Starting the Second Online Moodle Course

Rather than begin a whole new blog, we'll add on to the short one we started in the winter/spring course. There is a great group of teachers enrolled - now let's hope Moodle lets them all join in on day one...

First Class

I, too, thought the first class was pretty much First Class. There was good energy in the room, with lots of sharing and helping each other. The forum posts and comments you did during class are, for the most part, excellent: thought-provoking, questioning, learning. Be sure to comment on someone else's post. Don't forget to post a discussion to the second forum in the blogging unit, as well as to create your blog and post your learning by Monday. There's lots to learn! And, as in anything, the more you put into this class, the more you will get out of it.

Have fun.

Off to a Good Start

The first class session - a face-to-face hour and a half - went exceptionally well. I had really expected more technical difficulty since it is the district's first shot at using Moodle. Things seem to change when you load up users, but this worked as well as when I'm in Moodle alone.

Everyone seemed to get the big concepts of working in the online environment. The first forum posts were mainly done within a short time before we left the room. And so far no emails about difficulties connecting or working in any way on the site. Let's hope that continues.

Spent some time today reconfiguring some things to make the Calendar block and the Gradebook more useful. There are hundreds of variables in the CMS so deciding what is best for any given class will take some time. My hope is that participants in this first class will bear with us as we discover things. More important, though, is that they enjoy learning about the 12 tools. As always if one of them sticks and becomes integrated in their work, super. In any event, working with new tools helps keep up with the pace of change in the tech world that our students are living in and that we need to recognize as an influence on their world view. We're in it, too.

And So We Begin.....

I also look forward to sharing our new model of professional development with Steve and our 21 participants. - an auspicious number for the 21st century and the skills to which we will introduce you. Remember that this is a work in progress; we value your input as the semester proceeds in order to discover what works and what needs tweaking. I can promise you that our time will be exciting and thought-provoking.

Starting Out

Tuesday, January 26 begins our first online professional development course using Moodle. It's our 12:21 class, with 21 participants enrolled. I hope to blog about its progress.