Category Archives: Moodle

Resources and writings about Moodle

Forum – the heart of Moodle (iMoot reflection #1)

Huh, the iMoot is over!

Judging by the feedback through various channels, the inaugural world online Moot was a resounding success. Congratulations and sincere thanks again to the iMoot crew, particularly to Leonie Beetham, Shane Elliot & Julian Ridden.

It was great to listen to so many passionate and clever moodlers, it was also great fun and honour to present at this event. I put my hand up for two things – the series of 3 live presentations called ‘Forum – the heart of Moodle’ (described below) in the Teacher Stream and a general panel discussion titled “Moodle v Pink Floyd – Breaking Walls With Moodle” (more on and from the panel next time…)

I embed a presentation I used as a backbone to my 3 ‘live shows’. In the first part of each presentation, I stressed that (at least to me) Forum activity epitomises Moodle for particularly two reasons. Firstly, because Forum is essentially a conversation, it encourages, enacts the constructivist notion of learning (we build knowledge with and for each other through active participation). Secondly, it presents awesome opportunities to get creative and moodle away (‘to moodle’ used as a verb meaning to tinker, create, experiment, get ‘a-ha!’ moments in trying to use Moodle in a meaningful way) to suit the needs of a particular context in a relatively simple, straightforward way with a little bit of imagination.

I tickled the participants with a few ideas about the possible uses of Forum activity (slides 5 to 8), took them on a brief web tour of what happened in my class just a day or two before, mentioned the ‘5 Principles of Moodle’ (see slide 12) then …. invited the participants to “walk the talk” on all five, immediately. Now THAT was the best part!

Inspired by Dave Cormier’s ‘live slides’ experience (read the post & rationale!), I simply created a few blank slides. One to doodle and practice, four with guiding questions on them.

While quietly expecting some input, I was blown away how quickly and effortlessly the slides filled up with awesome ideas from people (mostly teachers & educators) from around the world. Thoughtful, real educational experiences, positive and negative, pouring  onto the shared space.  I simply guided and commented on selected items that appeared on the  board while keeping an eye on requests, questions and comments in the chat window. We were literally building together. And every one of the three groups had slightly different ideas that simply enriched us all while having fun, engaged …Forum – The Heart of Moodle (iMoot presentation)

View more presentations from Tomaz Lasic.

I have since collated the responses gathered from slides, audio and chat of our ‘Forum – The Heart of Moodle’ sessions into a document I share below. I invite you to freely share & build upon non-commercially but if you do so please acknowledge the source by the request of the iMoot organisers and myself. Sincere apologies if I missed any points that you may have contributed but the devil of interpretation is that something always does get lost.

Forum – the heart of Moodle

A big thank you to all who participated in any of these sessions (and apologies for bumbling with Java setup on the first one :-0). YOU made them great, I hope you got as much out of them as I did.

A big, unsolicited plug also to Elluminate (not just because they were iMoot sponsors) – a great tool, worthy of exploring and using! I don’t know about you but I am getting myself a free ‘Vroom’ at LearnCentral very soon (thank you Jo Hart for helping me all along! 🙂 ).

Notes on the Panel 3 coming soon, still chewing through. Ciao moodlers!

Calling all moodlers

iMoot, the world’s first online MoodleMoot (‘moot’ is a word of ancient origin used to popularly name gatherings of Moodle users and developers around the world) is kicking off this coming week, Thursday 4 February to Sunday, 7 February 2010.

Quick numbers: 31 timezones, 210 countries, 40 presenters in 3 streams … all unlimited for AUD$45 and there is bound to be a time slot that suits you!

I know I sound like a salesman now (no, I don’t get a dime out of it) but this is a fantastic opportunity to have access to all materials, share, learn and connect with fellow moodlers from around the world for four days at a cost of a few beers.

Here is a little teaser/intro to my own presentation (in the Teacher Stream) titled ‘Forum – the heart of Moodle’. (YouTube version link)

Forum – the heart of Moodle from Tomaz Lasic on Vimeo.  (Sorry, the audio goes a tad funny :-/ ah well…)

I am sure that the inaugural iMoot will be packed with great presentations, panel discussions and just some renown Moodle camaraderie, even if online this time.

If you haven’t had a chance to look, here is the address again: http://imoot.org

Big thank you goes to Julian, Leonie, Shane, Martin & the rest of the iMoot crew for putting on this event.

