Thing 12: Social Learning & Learning Management Systems

      I have had a little experience with Edmodo, but not much. Like many of these systems, they seem better for secondary than elementary and better in affluent areas than in high-poverty, rural areas where many kids don’t have high-speed internet access. I had taken a short (2 hour) course in Moodle about 5 years ago when we first added Moodle in our district. At that point I had created a Moodle “course” for a project that one sixth-grade teacher was doing, but I haven’t maintained it and she hasn’t asked any more about it.
        I decided to revisit Moodle for this Cool Tools project. (I will be looking into Edmodo again as well). I like that Moodle is free, has always been free, and is on our server, so even if future versions go commercial, we should be able to use the current version for years. One of the difficulties that put me off of Moodle in the past was that each update seems significantly different from the previous. I know that the same capabilities have to be there, but they are not in the same place and I have to search them out. It takes a little time to find accurate documentation for the specific version that you have at that moment.
       I also find that the enrolling students feature is more difficult than it needs to be. They have to “sign in” to Moodle before they can be enrolled in a class. It makes using it in a school a little more difficult. There is a way to enroll with a CSV file, but I haven’t fully explored that. Still another problem is that the students do need an e-mail address, though since the Moodle software is housed locally, the e-mail addresses do not need to be accessible by the public (like say to use GoogleDocs). In our case only fifth grade and up has e-mail addresses at this point, though the tech guy is willing to add them for younger kids AND he will add in “generic” Moodle accounts which could also get around the e-mail requirement.
       Moodle is not as visually appealing as some of the other learning management systems. To my knowledge, there are not apps for it yet. However, they have added “badges” like Edmodo and it is fully featured so that you can add documents, links, tests, quizzes, videos, etc.
       So far I have started to create 2 different “classes” in Moodle. One is for my sixth graders. When students have lessons, therapies, doctor appointments, or other absences, they come to me to try to make up the work. It is problematic to schedule with all of my other lessons for all of the other grades. They don’t have recess per se and my schedule varies by the day. I have started to set up my predictable lessons for their big sixth-grade research project in Moodle. Next year, I will enroll all of the sixth graders in September and show all of the students how to use it during our first lesson. Then, they should be able to take responsibility for making up their missed work. Cross your fingers that it really works that way! Also, some sixth-graders seem to manage to lose every paper they are given before they make it out of the room. By posting all of my hand-outs on Moodle, I can tell them to find it and print it instead of taking my prep-time to do it.
         The other “class” I have created is for Professional Development. Jan Tunison gave a talk about how she used Edmodo for PD with her teachers. A fellow teacher and I created a professional learning group at school about technology. Every month the group meets to discuss different programs/sites/etc. We also talk about problems people are having with using technology. I had been sending out a Word document that gave the minutes of our meetings with detailed instructions for different things we covered. I realized that Moodle might be a good place to store that information so that staff members can access it whenever they need to. Assuming it seems to be working with our group, I will reach out the the principal about presenting the Moodle site at a faculty meeting and enrolling all staff as “students” in the Moodle course. Then they can look at it when they want or need to.
        I have spoken to a friend who is a second-grade teacher about it. I can really see Moodle being a possibility for many different things for a classroom teacher. (At least if the teacher expects to be in that grade for multiple years.) You could set up reading class centers through Moodle. First the students complete this assignment, then read this, then go play this game to reinforce a skill, then take this quiz, etc. Just like with my sixth-grade project, I think it is a great way to set up a research project. All of those timelines and other handouts can be online. You can even have older students use the forum to collaborate or comment on each other’s work.
         All in all, I think learning management systems can be a valuable tool. They take a while to set up, so they should be well thought out ahead of time.

Okay, Thing 11: Mapping & Geolocation Tools I had already seen the Google Maps new interface video once before. It is not very inspiring to me as I don't use Google Maps to find restaurants, etc. I tried to follow the interface tour, but I somehow messed it up somehow. I did learn that when you jump browsers, Google does not follow you! Handy info since they seem to be able to track everything. (Just a reminder to those of you who are not as paranoid about internet snooping, unclick the "Stay signed in" box so that you are only signed in to google when you want to be.) I also just learned to create my post in Word and then paste it into Blogger, because Blogger started saying it couldn’t save my post. (Not that I was ready to publish, yet!) That was something Jan Tunison recommended at her presentation on using Edmodo at NERIC Technology Awareness day. It seems like a good idea to maybe save everything that seems important that you have on a free website as a Word doc, too. I have also learned that Google Maps says that Internet Explorer does not support all of the cool new things in Google Maps. They recommend Chrome of course, but I didn't get that message in Firefox so it must support the new interface. My tech guy, Dave Holmes, is always trying to get me to use Firefox or Chrome, but Firefox is too annoying for school since I can only have it up on one computer at a time. What with budget cuts, I am usually signed on to both circ desk computers at once so I can work on one and go over to check out books, look up things for teachers, put books on hold, etc. on the other when I don’t have any help in the library. Okay, I went into Chrome to take the new interface tour. Not an impressive tour to me. As I play around, I noticed that while Google has taken unbelievable street view photos of my neighborhood, most of the photos at the town I work in are clearly not Google in origin. They are still shots, not 360. It makes sense that no one wants the school in too much detail, (you can only see the bus garage), but I am surprised about the main road. I looked into Photosphere. Interesting that there is something easier with Android that with iPhones. I went with the Android phone, but sometimes feel left out if I am not near other techies. Still, with my students so young and not supposed to be using cell phones at school, I don’t see much use for it in an academic sense. Also, it seems more just a fun thing to do than a really curriculum relevant thing at the elementary level. I could see the Jr high which at times has field tripped to local history sites adding info via Photosphere as a project. I did add my favorite vacation spot to the collaborative map labelled "Wendy's favorite vacation spot." Very inventive title, no? I checked out History Pin, What Was There, and Sepia Town. Sepia Town does not seem to have anything local. History Pin has more. To me it seems like What Was There is the best for our area. I don’t see real curricular connections, but it would make a great Scouting project. In the past, before Common Core and all of the standardized testing, I think that teachers would have felt like they had the time to use this as a local history project. I could see people going to the relatives, local museums, public libraries, historians, etc. to get a photo to scan, identify the location, and upload. That would be cool. The My Histro site seems especially good. We had tried timerime with our Professional Technology Group, but that doesn’t seem as focused as My Histro does. I will definitely mention this to Tech Group. Library Thing Local is interesting, but not much use for school. GeoGuessr is similarly just amusing. I think that some of the Shepard Software geography games are much more appropriate for school use. Free iPad apps might be cool IF we had any tablets in the school building whatsoever, but we don’t! The QR code ideas might be cool, but they aren’t appropriate for a school where the kids are not supposed to be using cell phones at school AND we don’t have any tablets. Finally, I did take a Lit Trip course in the spring. I have a curricular connection for it, but I haven’t gotten back to it. This reminds me to do it and I hope I can get myself to take the time. Well, if I hope I get faster at working through future Things and more succinct at posting about them. Final thoughts... How do I get Blogger to let me have line breaks in my posts? All of my paragraphs ran together!

Okay, time to get to work. I joined Cool Tools with the hope of being as inspired as I was when Polly taught the CDLC course that necessitated this blog. However, the November start with the Holiday crazies at school, at home and in the community was just not feasible for me. I hope to catch up between this weekend and next.