A final reflection on my experience with Moodle.

Since the site was centered around the topic of woodworking it makes sense to stick with that for the final reflection.  Before you can actually start building a project you obviously need a plan, you have to know what it is you’re going to make before you start making it.  To quote Yogi Berra, ‘if you don’t know where you’re going, how are you gonna know when you get there?’  I chose to build the site around woodworking.  I did this for a few reasons, it’s one of my subject areas, it’s something I know a fair bit about, and it’s something I would be doing even if I wasn’t making a living doing it.  So I had my plan.  Next I needed the wood, the raw material that I was going to use to build the project.  Unlike most of the time, in this case the raw material was given to me, it came in the form of a Moodle site and some requirements of what had to appear on the site.  Then it was building time.

In any woodworking project there are stages,  not stages in terms of, ‘do this first, then this…’ but emotional stages.  There’s the initial interest and enthusiasm you get with working on something new, something you’ve never done before.  This is the time when you ask yourself how you’re going to go about building the piece, what tools will you need, and in what order should you proceed.  In the case of the Moodle this time consisted of exploring the Moodle site, trying to find the tools available and learn how to use them in order to build the requirements of the site.

Once you start actually building a wood project you inevitably encounter moments of frustration, a blade that isn’t sharp and has burned the wood, a part of a plan that seems the wrong size to fit where it belongs.  With the Moodle these frustrations came mostly from trying to do something that wasn’t intuitive or well explained, for example spending too much time trying to figure out how to have a discussion forum that would be restricted to a small group.   This is where the real challenges, and for me one of most interesting parts of building the project are, either a wooden one or a digital one, trying to figure out how to do something, how to solve the puzzle.

Another stage I always seem to go through with a woodworking project comes when I’ve been working on it for a while and I start to get a little tired of it, I’ve solved most of the major problems and now I just want to see it finished.  With the Moodle, since we weren’t working on it steadily this took a bit longer to happen, but I did get to the point where I started to think that I had solved a lot of the biggest ‘how-to’s’ and now I was just filling it in to check off the requirements.

The next emotion I feel when I’m working on a wood project comes when it’s all over, the parts are together, the finish is dry and I’m ready to either put it somewhere in the house or give it away.  I’m rarely completely satisfied, if there is a little mistake, even one that no one else notices, I’m always drawn to it.  Even if there are no mistakes I inevitably start thinking about what else I could have done, how I could have changed it to make it better.  For the Moodle site the feeling was much the same.  I met the requirements, (I think) but maybe I should have had more bells and whistles, more stuff. But whether it’s made of wood or made of 1’s and 0’s, you eventually get to the point, often based on time, when you have to say, ‘it’s done’.  And that’s where we’ve arrived.

Lastly there is the emotional feeling that comes afterwards.  The mistakes and frustrations you experienced along the way have slipped to the background and you realize that you actually enjoyed doing that, it was fun to figure out the ‘how-to’s’ and to know that you accomplished something different.  With a hobby this is why you continue to be interested, with Moodle the future is less certain, but looking at it now, it was kind of fun.

Fortunately I have some experience using a Wiki, all from the MET program, so I had pretty much gone through the learning cycle beforehand. As I’m learning the hard way trying to figure out how to add a voice over to the web 2 tools, removing the learning step was a big help when it came time to post my ‘sightings’. As to the question of how the group collaboration and discussion differed from the Vista space, I think the two are distinct enough to deal with separately. The collaboration page, with the sightings, I liked. I liked being able to see everyone’s posting at once on the page. This made it easy to go back to someone’s posting and re-read what they had said without having to hunt around for it. I also liked the look of the page, it was very clean looking, everything laid out and divided up neatly with headings etc. (no, I’m not generally a clean freak). One other thing I liked, and I’m not sure if this is an option with Vista, I liked being able to go back a couple of days later and add to my posting. Even if you can do this in Vista I always have the feeling when I post something that it’s suddenly written in stone. One aspect of the Wiki that didn’t seem very useful for our purposes was the thing that sets Wikis apart from regular web pages, the ability to make changes to anything on the page. I wasn’t about to go to someone else’s posting and start changing things. As for the discussion space, I wasn’t quite as taken with that. I found that there were too many things going on there, it jumped around too much. I also didn’t like that the discussion was on a different page than the thing that was being discussed, I found it a pain to have to keep going back to the sightings page to look at the posting that was being commented on. However, I think the positive aspects outweigh the negatives, I like using Wiki’s and I can definitely see their usefulness in education.

