Tag Archives: forum

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!

Giving all students a voice – Moodle forum

flyAfter an amazingly insight-rich, highly enjoyable and very well-received online forum across four senior classes at our school on the theme ‘What would you improve at our school?” this week, I simply had to put in a big plug for forums in Moodle. I write this as a combination of teaching and tech tips and strategies for using forums in Moodle. Most of all, I write this with my students, their voice and their learning in mind.

Like many teachers, I often run class discussion. A problem or a question is presented with individuals invited to call out with answers. Sometimes students are in groups for all or part of the discussion with more than one topic to discuss.

What I have ideally wanted is for each student to contribute in some way to either the group or class discussion. In reality, I often get a few regular contributors to call out with some quality answers, a few attention seekers with not such high quality answers and the rest of the class likely to switch off.

Continue reading Giving all students a voice – Moodle forum