See you at the iMoot!

For ‘L’ in Moodle

moodle logo

There is something I have been meaning to share with the world for the past few weeks. Today, I finally can.

This afternoon, I accepted Martin Dougiamas‘ kind offer to formally join Moodle as an ‘Education Researcher’. I will be concerned primarily with the pedagogical and andragogical aspects of using Moodle, and look at how (well) does and could Moodle ‘hit the ground’ in a range of educational settings, primary to tertiary, vocational, training etc.

In short, my concern is the ‘L’ in Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment).

From creating resources, curating best practices, conducting formal research, active participation in the world-wide Moodle community through moodle.org and many other sites and channels, help with design of future versions of Moodle, and more, my job description is as varied as it is challenging. Eh, my cuppa tea – variety and challenge! 🙂

As for the title,  I have always felt that terms like ‘Specialist’, ‘Consultant’, ‘Leader’ etc breed spoonfeeding and useless reverence, so ‘Educational Researcher’ fits the bill perfectly.

Yes, I am leaving a ‘safe teaching job’ and the classroom for a little while. I do so not because I am sick of teaching, or, heaven forbid, the kids (a few posts here will tell you so…), but because this is an awesome opportunity and a different context to do a lot for a vision of education I have pursued for many years ‘on the ground’. And to be asked by someone like Martin, whom I have a huge amount of respect for, is frankly … an honour (sucking up to his boss already, hey?  🙂 🙂  ).

I intend to maintain a close contact with colleagues in schools and universities and pay regular visits (you can hold me to it!) not just to ‘see how Moodle is going’ but to never lose touch with the people and the beautiful messiness of this thing we call ‘education’.

Moodle … here we come!

Sports Moodle

World Swimming Champs - Womens Water Polo
2007 World Champs Melbourne http://www.flickr.com/photos/flying_cloud/466828962/

From 2000 to 2004, I ran an elite/development squad of female water polo athletes at the Western Australian Institute of Sport (WAIS). This was just one of the many parts of my 15-years long sports coaching career, from juniors to multiple Olympic medal winners.  I have very fond memories of the time but as I look back, I would have done many things differently too, particularly in the running of the squad, working with athletes, fellow coaches and supporting staff at WAIS and beyond. I also wish I had Moodle THEN !

If I got my old job back today, I would get myself a Moodle and..

First, there would be no more paper printouts of schedules, pool changes and types of sessions. One calendar, accessible 24/7 and from anywhere with internet connection. Every player has a mobile with it … so there. Any changes would be seen immediately as each player logged in. And for lengthier up-to-speed items – there is always the News and Notices forum, a default in any Moodle course.

I would have a published, annotated annual plan in a shared space, where the players could see what sort of training we’ll be doing, why so, and see how it fits within a myriad of other plans. Previously, this had been always a big printout job that frankly mostly got lost in girls’ bags, together with wet costumes, caps and towels. Maybe a simple webpage, even a wiki with a table in it would do just fine, or even an Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet, linked to be accessible with a single click. And because even the best laid plans change, the changes would be shown immediately in the document. This way, training plans (annual, cycle, week, even session) would not only be easily accessible but easily stored for any future use, reflection, and analysis.

A bank of drills and plays, ours and opposition’s (in either printable or video format, depending how far we’d want to take it) would be there at the fingertips of anyone we allow, not back at the office or ‘left it at home’. I remember printing out a forest before a tournament for the players and shoddy scouting notes on opposition shooters from my own playing days, pre-Moodle (Always a goalie! Crazy, I know 🙂 )

But I would not use Moodle just to keep the training plans, playbook (yes, the most downloaded extra module in Moodle is called ‘Book’) and scouting notes. For example, one of the biggest pains (literally) of any athlete and their coach are the injuries. A simple wiki, paged further into each player’s name would be great to create and keep a permanent, trackable record of each player’s recovery. And the best part? Let’s say the player sees the physio at our institute … instead of typing an email to the coach that needs transferring, storing (forgetting to) the physio simply types a couple of notes [if important] straight into the wiki after the treatment. For sensitive athlete information, the coach would simply adjust the level of access on various activities and resources – because in Moodle, you can. Any sports science details (physiology, psychology, nutrition, biomechanics … yes, coaching an elite squad is not easy!) – all there in one place, easily updated by the relevant person, even the athlete themselves. The repository could grow, perhaps easily turn into searchable database in Moodle (yes, you guessed it – standard in Moodle) and offer a coherent, integrated picture of athlete’s progress over time.

