No Muddle with Moodle

Now that summer is truly here, I can catch up a bit with commentary on my life with technology.

I use moodle for much of what I do in class. It is provided on a local server by our school district to any teacher, with some basic inservice provided. It is key to use of a technology-based classroom.

Moodle is "a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities." Teachers basically create as much of an on-line "presence" as they feel able to do. The key is that moodle gives you a variety of tools, which, when mastered, allow you to do any thing from posting your agenda for the day or uploading student assignments to giving a semester final.

The students must log-in and identify which class they want (Mr. Appel's US History, Ms. Chastain's English, etc.). My students next see a sort of "title page" which includes a list of current units with graphics. Students then click on the provided calendar to get the daily agenda. My moodle approach is a bit different from some, in that I make items on the agenda active links to assignments. Here is a typical Agenda:

On this agenda, students start by taking an open-book quiz on yesterday's work. The quiz is taken on-line, and students know immediately how they did. I still lecture, while showing notes on the presentation system. Students can save their own typed copies to their own folders for later use. That day I also had then create their own mini-protest signs from the era and we saw a bit of the movie Across the Universe.

More about using moodle later.

Big Video Arrives

After school yesterday, Kevin and Keith arrived to assemble and mount a new 60 inch monitor/TV!

All day as students entered today, there were exclamations of happy surprise. Since many US History students have been out for the GQE (basic graduation test) the last few days, I had started the movie "Thirteen Days," which yields a pretty exciting look at the Cold War. We're just starting the unit on the Cold War, so it helped to establish the risky nature of the era. In Geography, we're doing a walk-through on South Asia, so the provided text's provided video was a natural. All were impressed.

I also demonstrated the connection to my computer monitor, using the iTalc software (which shows a mini version of what each student is currently working on).

As I demonstrated how I had been looking at each station in a kind of classroom picture, it occurred to me to walk through the new South Asia unit by having a web search for pictures as we did an overview of topics. The whole class could see when an individual had found a picture We easily found "competing" pictures of the Taj Mahal (inside and out), the Himalayas, and the results of a monsoon. When a picture would appear, I could quickly make it the size of a (large) screen and we could comment on it. Geography students enjoyed the competitive nature of the search, as well as the INSTANT recognition.

Generally, it was a good day.

A Bit of Background

Sometime in the Fall of 2007, Kevin McGuire, our district's Technology Director and Mary Gish, the Information Technology Coordinator, approached me about the One-to-One technology project at Michigan City High. Many of our high school's English classrooms now had thirty computers, a large screen monitor, and a lot of useful software, all running on linux. This was all part of a larger state program.

Would I be interested in piloting the next step into Social Studies? Oh yeah. Since this would combine interests in social studies and instructional technology, and might possibly make me a more effective teacher, what's a little sleep loss?

By Late November, 2007, the computer desks were in, complete with power and network cabling. Over Christmas, HP computers running linux (OpenSuse/Novell) were installed. I did not yet have a "teacher computer." so the ability to observe and supervise (and change!) student desktops from my desktop was not yet there, but by mid to late January, 2008, I was ready to go with that software, "iTalc."

What the Heck Does This Do?

A wonderful part of using technology in education (as in other fields) is that "Ah Ha!" moment, the moment when you discover how something works. It's nearly as exciting as when your students make the same type of discovery!

This particular blog will focus on implementing a computer lab in a high school Social Studies classroom. The "thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" as some things are enthusiastically adopted, while others fizzle, will be chronicled.