For the activity I have posted a topic into a discussion forum titled, ‘Week One Forum – Logging in British Columbia’.  The activity is designed to inspire students to think about their future as woodworkers in a larger context.  They will be working with wood, but that wood doesn’t just grow magically in a lumber yard, it involves logging.  The forum wants students to use what they know, or have heard about logging to express an opinion about the practice in B.C.  The forum is not looking for a right answer and for the age group the course is designed for, I’m not expecting deeply philosophical answers, the question is designed to make students think about the ‘big picture’.  Students will be expected, as part of their mark, to contribute to the weekly forum.  With this first forum my hope is that the question is broad enough, and open ended enough that opinions on logging practices in B.C. will be quite varied and that students will be inspired to respond to each other with varying opinions.  The intention is that if that happens it will plant the seed for future forums and if I can get students to feel comfortable expressing opinions and arguments it will carry on throughout the rest of the class.  My only concern with this forum, and any future forums is with forum etiquette, however since the forum will be available to look at all the time I will be able to monitor the discussion and make sure it stays civil.

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I knew pretty much from the beginning that the two tools I wanted to use were a chat and a forum.  I’ve had experience in being a participant using both of these tools and I think they both compliment each other.  The chat I’ve enjoyed if for no other reason than it lets me feel that I’m not alone.  The feeling of isolation is one that I’ve struggled with throughout the MET program.  Even a chat that doesn’t go particularly well can at least make me aware that there are other people in the class.  A chat that goes well can be a really great experience letting you get instant feedback to points that have been made.  Like a face to face class the chat can often quickly clear up any confusion I may have had about an assignment or some other aspect of the class.  As for the discussion forums, I can’t see how you could have an online class without including discussion forums.  This is where so much of the learning takes place, by reading and responding to what other people in the class are thinking about a particular topic.  Before i made the final decision I did consider some other tools.  I thought of making the asynchronous tool a Wiki, however in the end I realized that I would be using the wiki in the same way as a discussion forum so it didn’t really make sense not to  just use the discussion forum.  Even though Moodle has a built in chat I did look at some other chat tools.  I liked the Google chat tool but I didn’t want students to have to leave the course site so in the end I decided to use the built in tool that Moodle.  I experimented with both of the tools within the LMS site and they both worked well.  I didn’t really like any of the four layouts of the Moodle discussion forum as much as the layout for the WebCt forums, but it’s not a serious flaw, it will work fine.

Well this didn’t come easily to me at all.  In fact i had a lot of confusion about this one.  I signed into the Wimba Live classroom account as instructed, o.k., that was easy.  Wimba tested my set-up and that went fine.  So far so good.  Then a new page opened up saying ‘Welcome to ETEC565’  at which point i was faced with the question, ‘now what?’  It looked like a chat program but it’s hard to know for sure unless you actually have someone to chat with.  I tried typing in, ‘this is a test’ and was informed in the little box, ‘you tell etec565, this is a test’  ‘etec565 tells you, this is a test’  which i suppose means that i’m talking to myself (again).  I did play with some of the buttons and it looks like it could be very useful, if everyone you were communicating with had all the right stuff, mic and headsets for example.  I also liked the white board but i’m not sure how much use it would really get in a group chat.  One of the things i liked the most was that you could add a web page in a separate box.  Having been taken away from Vista more than once for clicking on a link within a chat, that seemed really useful.

One thing i am having a problem with though is the reflection assignment for Wimba.  The assignment says, ‘Write an entry for your course weblog about your experience here (on your “Home” page and posting a new entry). How labour intensive was the process? What worked well? What was challenging? What surprised you’.  I’m not really sure what’s being asked.  My experiences where?  On the Wimba chat?  How labour intensive was what process?  Maybe this will become clear later and i’ll be able to respond better to this, but for now, to coin a much used phrase, ‘ I don’t get it’

Took a giant leap backwards and went through the instructions for setting up the weblog.  Sure enough, there is was, and not even hidden, instructions on adding a new post.

A reflection setting up a Welcome page and adding a discussion forum.  I feel like i’m having a bit of an argument with myself with this one.  I found the instructions very easy to follow, not labour intensive in the least, and not very challenging.  Now here’s the argument part.  One side of me is thinking, ‘this is exactly everything i was hoping for, easy to follow instructions on how to do something that was completely new to me.  It was perfect.’   The other side however is thinking, ‘that was too easy, all i had to do was follow the instructions.  I didn’t actually have to understand what i was doing.  I felt a little like i do sometimes when i’m teaching students a new technique in my metal class.  I find myself saying ‘do this’, ‘now do this’  After a while  i start to think that they’re not actually learning anything nor will they remember it, they’re just doing what i tell them to do’.  I suppose if i had a logical mind i would do it all again without referring to the step by step notes and see how it went.   hmmm, maybe i’ll do that.

Oddly enough, i found the hardest part of this whole thing was with the Reflection part of the assignment.  I didn’t understand the instruction, ‘on your home page and posting a new entry’.  I couldn’t find anything that said, ‘post a new entry’ so i just did an edit.  So in fact, i don’t actually know if i’ve done this part right.