2010-7
5

Moodle as the main school website, or not?

Category: ICT Education, Moodle | 5 Comments

Having worked with a number of schools now who have chosen to use Moodle as the main school website, without the need for any other site, I thought it worth sharing the pros and cons (from my own experience) in such a venture. This post has been prompted by email enquiries from a number of schools about exactly this subject.

BPS Website

The two schools in which I am employed, Buckingham Primary School and The Royal Latin School, have both been using Moodle as the main school website for a couple of years now.  Initially, at the Royal Latin School, we were tasked with creating a site that would allow teachers to update it with the latest news and information.  At this point, the school had a separate website and a Moodle based VLE.  After exploring a range of Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Joomla and Drupal, we decided to stick with Moodle and attempt to structure it to meet the needs of a website and a VLE.  After all, why have two separate systems, with two sets of logins and two times the administration, when one could do the trick? More »

2010-2
6

Moodle and Blogging

Category: Blogging and other blogging type things, ICT Education, Moodle | 2 Comments
My Zone screenshot

Blogging and MyZone

Moodle has an interesting, and little used by many institutions, blogging facility.  Although it is very limited in comparison to, for example, WordPress, it does have its uses, and I have seen learners in both primary and secondary schools take good advantage of it.

At Buckingham Primary school, we use the moodle blog as a basic introduction to blogging.  Writing has been a focus for the whole school for the last couple of years, and the initial idea behind using blogging was to inspire reluctant writers, particularly boys, to write more frequently.  Also, in pupil surveys (Moodle surveys, of course!) , pupils had indicated that they would like the opportunity to write about subjects of their choice more frequently, and to have a wider audience for their work.  Moodle’s blog facilitates these requests quite nicely!

Again, at Buckingham Primary School we have a prominent link on our VLE to the ‘My Moodle’ page (yourmoodleURL/my), and we call it ‘My Zone’.   ‘My Zone’ is configured so that Moodle’s blog menu, and blog tags, appear for every user on this page.   Although not quite i-Google, it is still quite a neat ‘home page’ for pupils.

The first steps with primary pupils and blogging is, of course, to consider blog safety.  We have setup a blogging Moodle course and it is the first thing that we introduce to pupils before entering the world of blogging.   I’ve backed up the course and made it available from this post.

Link to Moodle blogging course

Blogging course

Blogging course

What has actually transpired over the last few years with blogging with Moodle at Buckingham Primary School is that a core selection of pupils have regularly blogged about subjects that interest them.  New friendships, often between pupils from different year groups, have been established electronically.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t had the wide scale impact on writing that we hoped, but it has allowed pupils with an interest to explore new ways of communicating.  Use of the blog has also peaked around key points in the school year.  For example: we run a ‘Baftas’ moving making competition every World Book Day, and we encourage pupils to blog about their movie making experiences and thoughts; this is a busy time for the blog!

At The Royal Latin School, older pupils are using the blog in a very different way.   Currently, pupils don’t have access to an online portfolio or an online file storage area.  There is also currently no access for students to their school user area from home.  Students who have forgotten their memory sticks are in a bit of trouble if they want to access their work.    Many students ‘send an email to themselves’, but this has the problem of filling small mailboxes very quickly.  The solution that I encourage many students to use is to ‘blog’ work home.  Adding a blog post and attaching a file is very easy for students; the only thing I have to remind them is to make sure that they set the post so that only they can view it, as opposed to ‘The Whole World’!    This temporary measure works well for many students, and it is also a good backup, and it suffices until we get a proper online portfolio setup.

2009-7
7

Art Gallery Course for Moodle

Category: ICT Education, Moodle | 2 Comments
Art Gallery screen shot

Art Gallery screen shot

Following requests for support from several primary school teachers, I have put together a simple Moodle course that can be used as an online art gallery.  The course consists of forums for each year group, allowing pupils to post to their hearts’ content!  Each year group also has a slideshow already set up, hopefully making it easy for teachers to add photographs or scans of pupils’ work to the files area and subsequently to the slideshow.

This course is intended as  a ‘whole school’ course, capable of running alongside the school’s art curriculum.   I believe that one of the key motivational reasons for using a VLE/learning platform in primary schools is the audience that the VLE generates.   With this course, pupils get a chance to post their work for other pupils to view.  Establishing the ground rules of forum posting is very important with this kind of course.  We encourage children to be critical friends – posting positive praise.  If a criticism is to be made, it can only be added after two positives!

Three years ago, I put together a very similar course entitled ‘Poetry Page’, simply giving pupils an area to post their poetry.  It is still in active use today, despite not being directly used by teachers.  Many pupils love to share their work, be it poetry, stories, artwork, or music.  Many pupils aren’t confident enough to share but can learn so much from the efforts of other students.

Feel free to download the backup of the course.  Any ideas for improvements – please let me know!

Link to a backup of the Art Gallery course

2009-6
29

Getting to grips with VoiceThread

Category: ICT Education, Moodle | No Comments

Having seen quite a few people on Twitter referring to ‘Voicethread’, I thought that I’d have a little look and see what the fuss is all about.  One month later and I am hooked, and keen to share what Voicethread can do with colleagues that I work with in Primary and Secondary education.

http://voicethread.com

I’m now currently building a school tour using Voicethread, including inviting students from across the school to comment on videos and photos.  When finished, I will export a ‘finished’ version and have it on the front page of the school site!

