Sample Moodle course

    Sometimes people ask me what my Moodle courses look like, or what any Moodle course looks like, or how to do something in Moodle.  I’d love to let these people look at my active courses, but that violates the privacy of my students, all minors, so it can’t be done.

    Recently, I took my most active course, archived it without student information, then gave it a new name when restoring it.  This way, I have the entire course but without any student information. 

    If you’d like to take a look at it for ideas, you’re welcome.  Here’s the full URL: https://stbernard.globalclassroom.us/cirrus/course/view.php?id=11  and a shortened one: http://tinyurl.com/3wzynwp

   This is a blended course, so the online piece and the face-to-face piece complement each other.   I am making a lot of changes this summer, but thought other teachers would be interested.  (I especially want to change the default font size so I don’t have to keep using labels to make the contents easier to read.)

    Unlike the way the course appears to students, all the units show, and all parts of a unit show.  In “real life” only some of the activities for a unit are revealed at a time.  Also, for students, only a few units are available at any one time, and directions are always the first thing they see, as in the example I’ve given.  Some units (vocabulary) are always available, but they are always placed below the unit we’re working on at that point, sort of in the background. 

   You are welcome to do the usual teacher thing – borrow, borrow, borrow.

No more moodle next year?

You know you're doing something right when kids regret that it's not going to be available any more.  I've been trialing Moodle, which has become a fixture in my classroom.  Students who have used it for the past year are sorry they won't have it. 
photo © 2011 Ron Bennetts | more info (via: Wylio)

    What'll we do next year when we don't have the moodle?

    We won’t have Moodle next year?  Can’t we keep using it? 

I’m the only teacher using Moodle in my school, so when students move up to a new grade, they’re no longer in the Moodle.  I’m delighted my students are so connected to the community afforded by this great tool.  And torn because I can’t keep offering it to them.  Because, no, I’m not going to keep on offering cool things for them to do online and engaging discussion because I won’t be their teacher.

That’s another teacher’s job.

But I hope I can use my students’ comments to encourage my colleagues to start using online discussion and using Moodle.

After all, when is the last time you heard students ask for more work, please? 

What students like about Moodle

Comments from the year-end student survey:

• I like the discussions and extra sites you have up here.
• it was ALOT OF FUN
• i didnt need to use paper and carry my book
• It was very accesible, and easy to use.
• What I liked about the moodle was open discussion, there wasn't one right answer
• I really liked how in the discussions you could say your opinion and how there wasn't none right answer.
• i liked the moodle this year because it is veyr handy and can help you study for things like vocabulary.
• I liked the vocab and the discussions, I think vocab was so much easier to do on moodle and funner.
• I loved moodle this year because before a vocab test, if I forgot my book, I could use the moodle.
• I liked the discussions
• The moodle is great for studying, less writing with the hands (which i do not enjoy) and it keeps everything very organized.
• I could type my assignments up and I could see and comment on what other people thought
• It connected us more. 

‘Nuf said.

Student survey helps me improve

I surveyed my students at year-end and found:  For every student who liked something, there was another who didn’t.  Seems like this always happens because my students are individuals.  Some love school, some don’t.  Some love English, some don’t.  Some enjoy the work involved in learning, some don’t.

There were a sizable number who liked the Moodle (59%) and a smaller number who were frustrated by it (33%).  The frustrations came from problems logging in (forgot userid or forgot password), so I’ve added a big Help button to the login page that students can access even if they can’t login.  I also plan to create Jing videos showing some basic skills – navigation, adding images, posting to discussions.  Even though I demonstrate these skills F2F, students need access to this information when I’m not around to ask. 

Results of online vocabulary studying

This year I added online vocabulary study, using Moodle forums. The basic assignment was for 10 of the 20 vocabulary words, add this information to a Moodle discussion about the word: use in a sentence, provide an image/ synonym/ antonym/ definition/ word origin). I wrote about this in http://adventuresonlineteaching.blogspot.com/2010/12/letting-go.html and http://adventuresonlineteaching.blogspot.com/2010/11/vocabulary-in-discussion-forum.html

In about 10 minutes, students could post this information. Many students found this activity fun - especially finding funny images - while others found it onerous (but I did notice that these were students who complained about doing any work, no matter what it was.)


