Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Moodle & Course Structure Ramblings

Moodle is not the most intuitive tool I have used but I'm finding that the "Using Moodle" book is a helpful resource. Quite a few years ago, about 5-10 teachers were using Blackboard however when the cost became prohibitive we tried a switch to Moodle. Our migration to Moodle was a disaster. This was several years ago and moodle was young and the support materials were not as prolific as they are now. Needless to say, we abandoned ship. I have used my own website to house course materials and resources for my students but this was a one way street- teacher to student. Last year, I used a wikispace to house course content and allow students to post and have discussions. However the wikispace also has it's limitations it is really not designed to be a course management system. I am hopeful that Moodle will provide the balance necessary to meet my students and my needs.

What is slowing me down right now, is that I am developing a new hybrid course and I haven't spent enough time on the course design itself to really determine how best to organize my moodle site. I'm not concerned about the technical aspects, I need to spend some significant time on the conceptual design.
My inital plan is:
  • Moodle-for the course content, nuts & bolts
  • A Class Ning similar to the link AnnMarie sent out on the Student Action News Ning- for publishing our work (Thinkg about calling it POW- Perspectives On Westwood)
  • Then I want each student to maintain a personal digital portfolio. I'm thinking about having each student maintain their own ning page, I think that would work better than their own blog or wiki... but I'm not sure.The goal is for each student to maintain their own portfolio of their videos with continual reflection on their work.

I have a lot of work ahead of me. If anyone has any insight or personal experience with digital portfolios I would be interested in hearing about your experiences, recommendations and pitfalls to look out for.
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2 comments:

  1. chemgirlHHSJuly 12, 2009 at 11:33 AM

    You are correct that if you do not have a vision of your course, putting together your moodle page is going to be challenging. Since you seem to be set with the technology it is just a matter of time and thinking before you are on you are on your way. I think the ningpage would be something good for your students. Let me know if you have any questions.

    You had asked me about the moodle "look and feel" at our face-to face session...*As for the formatting of the moodle page, I checked with Linda (our IT person) and the "look and feel" is something that she controls. She did mention working on it this summer, so there may be changes in place in the fall.

    Jen

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  2. Mrs. DlottAugust 3, 2009 at 6:48 PM

    How is your course going? When you posted this, you were contemplating using a Ning for portfolios. Would you use the social networking piece of a Ning? You have some wonderful ideas. I hope that you've been able to implement some of them. Please keep me posted.
    - Ann Marie

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