Source: ‘Lucky Roll’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaehbom/2246451899/

It’s been a while since I wrote anything ‘moodling’ but after this morning’s class I can’t help but quickly share this little gem.

In my Year 9 and 10 classes (both deemed ‘lower end’, damned labels…), I am trying to teach research skills, critical thinking skills and a bit of critical pedagogy to boot this term. It’s my last term at this school so I thought I’d go out with a bang

Last night, I created a monopoly board in a Moodle wiki. Nothing fancy, just a simple table in wiki’s HTML editor (no HTML knowledge required, just a bit of tinkering with 13 x 13 table in the enlarged editor). I entered the correct colour fields, nominal values of fields, utilities and stations. I then created a wiki page for each student by enclosing their names with hard brackets on the main wiki page (eg. [Matthew] ) and  copied the table with instructions into each personal page. This way, students simply click their name of the main wiki page, click ‘Edit’ and go for it. If you are not so handy with Moodle wikis, here is a “2 Minute Moodle” on it.

At the most basic level of the task, students have to find median house prices in Perth suburbs and enter them accordingly on the board, as well as find names of train stations and utilities. Basic internet search demonstrated – easily, but not for all.

They have to create 10 of their own Chance and Community Chest cards that need to reflect the realities of life in our city – more digging around and seeing what kids know, value (and not).

If they choose to do so (commensurate with higher achievement too), kids can come up with their own monopoly topic/theme – eg. Swan River (main river in Perth) and write their own ‘values’, cards and rules. But they need to ‘keep it real’ and back what they write with info they find.

Because this whole thing is in a wiki, kids can share and help each other out at any time. All boards are easily printable, exportable and of course – ultimately playable.

We had our first run this morning and I sent out a tweet: I wish I could bottle this engagement & open it on a bad day.

While the kids are beavering on their own game, I’m creating my own version – but with a twist. The idea came from a passing comment by a student, while brainstorming for open ended questions about Monopoly a few days ago:

“What if Monopoly was like real life. You sort of get your chance card when you are born, don’t you?” (who says kids aren’t great philosophers)

We have done a little bit of work of chances and choices in life and the difference between them. In light of that, my Chance card will have a theme “chances” in life, Community Chest will be “choices” in life. The cards will have statements with NO assigned further action (eg. none of the ‘Get $100). A Community Chest card may be “You fail to graduate from high school”. I will design a few sample cards, the rest will be decided by class before we settle and design our ‘Monopolife’.

The statements will (I hope!) lead to an open ended discussion and negotiation between players how far should the player go forward, backward, penalties, advances etc. And it is this discussion I am most interested in, to see how kids reason, argue, feel, value on their own terms.

I am hoping for a discussion with questions like: What can we do with choices in life? What about chances? Should we simply give up? Why are choices and chances (not) the same? What if you were really rich/poor and had different chances? etc.

Those are in no textbook I have seen but they are life. A life where chances of those with the most are often presented as universal choices, breeding resentment, stress and, so often misery. And vice versa. And all in between in all its messiness, through lack (and oversupply) of understanding and care.

We may not ’succeed’ in everything planned with this game, but if we enjoy next week or two in class, develop some valuable life skills, and see each other as fellow, struggling, hoping human beings – our work will be done.

Pass’n'Go !

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/niclindh/1389750548/

I have grown a pretty thick skin over the past few years dealing with questions like “What difference can digital technology REALLY make in schools?” For the record, I loathe ‘electronic worksheets’ and my mantra has long been “if you can do it better, simpler, faster in pen and paper then…use pen and paper.” But try to come close to this without digital technology:

Earlier this term our school Moodle site got a nice new design. But things did not just look nicer. The aim was to make Moodle more ‘owned’ and used by students. To my delight, the biggest change has proved to be participation in the student ‘Have Your Say’ forum, now made prominent by a big clickable picture right on the top of front page.

From the very first day, students have jumped on it. Within two months, our forum is sporting over 60 conversations (another dozen already deleted as they lost currency or were clearly spam). They range from the inane, “lolz-full” to very serious, thoughtful stuff in many of the forum’s conversation threads, some with 40 posts or more.

