Saturday, December 18, 2010

Designing a new class

Excerpt from new class
    Last semester I taught high school technology for the first time.  This is a basic semester course taught in the computer lab – internet searching, safety, and reputation; Word, Excel, PowerPoint.  Since I’ve been teaching technology in middle school for years focusing on the same skills, the content wasn’t a stretch.  But high school students are very different from middle school students.  So I spent the semester finding out what works best with this different age group.  

    Now, I want to use Moodle with these students.  Moodle gives me more control over their learning environment, and it’s a natural choice for a technology class.  I also want my students to have the experience of using online discussion, something they are very likely to experience in college classes.  And since high school students are a little more aloof, I want to use reflection and discussion to draw out their learning.  

    Now that I’ve had experience with Moodle, and with creating online content, this is so much easier.  I am not constantly cruising through my Moodle books trying to figure out how to accomplish something; now I’m just doing it.  Nice to be farther along the learning curve! 

2 comments:

  1. Hi Fran,

    I'll be very interested to hear what you're going to be doing with you students in Moodle. I've been tasked (as part of a small group of teachers) to try and use our college VLE more with our ESOL students. We're on Moodle here (we arew an FE college in SE London in the UK), so I look forward to hearing what you get up to!

    Best,

    Mike

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  2. Mike - Great to hear from you. Since you're interested in Moodle, I'll do a post about some Moodle resources in case some are new to you. I'm also interested to hear more about what you're doing.

    Best regards,
    Fran

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