But as one student commented in the year-end survey, “DO THE MOODLE. It's the same as a test grade and is an easy 100 if you just do it.”


For any students who had trouble logging in I had an easy alternative – give me the work on a piece of paper – which was frankly even less work. I found that since we started Moodle vocabulary “discussions” that students consistently did a much better job on tests of vocabulary than in previous years, and also used the words much more in their writing.


Students also commented in the year-end survey that the Moodle made studying vocabulary easier:

• My vocab became expanded due to the intesive work done on it, it helped in other classses.
• i liked the moodle this year because it is veyr handy and can help you study for things like vocabulary.
• I liked the vocab and the discussions, I think vocab was so much easier to do on moodle and funner.
• I loved moodle this year because before a vocab test, if I forgot my book, I could use the moodle.
• it was a good way to review in the vocab section

Only two pieces of vocabulary study took place in class 1) introducing the words (in a continuing story that I wrote, so students would see the words in context), and 2) tests (students had to use the words correctly in a sentence showing the meaning of the word).

Vocabulary work was almost entirely on the Moodle and in exercises in the text, all outside of class. The online tool provided both a place to participate in learning about words, and a place to study. My goal was to move vocabulary study out of the classroom as much as possible, while still improving student learning; I accomplished both.

Using the computer for essay tests

Since I teach blended classes, some work is online, some face-to-face, and some in the computer lab.  This year, I experimented with having my final exam in the lab.  The multiple choice vocabulary went onto the scantron with the keyboards up on the CPUs (and yes I know you can give tests in Moodle, but I find setting up the quiz function excruciating, so don’t use it). 
photo © 2007 Mike Traboe | more info (via: Wylio)

The part of the test I wanted the computers for was the essay – I wanted them to type it.  Here’s what I saw:

Students were on task, focused.  They edited and even spell-checked their essays (something students sometimes seem to skip on written homework).  Some even printed out and revised their essays.  A few students chose to hand-write their essays, and that was OK, too.

Students are used to keyboarding their writing, which lets them focus on the writing, and not on keeping their writing neat.  Most can key rapidly, so their writing keeps up with their thinking.  And cut-and-paste revision is so much easier on a computer.

One result:  since they got to use a tool they usually use for writing, their writing was significantly better than I usually get on exams. It was organized, cohesive, thoughtful, and mostly spelled correctly.

Another huge benefit for me:  it was all legible.

Two things that worked particularly well:  1) assigned seating (to separate buddies, to isolate kids who need quiet, and to isolate kids who are noisy;  2) giving students the choice of typing or hand-writing, so they could use their preferred writing mode.

I will do this again.

If you don't back up

Today I've been helping a teacher who has inexplicably lost all her first semester grades for two of the classes she teaches.  (Obviously a problem since year-end grades won't have meaning if they don't include grades for the whole year.) 

 

The problem reminded me about how dependent we all are on our technology - and how wrenching it is when we don't have backups.

 

Many of us now routinely use online gradebooks.  I remember paper gradebooks and bubbling in forms so that report cards could be printed - we do not want to go back there.

 

But if we're going to use technology, we need to make backups for those terrible times when the technology does us dirt.  Remember that there are only two kinds of computer users - those who've lost data, and those who haven't lost it... yet. 

 

I print down my gradebooks at least every quarter.  Also, I post grades from the gradebook to the private progress reports that parents can see online.  Both of these are good sources of backups if my gradebook gets corrupted and the vendor doesn't have the backup that they should - which happens more often than bears thinking about, including today. 

 

The more you have in the cloud, the more likely it is that you will lose important information.  Please make your own backups.  Don't let this happen to you.