I remember the times I used to fiddle around with cameras, tapes, burning (multiple) CDs and DVDs in biomechanical analysis sessions. Each player had a CD to look at themselves, never really comparing and learning from (the analysis) of others. If I were to do it today – record straight onto hard drive, analyse with appropriate analysis software, then upload the exported videos onto a shared space on Moodle (multimedia plugins and multimedia centre block make this a breeze). If they were in a Moodle database, named eg. ‘Shooting Analysis – March 2010’ I could easily add comments and maybe allow players THEMSELVES to self-analyse before seeing a biomechanics specialist and myself about their technique. And if we’d want to go external in analysing a video or critical snapshots of eg. a game … there would probably be a plugin for that (eg. VoiceThread) or just an embed, even a link. All there!

Any master of their sport will tell you that one of the pre-requisites for success is to be a constant learner of the sport you play. Having Moodle (the ‘L’ in the acronym does stand for ‘learning’…) would make it easier for me as a coach to encourage and facilitate players to become ‘students of the sport’. There were countless occasions where I came across an interesting article, clip, website, something that would really be useful to players in my squad. The trouble was, when gathered at training, I couldn’t ‘waste’ 20 minutes of whole-squad time on such items (unless, of course really important). With Moodle I could easily post the interesting items up for players to access and maybe mention, talk about, refer to (geez, even quiz them…bloody teacher-in-me 🙂 ) in our interactions. For example, water polo has an incredible history nationally and around the world that local kids who were playing the game were not aware of. Once they would come across some classic material, stories and examples of masters of the sport they played, they would (and always have!) gained a much deeper understanding of it and respect for the sport itself. With lots of these things ‘on tap’ via Moodle, the chances only increase.

So far, I have only talked about things that I as a coach would put on Moodle for players to access – schedules, documents, lists, calendars, videos, notes etc.  This is a bit like the first steps of Moodle use in schools – teachers put their ‘stuff’ in and students access it. Because sport can be quite ‘army-like’ we have ‘experts’ who know and ‘novices’ who don’t (and need to get there, faster the better), many people don’t see too much point in involving players in creating their paths and contributing, they ‘just do it!’ (ah, the number of times I said that 🙂 … ). But I beg to differ and Moodle is well built for that!

Let’s start with players setting their own goals. Give them time and space and help them come up with something realistic that they CAN explain, aim for and achieve. Say, a wiki in Moodle can be edited by a young player at 10pm when she gets the idea and writes it down. Next day, I (the coach) see the edit and chip in my part to shape things up – together. The player then owns the goal. Oh yes, there is a module called Indivudual Learning Plan in Moodle. Think we could use that?

How about team goals? Weekly or monthly focus? Coming up with rules of the squad? Many would say at this point “that’s why you have team meetings” but I have seen too many loud, Type-A personalities kill off great ideas of the quieter players in team meetings. A simple forum or even a wiki in Moodle to write, edit, confirm the rules (you can still discuss them) in a given time of a week to think rather than 15 minutes to squabble and yell over each other.

How about reflecting after a game? Season? Game? Tournament? How do you gather the rich and important voices of players easily and equally? Well, ask each player to write a quick blog entry (good to see some WAIS athletes do that already!) or a special type of forum (Q and A) where you need to post before you see what others have posted.

How about setting performance targets as Outcomes or Standards and get each player to self-evaluate how well they are doing on a regular basis with the coach able to confirm or change, then comment on the changes and the performance? No paper, all automatically collated, tracked and easily commented on either in person or online (first, if needed).

How about social events? Tour photos? How about allowing each player to personalise their own space by turning on MyMoodle and keeping a few key blocks and resources ‘sticky’ so they can’t possibly ignore them?

