makes me wonder if I would learn a new platform faster now. I certainly hope so.
In general it has always been a lot easier for me to work on lesson planning once I have gotten into the flow of things and once I am in that zone I do not like to walk away and do something else. This is not normally the case with my other course work. When working on my masters I normally need breaks to clear my head. This project however felt more like work (lesson planning) and less like school (MET.) I think that is one of the reasons why I enjoyed it. I worked in students services this year for the first time, and while I certainly did not miss the piles of marking that come with teaching in a traditional classroom, I did actually miss the planning and curriculum development. It was therefore really nice being able to practice that skill again working on this project.
The advice to others, who are having a hard time getting started, would just be to jump in! I actually really enjoyed putting all of this together once I got started and despite a few bumps in the road it was not too hard to figure out. Watching all the YouTube tutorials before I even knew what I wanted to do just made me more confused and reluctant to start. I would recommend playing around with Moodle yourself first, then once you have a good idea of what you want to do, looking for some tips online.
Reworking the Start:
When starting the second half of this project I first went back to the introduction module and made a few changes, most notably I added guidelines for participating in group discussions. It seemed like a wise choice after reviewing a few of our course readings. I also changed some of the format choices I had made. I originally wanted to use Google Documents because I thought they looked better and because I thought it would be useful to be able to edit them, without having to change anything in the Moodle. However, upon coming back to the project, I found that it actually did not look better at all (really not sure what I had been thinking.) More importantly, not using them allowed me to put everything in order for the students which I think is more useful. When most items were in Google Docs, but a few were not (like assignments) course elements were out of order. Additionally, It is possible to edit many of the elements on Moodle without too much trouble.
Online Learning:
Despite the fact that I am enjoying the chance to lesson and unit plan again, creating an online class for the first time ever, continues to be more difficult then I thought. There are some things that just can not be done it the same way. I certainly had to re-think the way I normally do things. However, I do not feel like I can be certain how well the course would actually work without actually teaching it. I am a bit sad that I likely will not get to teach this course I have made. Regardless I still wanted to finish as much of the course as possible. I was able to completely finish the introduction module and two full content modules (or units), of the three that make up the whole planning 10 course. I would have liked to finish the final unit (the health unit) but I simply ran out of time. I have however, completed the set-up of the final unit, and the information for it is on the course calendar as well. I hope this will give the general idea of how that unit will be.
New Elements:
When starting this project there were two things that were important to me. First I wanted to make something useful. Which is why I chose Planning and Moodle, however I already explained those choices in my first project documentation. The second thing that was important to me was making sure that the course is user friendly. One of the new ways that I tried to ensure that was to further divide all of the work week by week. This way it would hopefully be really easy for the students to follow the course schedule and know what needs to be done each week.
Another new element I tried this time around was to add a Prezi. I was very please at the ease of that process. Adding a Power Point is also pretty easy but it did take one an extra step, compared to the Prezi. If I were to use Moodle in the future I would defiantly create more Prezis to use in the course. The other new pieces I added, like videos were also simple and user friendly. I appreciate that they are embedded so there is no extra step for the students, they can just press play.
Final Thoughts:
I enjoyed and (maybe more importantly) found this project to be very practical. I learnt specific as well as general skills for building an LMS that will certainly be useful. The hands on learning was appreciated and a welcome break from research!