I've been experimenting with Moodle for about a year now, along with several other teachers at my school. I now have a reasonable amount of content for all my classes, especially seniors. It seems like a good time to evaluate my use of Moodle, and the student's response to it.Positives for me:
- Students like it! Although some teachers are still a bit anxious about using Moodle, even my most limited students have embraced it and seem to manage very well.
- Sometimes I just use it for students to submit work, instead of printing (they seldom have print credit). This enables me to mark their work anytime, and they love getting written feedback from me.
- Any work submitted by students can be opened, by them, at home. Parents can then also see their work, and my feedback.
- Having a student finish work at home, without being asked, and submitting it to me in the evening is awesome!
- I have been able to add some activities for different groups of students to continue with, while the rest of the class is working with me. I have used it for:
- students needing extension tasks: I have several extra units of work on my Year 10 course, to cater for different interests.
- students who cannot manage all exam work (mainstreamed students in particular). They have been added as a separate group, and check here daily to see what to do next. They then submit work to me (I get an email when new work is posted), and eagerly look for feedback the next day.
- Mixed level/ability classes. Senior classes are currently mixed level, with different levels of experience within that. Therefore they are all working at different rates, often on different units. All activities are added to Moodle, and all work submitted this way. I have also started to add extra help, such as embedded YouTube videos, and links to other sites. - PowerPoints that I use to teach the class are easily saved as a PDF and added to a Moodle course. This is great for students who have been away, or want to recap at home.
- Hot Potatoes quizzes are a great way to add starters for lessons, especially with a focus on vocabulary. I usually have students repeat the quizzes until they get 100% - they love to compete against each other. One wee year 9 lad who was often not engaged in class work at other times, loved this idea of getting 100% so much, he used a pen and paper to record answers as he got them correct so he could go back in and get them all right!
- The Save to Moodle add-in makes it much easier and quicker to add files to Moodle courses.
- Work smarter, not harder! Most of what I added last year is still good this year. More effort the first time BUT definitely a much easier year to follow!
Not so good:
- The administrative side still has a few hiccups, especially the links with Kamar. We're definitely getting there but it doesn't happen over night. I will persevere because I think it's worth the effort.
- I don't like the messaging feature, which we don't seem to be able to turn off for individual students/courses. It can be a bit of a pain in the wrong hands.
- Try forums
- Get even more interactive with content updated to reflect what we're doing right now.
- Investigate how other learning areas are using this, and hopefully we can inspire each other.