Now, you may say “this may be all possible and fine in team sports … but what about individual sports, particularly those with high level of technical skill involved” (yes Ben, thinking of you 🙂 . Let’s walk over to the rowing, kayaking, or swimming coach. Very technical sports, all of them.  Well, most of the above applies really. There may be fewer ‘squad meetings’ but there could be greater emphasis on video analysis (as stated, Moodle plugins handle a good lot of media, commonly exported from analysis software like SportsCode, Dartfish, Swinger, Garmin, GameBreaker, SiliconCoach and the likes). You can easily embed the clip and have a chat about it (yes, Chat is standard in Moodle) or you can just install one of many plugins (the good old Skype would probably do just fine) to have a live chat (for 0$ usually) if on remote location in a city, pool, track, river somewhere (with net access, of course). With Moodle, events, times, results, analysis, everything travels with ‘the team’ to be available anywhere with net access at any time. No more long ‘tour notes’ back at the office when jetlagged and forgetful.

Tracking of times, statistics, heart-rates can be automated by linking the resource to Moodle (eg. Polaris heart-rate system, Garmin GPS) and have it all at the athletes and coaches fingertips when required. Coaches could very easily exchange Notes (yes, there in Moodle as standard) on their athletes or even build a series of observations through them to help them with that important team selection or trials. And more, and more, and more … By the way, when it comes to individual sports, when their squads go away they often  support and work with each other more than the team sports. Not to mention a team of people behind every serious athlete.

Back in the days ( 🙂 ) and as one of the assistant coaches for the national team, I often had to consult with the Head National Team Coach about the players in various national squads, their training requirements, drills, plays, travel etc. Well, rather than playing an e-mail tag and endless phone calls, he could have gotten get a very good picture of any of the players in my squad simply by being a member of our ‘course’ (or rather ‘space’) in Moodle and talk to me and/or with the players directly, avoiding (often) the guessing and misinterpretations. I know a player who nearly missed out on the Athens Olympics berth because of such an incident!

And then imagine the entire sporting oganisation (eg. national association, sporting institute, club(s) …) sharing a Moodle (much like about 32 million people around the world do right now). And have I mentioned the social networking features of the upcoming Moodle 2.0 and things like ‘community hubs’? All of this for free, no licensing fees to pay, ever ! (I sound like a dodgy salesman now 🙂 but it’s true! )

Yes, you can do all these things across the tools like Google Docs, even the new Google Wave, wikis, blogs, email, videoconferencing, social networks, video sharing sites etc. But if you ask me – I would have all my bits under one roof, accessible 24/7, where I can control, change access and roles as much as I like (yes, sport is a competitive thing and some things are just to precious to share…) in a stable, secure and easy-to-use environment.

So, would using Moodle make me a better coach? Only as much as I would nurture the skill, experience and wisdom of my players (and my own) with the help of it.

No computer software will ever score a goal or race a world record time. But it sure can help to if used well.

Moodle Monopolife

Monopoly

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 ! 🙂

Ask the kids

My Listening Ears

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.

Our Moodle Magazine

Over the past few weeks, my Y11/12 class of ‘Moodle helpers’ in the course called Career and Enterprise (you can see the programme here if interested, big focus on ‘living with technology’) have put together a magazine about Moodle.

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

Grow a Moodle

moonflower seed after soaking overnight

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…

Continue reading Grow a Moodle

One sentence

Good news travels fast. ‘Sticky’ ideas even faster.

In her recent comments, fellow teacher and moodler Mary Cooch (known also as @moodlefairy) mentioned how the staff at their school spend a couple of minutes of their weekly meetings talking about their use of Moodle in the classroom. I loved the idea and in the brief email exchange that followed hinted that I will try to use it here at our school too.

This afternoon, I had a cryptic staff meeting agenda item called ‘Share’.

When I got my turn to speak, I simply asked:

‘Could you please share ONE thing or strategy you have found Moodle useful for in your classroom.”

Silence. Tick, tock, tick, tock – 15 seconds.

Then it opened. What followed was just about the best 8 minutes of my three years at this school – 10 short stories, 10 people, 10 different uses, 10 different skill levels. Genuine, specific, relevant, encouraging … and more we haven’t heard because of the crammed agenda.

As I write this, an email popped into my inbox from a colleague Aaron. This is the last sentence from it:

“What took place in today’s staff meeting is exceptionally rare, so from one colleague to another, well done”

I find myself happy and sad at the same time.

Sad? Because, as Aaron says, it is exceptionally rare. Making such things standard practice won’t change a few staff meetings – it will change the profession we are in.

Can you teach me Moodle?

Thumb

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?