A number of staff have actively joined in some of the conversations questioning, explaining, supporting or sometimes challenging the kids as equals. I have heard a number of comments along the lines “I love checking the kids forum when I get a spare minute, it’s addictive.”

Through the forum, the school community has had a chance to safely bring out in the open and many times incredibly thoughtfully discuss the issues that were considered ‘off the table’. Our forum is in an environment that is open (in mind and method) and very egalitarian. Yes, there are some ranty posts, immature responses and all, but to actually see the kids write and speak out in public, then be prepared to have their views scrutinised, confirmed or challenged is something that is not cultivated in many (formal) classes or so often gets the ‘educational’ label that suffocates the real and raw. This is huge for a school that is (still) suffering from the mentality of fear of standing out, amplified of course by teenagehood itself.

There is no other physical or virtual space like it at our school to bring together students of all ages and year cohorts to speak to each other. There is no other space like this where kids have time, space and (to many) a very familiar method to respond. There is no other space to bring students and staff together to share their ideas safely, and with the reasonable choice of (non)participation that breeds real maturity and responsibility. There is no hiding behind fake names – everyone stands behind their words, for good or bad. There is no shouting, interjecting, excluding, bullying … we are equal.

Technically, the forum is just your stock-standard garden variety of a Moodle Standard Forum, set up in a couple of minutes. The forum rules consist of one line: Keep spam and swearing to yourself. Now, let me remind you that we (our school) are not exactly stereotyped as ‘well behaved’ but rather the other way around. So one would think there’d be lots of trouble?

I moderate the forum with the help of four students (two junior, two senior) and so far, we have only had to intervene twice (spamming) as moderators. At all other times, it has been the students themselves who reminded each other about what the forum is for and what is (not)appropriate. Guess what sticks more – being told by a teacher or told by a bunch of your peers?

The forum has given our administration, teachers, Student Council and all the students indeed enough material to think about for months! And more …

One could ask “What has all that got to do with education?” My response: “Everything!”

It is touching what we, teachers are there for and we should be listening to every day – student voice. It is a crazy, young, hormonal, loyal, moody, clever, honest voice of people we are trusted to spend so much time and achieve so much with. Slowly, things like this are changing the kids from mere cooperators to true collaborators (Cooperate= work together to achieve the requested/ordered. Collaborate= work together to achieve shared goals & agreed methods of achieving them). It moves them from compliance to consideration, from being told to telling, from sharing what they think to shared thinking.

I know that some of my colleagues would knee-jerk at this point: “So you want the kids to be always right and run the show?” If/when it ever comes to that I’d just post the statement in the Have Your Say student forum for the kids themselves to answer probably with far greater maturity, passion and eloquence than expected.

And if by any chance think I am making this up, here’s one of the posts from the forum:

“Keep your opinion to yourself” is a phrase I see constantly repeated in this forum. Have your say is here for the purpose of having one’s say in matters.

Yes, one may say something others may find offensive but I’m sure a lot of which is just poorly worded. It happens, especially when so many people abbreviate and don’t proofread their writings. Anyway, telling someone to keep their opinions to themselves defeats the purpose of this very liberating setup, I could go so far as to say it undermines our democratic state and rights of “free speech” – it’s somewhat over exaggerating, but it’s the truth in a sense.

With people keeping their opinions to themselves mankind would not have gotten anywhere, if Charles Darwin had not observed animal variation and voiced his opinions we would not know of evolution now. If Karl Benz didn’t share his idea of getting from point A to B faster and more efficiently we would not have the ever-popular automobile. If Mr. Lasic had not been so in-touch with our generation and modern learning we would not have moodle and intern this forum to voice our opinions.

Some opinions are somewhat ridiculous (look at mein kampf!), but I am sure we are all mature enough to dismiss such frivolous propositions without the need of jumping on the “keep your opinions to yourself” bandwagon.

Feel free to elaborate on this.

Thank you.

And they did! 20 posts later, the thread is still going. I have used it in my Philosophy & Ethics class too (excuse the gratuitous flattery of my name there )

What has that got do with education? Can digital technology REALLY make a difference in schools?

