Tech Chance

Project Title A project proposal to use a Moodle as communication tool for Student Teachers engaged in Teaching Practicum

Name of Organization: Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College

P.O. Box 40,

Granville,

St. James

Jamaica W.I.

Tel: (876) 952-4000-2

Name of Contact Person(s): Dr. Cecile Walden – Principal

Mrs. Michelle McFarlane

Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College

P.O. Box 40,

Granville,

St. James.

Jamaica W.I.

Tel: (876) 952-4000-2

Fax: (876) 952-0862

E-Mail: samcol@cwjamaica.com

Website: http://samsharpeband.tripod.com

Project Type: Technology Integration

Problem / Needs Analysis

Student teachers should be visited twice per week during their teaching practicum. In their period of practice, many challenges arise along the way. Unfortunately, constant or consistent support may be not given as the teaching load of their practicum supervisors remain the same. The practicum supervisors may not be able to visit all students and provide feedback in an efficient manner or as much as the student teacher would like. Sometimes, the challenge may simply for the student teacher to find activities for a lesson or preparing an evaluation in a lesson plan. It may even be to deal with the feelings of inadequacy that commonly plague student teachers as they engage in their practicum activities for the first time in a ‘real school’ before ‘real students’ or to share the experience and joy of meeting success at their practice.

Students may benefit from having an online forum where they can search for lesson plans, creative activities to include in lesson, post some of their own reflections on lessons, receive feedback from their supervisors as well as interact with classmates. They may also want to view examples of effective teaching, designing projects with group members and post reflections for feedback.

PROJECT BENEFICIARIES

The project is primarily aimed at targeting the student population engaged in their teaching practicum among the nine teacher training institutions across the island.

Purpose Of the Funding Requested

The funds requested will be used to sustain teaching practicum for nine training colleges across the island. As part of the mandate of the Ministry Of Education, Technology Integration is required at all teacher training institutions to ensure the development of skills needed to use technology in the early childhood, primary and secondary levels of education. The need also exist to develop an interconnectedness among the colleges thereby creating a network of teacher trainers who are proficient in the use of technology and to building a community of learners.

Objectives

At the end of the proposed project period, it is our hope to:

1. Provide communication tools such as email, messaging, discussion forums and blogs.

1. Enable students to access information, e-portfolios and timetabling.

1. Provide tools and storage to support lesson planning, classroom activities, simulated lessons, RSS feeds.

1. Provide activity modules such as Wikis and Forums to build collaborative communities of learning around their teaching practicum.

1. Provide adequate, frequent and consistent supervision of their teaching practicum through online interaction

Resources Needed

Hardware

• Disk space: 160MB free (min). More free space to store teaching materials.
• Memory: 256MB (min), 1GB (recommended). Moodle can support 50 concurrent users for every 1GB of RAM

Software

• Web server software. Most sites use Apache as the web server software. Moodle should work fine under any web server that supports PHP, such as IIS on Windows platforms.
• PHP scripting language. There are currently two versions (or branches) of PHP available: PHP4 and PHP5.

PHP settings by Moodle version

Total Expected Cost

The total expected cost of the project over the 36 month duration is US$40,000.00

Grant Required

The total grant required for the project over the 36 month duration is US$24,000.00. (see attached budget)

Amount Requested From The Chase Fund

US$24,000.00 (see attached budget)

Proposed Implementation Date

Proposed implementation date for the project is January 2010.

Project Description

Moodle is a platform for learning which is an integrated collection of essential tools, services and other resources to enhance teaching and learning. A learning platform brings together hardware, software and supporting services to enable more effective ways of working. It provides content management which enables staff to create, store and repurpose coursework which can be accessed online. It should also enable tools and services, providing communication tools such as email, messaging, discussion forums and blogs. Curriculum mapping and planning: providing tools and storage to support assessment for learning, personalisation, lesson planning;

Learner engagement and administration: enabling access to pupil information, attendance data, timetabling, e-portfolios and management information

The learning platform should also provide education for students who are away from school and in this case while completing 3 months practicum in other schools. It will also enable the students to collaborate and share resources between colleges.

Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS), also known as a

Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a tool for creating online dynamic web sites for their students.

• Moodle can be used for very large deployments and hundreds of thousands of students, yet it can also be used for a primary school or an education hobbyist. It is particularly suited as it can be used by the nine training colleges across the island.
• It can be used as a platform to conduct fully online courses, as well as augmenting face-to-face courses (known as blended learning). In our case, the students would have been prepared for the practicum through face to face and during their practicum the platform is used to for discussions and additional training and mentoring.
• Activity modules (such as Forums, Wikis, Databases and so on) build collaborative communities of learning around their subject matter

(http://localauthorities.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=pl&catcode=la_pl_01 retrieved June 7, 2009)

The selection of Moodle was done using the SECTIONS model along with consideration to Chickering’s Seven Principles.

Bates and Poole are of the opinion that a learning platform must be chosen according to the needs as the program requires it rather than a random and ad hoc selection of whatever is ‘in’.

teachers or educational administrators making decisions about educational technology should have some theoretical model or framework that guides the choice of media and technology. If not, they will be constantly driven by the latest technology development, whether or not they are appropriate.”
(Bates & Poole, 2003, p. 80)

Using the SECTIONS model to select a platform therefore resulted in consideration being given to several relevant factors.

S – Students: The appropriateness of the technology for this group of students;

E – Ease of use and reliability: how easy is it for both teachers and students to use? How reliable and well tested is the technology? Will this require more time for them to learn how to use it.

C – Costs: This platform is free and so there is little cost attached to the student learner.

T – Teaching and learning: what kinds of learning are needed? What instructional approaches will best meet these needs? What are the best technologies for supporting this teaching and learning?

I – Interactivity: what kind of interaction does this technology enable? This was given much consideration a the element of interactivity was extremely important for the student teacher and also the practicum supervisor.

O – Organizational issues: What are the organizational requirements and the barriers to be removed before this technology can be used successfully?  What changes in organization need to be made?

N – Novelty: how new is this technology?

S – Speed: how quickly can courses be mounted with this technology?  How quickly can materials be changed?

(Bates & Poole, 2003, pp. 79-80)

In terms of evaluation for this LMS, several websites were also consulted on how to select and procure learning platforms. [http://www.becta.org.uk/learningplatforms] A template on selecting and procuring a learning platform was also consulted at http://partners.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/learning_platforms_framework_example_statement_of_requirements.doc . This platform will be evaluated after implementation using SECTIONS to ensure the needs and goals are being met.

In order to adequately supervise the teachers, Chickering’s Seven Principles is also applicable. Through Moodle, frequent contact between students and faculty will be maintained as Moodle provides the forum for blogs and discussion boards. The principles also include developing reciprocity and cooperation among students. Through this platform, students recognize their efforts as a part of a team and will feel supported. Students will also be able to receive prompt feedback which will be useful in their successful completion of their practicum. (Chickering and Gamson, 1987).