Building a Moodle course site was just the type of activity and motivation I’ve been looking for, for many different reasons. First of all, I’ve been interested in Moodle since around February of 2010. I went as far as installing a Moodle site on my hosted domain and tried playing with it. Other than creating a couple of course titles and inserting a forum activity, I did not get very far.
I think one of the most important features in an LMS is to help enable communication. Learning is a social and cultural experience, and many people learn best through interaction with other people. I think it is relatively rare that a student optimally self-learns through books or other static media. This applies more to younger students than older or mature students. With this in mind, I was quite interested to learn about synchronous and asynchronous communication abilities for LMS.
As part of my development plan to engage and enhance student learning in the math and sciences, I would like to implement an online Learning Management System (LMS) to integrate with the subjects that I am teaching. The purpose of using an LMS is to achieve three primary goals. First, I would like to increase the frequency of on-topic course discussions, both student to student and student to teacher. Secondly, I plan on delivering lessons integrated with multimedia, and third, I will be incorporating some engaging Assessment for Learning techniques through the use of the LMS.
If you’re like me and interested in using math notation in Moodle, I believe you have 2 options. The first option is to use the TeX filter that is in Moodle. This is a LaTeX type editor. To enable, go to site administration -> plugins -> filters TeX in Moodle: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_TeX_Notation And more notation info: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_TeX_Notation_2
The big problem with TeX in my mind is that it is a bit awkward to use.
For my digital story I decided to use the web2.0 tool xtranormal. The context for this story is a type of introduction/overview on nuclear energy. It could be used in a Physics 11 class as part of a unit on nuclear energy. Have a look:
This story could be used to feed into a research/critical analysis project on the pros/cons of nuclear power. Alternatively, it could be used as the beginnings for a debate on nuclear power.
My Digital Story is the story of nuclear energy in the 21st Century. It would be used as an introduction to a unit on Nuclear Energy in Physics 11, as part of the required curriculum in British Columbia. An even better use of the digital story would be mid-unit, used as hook prior to assigning a critical research paper on the pros and cons of nuclear energy.
The pedagogical rationale behind is encompassed by the nature of the dialogue.
I’m always interested in ways that technology can be expanded, and one of the big areas for all types of tech is the expansion of mobile computing; therefore, I set out to see what options are available for a mobile Moodle.
A few google searches didn’t reveal a lot. There seemed to be a couple of apps that were aimed at making a mobile moodle solution but it wasn’t clear as to the maturity of these solutions of if they were even being actively developed.
This week in ETEC 565 our class did an activity where we were to collaborate on a wiki entry. The topic was geared in using social media for learning and collaborating, with an eye towards identifying key challenges and strategies when dealing with social media.
This was the first time that I have ever participated in using a Wiki, so the whole setting and editing environment was a bit strange. Furthermore, it became clear that the unwritten rules of how a person navigates and collaborates within a Wiki were also very foreign to me.
