What is a Zoodle? Moodle at the zoo

Orangutan

Cool morning, sunny +26 C day and the fantastic Perth Zoo were our playground yesterday for a bunch of our Year 9 classes. The excursion is a centrepiece of the term looking at endangered species of SE Asia and particularly Indonesia.

Sadly, not all students came along for various reasons. We wanted to make the occasion memorable beyond a paper worksheet, give students a chance to show what they got out of the day and, importantly, share the day and its (in)sights with students who stayed back at school. Luckily, Mr Lasic was on hand with his laptop, Bluetooth and Moodle – what a nerd!

We encouraged students to take pictures and clips with their mobile phones and cameras throughout the day (considering of course other zoo visitors and rules on using imaging equipment). At the end of the day, we asked the kids to pair up and take a 30 – 60 sec ‘interview’ of their buddy answering the question: “What have I learnt at the zoo today?”

On the bus driving back to school, students sent me their videos and images from mobile phone via Bluetooth. Within 5 minutes about 15 clips and 30 images effortlessly landed in my inbox. But wait – there’s more… For kids who had taken shots with their digital camera, I have opened a picture gallery (a handy preset in Database activity) for them to upload their shots from home. They have started trickling in since.

A video database will have the kids’ video clips plus a recording of an excellent presentation given to us by the zoo’s education staff – all on Moodle of course.

All of these will be made so students can download them, edit and/or mash them up (the more advanced users will), comment on entries and rate them. I think a blog post on “Why and how should I care about endangered species” for each student should be a pretty sound assessment piece with kids constructing it using their own or their peers’ materials rather than a copy/paste job off zoo’s website.

One student asked me: “If we put zoo stuff on Moodle does that make it a Zoodle?”

Epilogue:

This morning I looked at the draft school policy on mobile phones, Mp3, cameras and other ‘gadgets’ as lots of people like to bundle’em up. It makes me want to look for another job straight away – I’ll spare you the rant.

5 thoughts on “What is a Zoodle? Moodle at the zoo”

  1. hello my Name is Daniel and i was in Mr Lyons class last year by the way my edublogs site is daniel1231.edublogs.org please go on it and comment on any page or post by the way great edublogs site.

  2. Thanks Tomaz for commenting on my edublogs i would not mined if your high school students look at my edublogs site it would be fine i hope we can stay in contact by the why are you mr Lyons son or something.

  3. Sounds like a great excursion and a motivating alternative to the standard paper worksheet model.Would love to see some of your end reuslts or reflections by the students. Keep on plugging the innovative ways that you are approaching kids’ learning – eventually others will get it and you will have made a difference 🙂

    Cheers & thanks for sharing.

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