Just ask the kids. And listen. Carefully.

The first issue is targeted at new people in our school community and/or people who have not heard about or used Moodle much. Apart from minor edits and checks by myself, the whole thing is students’ work (minus the clips).

Please feel free to let them know what you think of the mag (nothing like feedback from the ‘real world’). Thank you

eBCC Moodle – eBCC Moodle Magazine

Create Your OpenZine

I have been thinking about and scouring the net for ‘best’ models of trying to get teachers to use Moodle for some time. I have tried a few things myself with mixed success until the most obvious thing hit me.

There are gigabytes of info on ‘growing gap between the teachers and students in using technology’. And what do we mostly do? We get ‘experts’ (adults) and fellow teachers teaching the newbies, reluctant or otherwise. Yet the biggest resource and pool of experts sits right in front of our nose – our students!

Talk about focusing on solutions not the problem…

Last week, I did a little “hunch test” to check the viability of students teaching teachers about Moodle. I gave my class (mixed Year 11 and 12 – 15 and 16 years of age) a simple task:

“You have just been given full editing rights in a course in Moodle called Teach a Teacher. Your job is to upload two files and then create a folder with these two files in them. There are a couple of clips called 2 Minute Moodles to help you work it out. Go and see who gets it done!”

None of these kids have ever had teacher privileges in Moodle. Four out of 12 never bothered watching the clips – they just worked it out and completed the task within 5 minutes! Another six watched the clips and got the job done in about 10 – 15 minutes. Two of them got the job done in about 20 minutes. They were all pretty pleased with themselves!

This little experiment encouraged me to start formally mapping out a school-wide “Teach a Teacher” programme.  The idea? Pretty simple really: Train the students, then let them train the teachers. The catch? Students make an offer teachers can’t refuse. Let me explain…

If Maggie comes to her teacher and says: ‘Miss, do you want me to show you how Moodle Assignment activity works?”, she will probably get a polite “ah, that’s very kind of you Maggie but you see … I am not a computer person and I just …”

If Maggie comes to the same teacher and says: “Miss, lots of people in our class lose or get late with assignments. Would you like me to show you how we could submit our assignments from home to save us forgetting to bring stuff from home?”

No decent teacher in their right mind would refuse a student to tell them something that would be genuinely helpful to both. Most students love to teach, they are naturals at it. What a great way to establish/improve the relationship while learning something mutually useful.

Now, imagine students asking teachers questions like these below beginning with a phrase – “Would you like me/us to show you how you can…” (with aspects of Moodle in brackets):

• store all kinds of files in a place we can all easily access them anytime we want or need to (files & folders)
• allow us to talk like equals without the loud kids always having the say (forum)
• help us when we are stuck searching for good websites (weblink)
• make us work on something together not just individually  (wiki)
• let us help you put together lots of pictures, links and videos because we prefer that to a textbook (website)
• submit our assignments out of school to save us forgetting to bring stuff from home (assignment)
• check what the class really thinks without people pretending (choice)
• note down things as they happen and then use them in class (blog)
• make quizzes fun and challenging, not boring (quiz)
• show you how to use quick messages to each other, not emails (messaging) …

“Anything else you want to know?”

Julian Ridden (the friendly ‘human Moodle Google’) hit the nail on the head tonight when he said that during his teacher training sessions, he spends more time on answering the ‘why to’ question rather than ‘how to’. The questions/answers above may read as ‘how to’ but they really are a ‘why to’ becaue they come from the mouth of the person for whom this whole thing is mostly designed for – the student.

How do we get to train the students? Like any good teaching – using simple activities and challenges. The one described above worked a treat – “let’s see if you can” (upload two files and create a folder). You could get your students to compete who gets the most posts in a forum to learn about forums. You could get them to compete for the most disgusting food photo (they’ll love that!) or the funniest video clip and that way learn how to use WYSIWYG/HTML editor and multimedia filters. You could get them to do ‘battle of the sexes’ and learn about assigning groups … I am still working on it here but work on it yourself – you know your students best!

