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Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you are having a wonderful day today. Today, we are going to be looking at a very specific learning management system, Moodle, and how you can use Moodle in your classroom for instruction. We're going to look at some of its features, its major their strengths, and some of the drawbacks. For today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by Benjamin Franklin which states "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." And that's what we're going to look at, one possible investment of knowledge.
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to describe the features of Moodle that you can use to help develop instruction in your own class. First, let's take a look at the basics of Moodle. First and foremost, what is it? Well, Moodle is a free open source learning management system. So as we discussed about the different types of learning management systems, this is one that was developed but is open and free for use by anyone who's interested in using it.
One of the great benefits is that teachers can really create their own private sites within Moodle, allowing for you to create something that you specifically can use to interact with your students in a particular class. You can create as many sites as you want, allowing you to create a different site for each course that you teach if that is what you are looking for. Or to create just one where all of your students can gain the basic information.
A wonderful thing about the way a Moodle works is that Moodle is organized around courses. There are various course pages where teachers can really help to present that learning information for that specific course and include different resources or activities that the students could participate in.
When you are a teacher of a Moodle course, there are three major elements that you can use to help address or connect with various elements of student learning. There are activities, there are resources, and then there are what are called blocks. And we will get into each three of those and break them down just a little bit more later.
Some of the features of Moodle include that courses can vary in size. So courses can be for one or two students. They can be for multiple students. And what's wonderful is that the number of different teachers can all use the same course. So if you are a new teacher and there is someone who has already been teaching a algebra class, and you are new to that, you can jump in on their Moodle and two teachers can help contribute to one, sort of easing the burden of keeping a learning management system going. There also can contain single lessons, or entire units, or entire years within one site. So that's really beneficial in that it's flexible for what each teacher will need.
Another wonderful thing is that students can self enroll or teachers can be responsible for enrolling students in theirs. So this makes the use of Moodle as opened or as closed as you the teacher need it to be. Another wonderful way that you can really customize it to your own needs.
Finally, some great features of Moodle are that its organization elements and its accessibility. Users are allocated different roles by the administrator. So you could either be the teacher or you could be considered a student. And then within that, that helps to organize the various resources and materials that each of those parties would get. Courses then can also be organized by the content area or by various categories, so that you can help keep all of the resources that you have included on your page easy to access for your students.
Finally, Moodle has wide accessibility. You can access it from a number of different devices, including mobile apps. And that really allows your students to engage with the material at a number of different ways and times helping to really encourage that active participation in education.
Now let's go ahead and take a look at those three major elements that Moodle offers in a little bit more detail. The first one we spoke about was called activities. This is a feature where students can learn collaboratively through different interactions with other students. This can happen in a couple of different ways. This can be seen through forums or in various assignments, through quizzes or different wikis.
For example, there are many different ways that students can come together and work with other students, thus allowing the technology not to isolate student learning, but really identify the individualized element of student learning, and then encouraging them to work with other individuals to create a group project based on their proficiency as well as their area of need.
Another wonderful thing about Moodle is that it really actively engages students through these activities. So this is where you are using a feature to help get kids actively involved and participating. Moodle has some of these activities, which are considered standard, but others can also be downloaded by the administrator. So it offers you a really wide variety.
The second main element that Moodle offers are what are called resources. This is an item that a teacher can add to Moodle to really help support student learning. This is where the learning can really get individualized based on each individual student and their learning needs. These can include things like files or videos or links to other websites, resources that these students can interact with to help advance their knowledge in particular areas.
This is more of a passively engaging the student, where content is open for students to read and study as opposed to activities where the students need to be an active participant in it. But just like those activities, there are standard resources and others that can be downloaded by the administrator, again ways that you can really customize these elements to your teaching needs.
Finally, Moodle offers something that's called a block. This is an item that the teacher can add either to the left hand side or to the right hand side of the course page to provide a little more extra information or links that the students can get to. When you're looking at the creation of a learning management system, you want to make sure that it is easily accessible for students. And these blocks help to keep Moodle looking a little more like the standard web pages that students encounter outside of their education, helping to keep them actively engaged and focused on information you want them to see right away as opposed to scrolling down.
These blocks can include usually typically our RSS news feeds, maybe quiz results or calendars, various terms or links to blogs that you want students to be watching. Sometimes you can include a countdown, other elements that really just kind of keep the student engaged and focused on what you want them to know each time they come to that website, kind of catch their attention right away. Finally, there are standard blocks that are built into the program. But just like the activities and the resources, there are others that are available based on what you as the administrator want to include.
Finally, I want to go ahead and take a look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of Moodle, some of their greatest advantages, and some disadvantages or challenges that come with using the program. First and foremost, a great thing about Moodle is that it is the most common learning management system. And as we've seen before, when something is commonly used, that means there are going to be a lot of different ways that you can get support for how to best use that system. There's also a great likelihood that you will encounter Moodle before other options when you go into perhaps a new teaching environment. So familiarity is a plus.
Also, it is widely used and accepted, meaning that if you would like to implement Moodle into your classroom, chances are that it's something that your district is going to be open to you using and help facilitate resources to make that possible. Finally, the great strength of Moodle is that it's customizable. Since it's open source, people can really get in and customize various elements to make it user friendly and really make it work for what it is you need to do in the classroom.
However some of these advantages also coincide with the weaknesses or the greatest challenges of using Moodle. It is challenging to set up an effective Moodle site. Because it's so customizable, that means there are many options. And if you're not well versed in that process, it can be difficult to get that site started. However once you have it, it can be very effective for you.
It also can be time consuming, not just to set it up but to continue to update it and use it again and again. Part of this is that it does require some coding knowledge. Without that coding knowledge, you can still have basic elements of a Moodle, but it's not going to be necessarily as customizable as if you know some of that coding. Given all of this information, I would highly encourage you to go to that learning management system and test it out.
Now that we've reached the end of the lesson, you are able to describe the features for Moodle that you can use to help develop instruction. Before we end, I would like to take just a moment for reflection. Now that you've completed the lesson on using Moodle for instruction, what do you think would be the first step you might take to begin implementing Moodle into your classroom teaching? Feel free to pause the video as you think about your answer to this question.
Now it's your turn to apply what you've learned in this video. The Additional Resources section will be super helpful. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. Each link includes a brief description, so that you can easily target the resources that you want. That's all we have for right now, but I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
(00:00-00:32) Intro
(00:33-00:42) Objectives
(00:43-04:21) The Basics of Moodle
(04:22-07:47) Three Major Elements of Moodle
(07:48-09:47) Strengths and Challenges
(09:48-09:55) Review
(09:56-10:41) Reflection
Using Moodle to differentiate instruction
This article explores how to use Moodle to differentiate instruction around student resources and activities. The list of ideas provides practical suggestions for teachers who use Moodle as their instructional platform. In fact, many of the suggestions can be used across a variety of LMS platforms.
http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/321
I Teach with Moodle
This is a very comprehensive site from a teacher's perspective on using Moodle for instruction. The "Moodle Teaching Ideas" section provides comprehensive strategies that teachers can use with Moodle in the classroom. The resources and ideas are up to date and relevant and include such topics as gamification with Moodle, using badges to engage and motivate, and more. Within each lesson for teachers are links to visuals and tools to help them implement the strategies in their Moodle environment. On the side of the site, there are links to other relevant issues related to Moodle, such as video tutorials for technology departments on setting up the server requirements.
http://www.iteachwithmoodle.com/category/moodle-teaching-ideas/