Thursday, January 23, 2014

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.