Moodle 4 Teachers ....

EVO 2012 said Good Bye a few days ago, but it left a lot of doors open. For me, this EVO is different from last year. I completed all the tasks required throughout the five weeks. I learned new things and tools, knew new people of the same interest, gained new experiences, and also corrected some viewpoints and ideas that I have. One of these wrong ideas is that Moodle is not free and I have to pay to install it on my computer. I started M4T EVO12 session a little bit late, but I managed to complete and catch up all the tasks and discussions.

To Join this Workshop:

• Click this link to go to the website hosted M4T 2012 EVO. 
  (Enrollment key: m4tevo)
• Please register for an account in our Moodle.
• Confirm your account by responding to the email we will send you.

Our Moderators:

Objective of M4T Session:

The objective of the M4T workshop is to provide participants, who have never used Moodle or who would like to enrich their previous Moodle experiences, with the knowledge and skills to navigate a Moodle course, access resources and activities from a student perspective, and practice the same resources and activities in the team and class sandboxes as teachers. 

Learning Outcomes of M4T Session:

• Develop a working knowledge of Moodle as a learning management system for fully online and blended learning environments (a combination of face-to-face and online learning)
• Learn to use Moodle features such as profile, discussion forums, assignments, chat, wiki, blog, choices, glossary, and WizIQ Class.
• Create content using Moodle activities and resources.
• Work collaboratively on a lesson with emphasis on group work, collaboration, communication, sharing, activities, and critical reflection.
• Create a lesson on Moodle.

Week 1 Completed Tasks:

• I took the Needs Assessment Survey, so the moderators can know more about me, why I participate and what I expect to gain from this workshop.
• I introduced myself on the Moodle Forum and on Voicethread. This gave me more opportunities to know more people around the world and deepen my relations with those whom I have already known from other EVO sessions.
• I loved the tool (VoiceThread) that was used to introduce ourselves. It is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too. 

 

• I took the Teacher Perspective Inventory (TIP) self-test and described my teaching style in the discussion forum. Really, I liked this inventory very much. It helps me to know more about the teaching style that I have. For me, I think that teachers should have all the five perspectives, but, of course with different degrees. We can take it many times after gaining new experiences and compare the results. I think that they will be different. I just want to say that we can have the five perspectives but not at the same time. I have taken this inventory twice, but the results are the same. I have the "Nurturing" perspective". For my surprise, I had the same sub-scores of Beliefs (B), Intention (I), and Actions (A). This means that my views with Nurturing Perspective are grounded equally in what I believe (Beliefs), what I intend to accomplish (Intention), and what educational actions I undertake in my teaching settings.
  
  
  Here are my results:
  
  First Time:
  Azhar Youssef ---  here are your TPI scores:
  
  14-JAN-12
  ----------------------
  Transmission total: (Tr) 33.00
  B=11; I=9; A=13
  Apprenticeship total: (Ap) 39.00
  B=9; I=15; A=15
  Developmental total: (Dv) 40.00
  B=13; I=13; A=14
  Nurturance total: (Nu) 44.00
  B=15; I=15; A=14
  Social Reform total: (SR) 35.00
  B=11; I=11; A=13
  ----------------------
  Beliefs total: (B) 59.00
  Intention total: (I) 63.00
  Action total: (A) 69.00
  ----------------------
  Mean: (M) 38.20
  Standard Deviation: (SD) 3.87
  HiT: (HiT) 42.00
  LoT: (LoT) 34.00
  ----------------------
  Overall Total: (T) 191.00
  
  
  Second Time:
  Azhar Youssef here are your TPI scores:
   
   14-JAN-12
  ----------------------
  Transmission total: (Tr) 37.00
  B=13; I=10; A=14
  Apprenticeship total: (Ap) 42.00
  B=12; I=15; A=15
  Developmental total: (Dv) 40.00
  B=15; I=11; A=14
  Nurturance total: (Nu) 44.00
  B=15; I=15; A=14
  Social Reform total: (SR) 41.00
  B=13; I=14; A=14
  ----------------------
  Beliefs total: (B) 68.00
  Intention total: (I) 65.00
  Action total: (A) 71.00
  ----------------------
  Mean: (M) 40.80
  Standard Deviation: (SD) 2.32
  HiT: (HiT) 43.00
  LoT: (LoT) 38.00
  ----------------------
  Overall Total: (T) 204.00 
  
  
  I think that Nurturing Perspective suits me to somewhat. According to this perspective, effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, not the head. I think that If I trust and believe in my students' abilities, this will give them a chance to learn more. However, these days I move towards another perspective that is "Social Reform". I try to link what students learn to what they have in their everyday lives because they will enter their practical lives soon. And I want them to have an effective role in their society. They can change thinking ways and this what they have done in their project "Welcome Back Egypt". They wanted to give a hand to their country after the revolution. They felt very proud that they made a difference in others' lives. One last word to say, I think that teaching perspectives are not static. They are changing all the time as a result to our professional development.

• I also explored the meaning of Moodle and why it was created. We were asked to study the provided resources or search the internet and then share our thoughts on Explore, Search, and Share: What is Moodle? forum. As I love learning through videos, I watched three videos and found a lot of interesting information:

What is Moodle? 

 

What can Moodle do for you?
  

How to Install Moodle?

 

 

• Definition:  Moodle is an open source, online, interactive teaching and learning environment. It allows both teachers and students to communicate in real time, upload and download materials and create interesting classroom environment without learning HTML or any other programming language.  

• What can Moodle do? You can use forums, wikis, blogs, online chatting .... etc. Really, Moodle is a very fantastic tool that suits all students' learning styles and provides multiple methods for learning the same material. Also, you can embed a lot of tools, e.g., vokis, videos, podcasts, quizzes ... etc. Your students can work collaboratively, vote and self or peer assess .... a lot of things you can do at the same place. 
•  Is it difficult to have Moodle on your computer? Of course not, it is so easy to install Moodle. You just need a Mini-Server (e.g., warmserver.com) and download the latest server. Then, you need to download Moodle from www.moodle.org.  
• I created a Glog including all what I found and inserted these videos with some comments. Really, Glogster is a very innovative tool where we can use it to summarize what we read using text, audio, images and videos. 

• What I liked most is the Support: Questions & Comments forum where we can ask questions, ask for help, add comments, and make suggestions. This forum helps me a lot during this workshop. 
  
  
  Week 1 provided us with the first guidelines to use Moodle in our classrooms. What is Moodle? and why was it created? were the main questions that needed answers and discussions. What I felt was that weeks keep surprises and more work ...