What is the benefit in all of this for the students? Aren’t we wasting their school time to learn this stuff? Preparing for and learning how to teach someone a skill, communicate appropriately and implement the training, then evaluate and improve is a hugely important and valuable lifelong skill for any student.

Many of these things can surely be built into some sort of assessment task or certificate. But just imagine getting a personal reference from a grateful teacher whom a student has taught well something useful. That stuff gets kids bucketloads of self-esteem, jobs and something that the whole shebang of education really rests on – a meaningful relationship and a chance to grow through learning. ‘Teacher’, ’student’ and ‘learner’ are mere placeholders here, holding onto their ‘traditional’ meaning may not be helpful (long live the rhizome ).

To me and thousands of moodlers around the world, downloading and installing Moodle is like planting a seed. People make it grow.

I hope this helps someone…

This afternoon a staff member walked up to me and said: “Tomaz, I have been meaning to see you about Moodle. You really need to teach me about how to use it.”

This of course is music to my ears as the resident moodler. But then I returned what is now becoming a standard line and a sure tickler: “I couldn’t possibly!”

She stood there stunned but polite. Huh, did I get her attention.

I did continue:”I would love to have a chat with you about Moodle and show you around but first – have a look in our Sandpit what Moodle is [the "Moodle explained with Lego" clip] and then the sort of things you can do with it [the 'How can Moodle change a school] clip(s)]. This will give you a broad idea about Moodle before starting to poke around. When done, come up to me with a classroom problem and we’ll solve it together, step by step. How does that sound to you?”

“See you on Monday at the workshop!” was the immediate and enthusiastic reply.

Too often we approach teaching of things like software applications with a “these are the features, click here, click there…” and then leave it to people’s imagination how they are going to use it. Doing so, we tend to break one of the most important rules of communication – we make it about the software not about the people. We own the information, they merely borrow it.

By turning things around and solving a real-life classroom scenario, challenge, problem, idea people suddenly own the solution. They recognise themselves in the picture – “Hey, that’s me”!

Teachers are a very pragmatic lot and love to borrow good stuff. Give’em a good one in Moodle and they will come! If a science teacher has a great solution using Moodle for a problem or idea her class and say, an English teacher sees it and ‘gets it’ – you can bet the English teacher will at least try or ask how to go about it. And coming from a colleague and a fellow ’struggler’ is a much more powerful thing than coming from the school’s main Moodle peddler like me. The bigger the struggler the more potent the message, even at the subconscious level (”If she can do that I reckon I can do that too!”).

‘Classroom solutions (with software)’ versus ‘Software solutions (in classroom)’. I know which one a regular chalkie would go for and why. Do you?

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.

I am getting a little tired of ‘spoon-feeding’ and doing the heavy lifting for my students.

These five myths deal exclusively with teaching and learning with Moodle. I have distilled these after experiences at our school and reading about experiences of fellow Moodlers over the last year or so. For more myths about the technical aspects of Moodle (Top 10) you can visit the Moodle forums at Moodle.org.

So, here are my top five … with replies.

Myth #1 “You need to be an expert and tech savvy to use Moodle”

Can you attach a document to an email message? Assuming that you have Moodle installed and run for you, that is about as advanced as you have to be to start using Moodle in a way that most users begin to use it – as a ‘digital cupboard’, a storage space for your files and folders where you and/or your students can view and download them 24/7. Even some of the basic activities like Choice for example, do not require a great deal of skills – just a little bit of imagination.

You can certainly get a lot more out of Moodle as your proficiency grows but don’t burden yourself too much about it. Do you have to know all about the fine inner workings of a particular car before you drive it?

Myth #2 “With Moodle, you need to be on computers all the time.”

Moodle IS an online management system and at some point you and your students will have to spend some time in front of a computer. But the extent of time spent in front of a computer depends entirely on what you use Moodle for.

Moodle supports delivery of courses ranging from fully online to the occasional use to perform a certain activity or access a resource. The extent of screen time is entirely up to the teacher. The majority of teachers around the world use Moodle in courses that are a mixture between offline and online teaching, learning and assessment. In fact, a hybrid model of courses where Moodle simply supports and/or extends the face-to-face and other activities is by far the most widely used way of using Moodle by teachers and students worldwide.