Currently, I have subscribed to the ‘Class pack’, giving us one hundred accounts to use at The Royal Latin School.  I have sent an email to all members of the school community, inviting them to take part in adding a voice to the tour.  A small group of students have been wandering around school, filming different areas of interest using Creative Vado digital video cameras.  The clips have been added to our video Voicethread, with a view to all of the people who have applied for an account adding comments.  We also have a photos only based tour for students to comment upon.

Students can add text comments, record comments using a microphone, or they can use a webcam to record live footage.  Whilst recording, users can doodle on the screen, pointing out key features etc.  The response so far from students has been very positive, although most users have elected to post text comments rather than audio or video.

The tours will be used as part of our Year 7 induction process, hopefully giving new students a good idea of what school is like before they have even visited!  We have set up a Moodle induction course for the new year 7s, and Voicethread embeds nicely into a course.  We have had to adjust our filtering settings to get it running in school though.  Another slight problem is that students have been a little bit sloppy on the spelling and capital letters front; as the tour is a showcase for the school, it is important that students check their work, but this is easier said than done, as most are posting from home.

Voicethread can be used for free, although we have elected to subscribe so that we can make sure that our area is fully protected and only our students can post comments.

For the future, I would very much like to share the use of Voicethread across KS1, 2 and 3; it has so much potential for collaborative learning.

2009-5
25

Ofsted and VLEs

Category: ICT Education, Moodle | No Comments

Having endured two Ofsted inspections over the last 1/2 term, one at Buckingham Primary and one at the Royal Latin School, I am shocked at how little both teams have valued the online provision.  At Buckingham Primary, one of the teachers even had to explain to the lead inspector what a VLE is!  I am not making this up – the lead inspector did not know what a VLE was!  Both inspection teams were given an account to login and explore the provision, but neither team used the account at all.

At Buckingham Primary School, every child is given the chance to contribute to the school council via forums, polls and questionnaires.  Additionally, the council meets formally to decide the agenda for the online council.  However, the inspection team were concerned about the lack of any formal election of school council members - so much for ‘Every child matters’!  Why couldn’t the team celebrate the fact that every child has a voice?

The inspection at the Royal Latin School was a pilot for the new inspection regime; I anticipated that the team would, therefore, be very keen to find out how the online provision has impacted upon learning.   The lead inspector did come along to our ‘Oscars’ evening and an inspector visited one of my lessons, during which pupils were creating movies using Flash.  Was this celebrated (or even mentioned) in the final report?  Not at all.

At both schools, pupils from across the school use the VLE to supplement and enhance their learning.  Pupils collaborate in forums, teachers prepare online quizzes, and the VLE is used to generate an audience for pupils writing, artwork, movies, music and much more.  The impact on the school community is considerable.  Were Ofsted interested?  Barely.

Personally, I don’t think that schools will invest precious time and increasingly precious money on their online provision until there is a section of the SEF specifically looking at this area.  If this was to happen I am sure that currently reticent schools would have to improve their provision, ending with a more enriched curriculum for all!

2009-5
11

Hot Potatoes or Moodle quiz?

Category: ICT Education, Moodle | 1 Comment
Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes

I’ve just got back from a training session with a group of teachers who, generally, have been ‘reluctant’  Moodle users.  Despite being enthusiastic about ICT in general, they have taken some convincing that Moodle is worth spending the time on!  However, today I introduced using Hot Potatoes to create quizzes and crosswords and they loved it!  By the end of the session they had all created at least one quiz, some with images and hyperlinks, and uploaded the quiz to Moodle.  This brought real meaning to the gradebook and how it can be used to monitor pupil progress.

Simple, easy to use and quick – surely just what the teachers need?

Making quizzes in Moodle, on the other hand,  can be time consuming and confusing, especially for users who are new to working online.  Alright, the quizzes can be shared across course, but big deal, a Hot Potatoes quiz can have background images!  Hot Potatoes runs offline, with the quizzes being uploaded at a later date.  This is inconvenient in that software needs installing, but it does mean things run quickly and smoothly.  The crossword, cloze procedure and mix features are very useful too, the crossword in particular being popular with students.

In case it isn’t obvious, I currently believe that Hot Potatoes, combined with the excellent Content Generator Scorm compliant penalty shoot out for fun, is the ideal combination for teachers to make online quizzes for Moodle.

I do, however, keep an open mind.  I am keen to see what Moodle 2.0 upgrades are made to the quiz.  I’ve also explored using the Word template for making Moodle quizzes;  I think it’s good. but not as good as HP!

Hot Potatoes is available from:  http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

2009-5
6

RLS Oscars – a great night!

Category: ICT Education | No Comments
A great time had by all!

After working on making movies using a variety of applications for the last 1/2 term, The Royal Latin School last night celebrated in style with its own ‘Oscars’ ceremony.  The event was attended by well over two hundred excited parents and students.    We watched short extracts from films nominated for eight different categories.   The full version of the winning film for each category was then displayed, with students encouraged to make an acceptance speech!  Finally, the parents voted for the best overall movie using ‘Voting System’ handsets (ninety of them!) and the headteacher awarded the winning shield.

All films entered into the competition were posted onto the school’s moodle based website.