Stephen's Untold Stories

Yet another university starting to use Moodle. I wish mine would follow suit.

The University is in the process of transferring to Moodle, a user-friendly Learning Management System (LMS) which allows students more interaction between each other and the professor.

Four thousand institutions are using Moodle. The Moodle Pilot team has examined how other universities have made the switch to the system.

“UNC Charlotte and Asheville have switched over, and other UNC schools are also considering making the move,” Dulberg said.

The entire system won’t change until summer 2011, when Vista will completely cease to exist. Three semesters will be given for the changeover, encompassing spring 2010, fall 2010 and spring 2011. If a new course is developed during this time frame, it will be done through Moodle.

The plan is to first migrate Vista users onto Moodle for one-and-a-half years while maintaining WolfWare. The initial goal is to have WolfWare powered by Moodle Beta for production-level usage by January 2010. WolfWare users will be migrated when file management tools, and other WolfWare tools not currently in Moodle, are implemented into Moodle.

Read the rest here.

Looks like it is working for them.

NCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — While looking over a computer screen, checking through the online thread posts of her middle school science students, Megan Sjoberg said technology will never take the place of teaching.

It can help, though.

Sjoberg and fellow teachers at the Lake Tahoe School are wrapping up their first year of using the open source, online Moodle software as a teaching tool.

“It’s an interesting tool with a lot of possibilities,” Sjoberg said. “We can use it for posting assignments, because despite our best efforts to get the kids to use planners, they tend to forget. With Moodle, they and their parents can look at an assignment at home and get it done.”

The program allows for a host of uses — grading for math teachers, open forums for science students and foreign languages aids for parents to help their children study — in a free, online environment. It can be viewed at moodle.org.

Sjoberg, for example, requires her students to look up, summarize and respond to current events articles through one of the software’s many tools.

The software is useful in cutting out the middle man — in this case a forgetful middle school student who can’t remember all the details of an assignment.

Headmaster Steve McKibben is enthusiastic about Moodle — software typically found on a host of college campuses, including Incline’s Sierra Nevada College — and its uses for K-8 education.

“It’s a revolutionary pedagogical tool,” McKibben said. “It’s a way to continue the educational process with our students outside of the classroom. Instead of wasting valuable class time with students taking vocab quizzes, they can take those online and we can spend time in class with that face-to-face interaction.”

McKibben said the software — which is accessible to teachers, students and a test group of parents through a login and password — helps teachers to tailor curriculum to individual students, allowing them different ways to learn the same material.

“There’s no one-size fits all, and that goes for the teachers as well,” McKibben said.

Read the rest here!

I even like the name of this service.They also have an interesting philosophy about sharing your material.

e-Socrates.org aims to create the best free Moodle hosting service for everyone who wants to do e-learning activities. If you want to create a course, login or create a new account and fill a course request, you’ll have the full moodle power in your hands, without restrictions of any kind! You’ll also be able track your students subscriptions setting a password for the course enrolment.

When you create a course within e-Socrates you always allow website visitors the right to read your contents, you can prevent them from subscribing as students but you can’t prevent them from accessing the material. This is the only “fee” we ask teachers in change of the free hosting service.

e-Socrates

Thanks to Andy Carvin for pointing out this article.

If K–12 follows the pattern of enrollment growth in higher education, it is quite possible that online learning will emerge as a substantial component in K–12 schools, especially at the secondary level. In examining this potential, small rural schools may be providing important experiences for school districts in other localities, especially those that are facing severe teacher shortages. It is also possible that the blended model may prove to be attractive to K–12 schools, especially those that are struggling with issues of online learning quality, student readiness, and teacher professional development. Finally, online learning is not one thing but comes in various shapes and sizes.

I have been involved with both the Georgia Virtual School and also in the creation of online training modules for teachers for the new Georgia Performance Standards. Online learning continues to evolve, and it will only become more prevalent.

UCLA has announced that it will begin using Moodle as its online learning platform. I hope this means that more major universities will follow suit, as I think that Moodle is a great piece of software.

I started working with Moodle back in August, and our center has developed online version of the Georgia Performance Standards training for teachers.  If you work for a school district, these online courses are free for you to use to train your staff. You can preview some of the courses by using the “Login as Guest” option if you will go to http://moodle.ksuettc.org

     
If you are an educator in Georgia, then I’m sure you are familiar with the Georgia Performance Standards (GPS). If you aren’t, the GPS are our new curriculum standards that are in the process of being implemented in our state.

As Georgia educators are trained on the new standards, the place I work has been putting this very important training online. We started using Moodle as our online portal for the training this fall, and it has been a big success.

If you are a Georgia educator and you are interested in this training, then head over to our Moodle Server. Even if you aren’t, you can still take a look. The Social Studies 6-12 Original course is open for guest access.

As promised, here is my Moodle podcast. Keep in mind I’m still refining my podcasting skills, so bear with me!

UPDATE…I’ve decided to re-record the podcast as I wasn’t happy with the quality. I’ll repost it in the next couple of days.

Here is the updated version!

Thanks!
Stephen

The last few days have been pretty exciting. Our department is switching to Moodle for some online professional development that we have been creating, and I had the task of purchasing hosting and setting up the Moodle environment on the server. I’m planning a podcast that will cover the highlights of the process, but I will extend a big thanks to Richard Kassissieh of the Kassblog for his Moodle advice.

Look for my Moodle podcast sometime early next week!