Myth #3 “Students will love Moodle because it is online and in ‘their world’ “

Probably the most dangerous of the five myths! Do not assume that just by using technology and having courses online will instantly make your subject somehow more desirable, that students will love your teaching or the content, get better grades etc. Good use of Moodle is all about asking good questions and good, insightful, reflective teaching with the selected tools at hand. And no matter how digitally advanced your students, they will look to you for the human ‘touch’, knowledge and guidance.

Regardless of how technically (un)sophisticated you are in using Moodle, good teaching and built human relationships remains the key to success in using it. An orchestra conductor can have access to the greatest musical instruments and individual virtuosos but (s)he still has to make sure they play together well.

Myth #4 Moodle is just about fun and games, it’s a time waster and does not encourage ‘real work’ .”

Moodle does not come packaged with games (but you can install them). ‘Making learning fun’ is not the driving force behind Moodle, ‘making learning valuable’ is. It really comes down to pedagogy – the science, or rather art of teaching. If students are not engaged and want to waste time, they usually will (or at least try to) waste time with whatever they find – each other, pens, computers, paper clips, phones, anything really to be off task, including Moodle.

Moodle is an all-in-one package of fantastic tools to engage, encourage and/or extend students in the primary purpose of education – learning. This goes particularly for learning by doing, sharing, observing and working with others, including yourself as a teacher. If you don’t see this type of learning beneficial, Moodle will probably be of less use to you.

Myth #5 “Moodle is just another thing we need to learn, deal with and worry about now. Admin will probably switch to something new in a year or two anyway so why bother using in and learning about it now.”

While certainly hugely popular around the world, Moodle is just one of the many content/learning management systems with similar features around these days. Regardless of the brand and functions, the use of such systems is increasing at a rapid pace in schools, businesses and other organisations. If your students attend tertiary study they are very likely to use such a system as essential to complete their studies.

By learning about and using Moodle, you will build a range of highly transferable skills you can take to your next job, even your retirement! Most importantly, you will build a way of thinking and the confidence to harness and use the power of increasingly ubiquitous digital technology in a merger with the timeless task of education – safely, manageably, one module at a time. And if Admin decide to change from Moodle to something else (and why would they want to do such thing ? it will take you much less time to learn the tricks of a new, similar software. More importantly, you will know how to put it to good use.

There you go. These are just my top five and there surely are more.

If you have heard any of these five myths, found my rebuttal misguided or useful, or you believe we can give more myths about teaching with Moodle a critical, constructive consideration please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

And what if we replaced the word/subject ‘Moodle’ with a broader concept of ‘digital technology’?

This little ‘epiphany’ and the desire to answer frequently answered question ‘What is Moodle?’ with a brief, to-the-point video drove me to spend the last few days playing with digital Lego and creating two clips, answering the question ‘What is Moodle?’ using an analogy with Lego bricks. The idea was not only to show (quickly) what Moodle is but also what it can do and what a popular and useful LMS it is. There are some excellent intro videos out there but here is my take…

There are two versions of the clip – short (length 2:43) and full (featured here, length 5:03). The slideshow and full text used in this video is available on Slideshare. If you can’t see the video or you are having difficulties with clarity (some small text, sorry) please click here.

Oh, and a little anecdote.

While compiling the material for the clip, I wrote down what Jason Cole dubbed as ‘Martin’s 5 laws’ of Moodle (slightly edited but intent preserved – did I ‘get it’ right Martin?). Purely by chance, a fellow teacher who has not really engaged with Moodle at our school walked by. I invited her to look at the five statements on the paper and asked her if she agreed with them.

She looked, paused, thought and said “Of course. They make perfect sense. How else would we….” and on she went about confirming the statements.

When she finished, I simply said “Well, what you have just read are the principles Moodle is built on. That’s what Moodle is about.”

Her reply? “Well, you better sign me up to this Moodle thing then.”

And THAT is how the story begins with Moodle, Lego or anything we see interesting and valuable to learn!

Happy MoodleMoot Australia 2008 in Brisbane to all participants – sorry I can’t join you (watch out next year…)