Moodle as a tool for Innovation

Hi everyone

I thought I could talk about moodle as a tool for an innovative teacher as well as a tool for a teacher to innovate. I’d like to look at how a learning management system like moodle figures into the 13 codes for pedagogical roles of teachers.

T1 – Explain or present information – moodle is used as a digital cupboard for useful readings, interesting videos, guiding presentations. In fact, information organization lends itself to automatic understanding on the part of the student, with little explanation required from the teacher on how information is organized. The teacher can focus on the content and on encouraging debates since moodle handles the task of presenting the information.

T2 – Give task instruction – in my class, the teacher sets a central weekly reading and discussion questions around that reading. Task instruction is very simple, straightforward and the teacher doesn’t spend very long on explaining the tasks to the students. Again, moodle seems to afford great convenience to a teacher in terms of managing the more administrative tasks related to teaching.

T3 – Monitor students’ task progression – because the discussion forums are so well set up and embedded inside moodle, students upload all of their individual as well as collaborative work onto moodle. The teacher can scan through the discussion forums to see that students are on the right track. Also, the use of bush graphs to show connections between student performance (grading is also possible on moodle) and student activity can help a teacher identify which students are doing badly and why.

T4 – Assess students – Moodle allows for peer assessment, so the burden for part of the grading can definitely (and personally I feel like it should) be delegated to the students. Using a standardized rating system, students can rate each others’ work. The teacher obviously still does the majority of the grading but this system makes students more conscious of each others’ work.

T5 – Provide learning support to students – Moodle allows for private dialogue between students and teachers so that students who are lagging can be supported separately from the rest of the class. In general also, constant monitoring of student responses to discussion questions allows the teacher to provide support to students who may not be doing as well as they should be.

T8 – Select ICT tools – Obviously moodle allows for a range for ICT apps that can be used in education. RSS feeds – subject related news from around the world on same page as course, videos, images, pdfs, charts, tables, links – everything in one space.

T9 – Support students’ inquiry process – Wikispaces on Moodle: students collaborate on drafting answers together. Discussion Forums: students ask each other questions to deepen their understanding. Glossary and definitions – students come up with definitions for words/phrases used in class.

T10 – Co teaching – Moodle allows for collaboration between teachers – same subject teaching (like Peter and Bob for instance). Both teachers can provide their inputs and make the experience generally richer for all students.

T11 – Support team building of students – Since moodle is available 24/7, students can work together outside of class, Forums like notice boards, discussions, chatrooms are meeting points for students and teachers. Especially the quieter students will often participate more in chatrooms than they would out loud.

Using Electronic Games in Classroom

(I will use T1-13 to indicate the 13 pedagogical rules in the following)

Electronic games(e-games, video games, online games) are always attractive to children. Especially these days, lots of portable devices are released, says, smartphone, tablets, etc. It lead to a rapid development to the electronics entertainment industry.

Though children/teenagers love electronic games so much, most parents and teachers usually do not like it. One main reason is that they think that e-games would distract children from study and make them be so isolated from the real world. Is it really true? The answer, of course, is No. In Hong Kong, there are certain schools do not be reluctant to e-games, instead, they provide e-games and encourage students to play the e-games. Teachers would ask students play the "RPG"(role-play game) provided by the schools network.(T5) The RPG may include several subjects, using MC, matching, pictures, etc to ask students to finish some "quests".(T1, T2) If students can accomplish those quests(T4), their avatars in the RPG will be level-up. So that students can have more accessories for their avatars. It encourages students to self-learn and teachers can also check students' progress.(T3)

In this kind of learning, teachers change their role from assessor to facilitator. In the past, teachers might encounter a problem that students did not have the motivation to learn or teachers could not find a better way to draw students' attention in the class. But with e-games students can be excited when playing games; they can also interact more with their classmates and teachers, as a result students can also gain social skills. Moreover, students can get information from different topics. Teachers can easily provide any content they want in the e-games. In such case, teachers do not the only one who teach students, but students also teach themselves from the games. It is a good example of self-learning.

There are some examples showing how electronic games(T5, T8, T11) are adopted in classroom and what teachers would do.

1. Nintendo DS Plays It's Part In The Classroom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-_7c1VOMT4

2. Schoolteacher Ananth Pai Brings Video Games to the Classroom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6KCgZY-7HU

3. Wii Fit Class of 30 doing hula hoops together in new PE class

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA6u5vCot_o

(T6, T7, T11, T13)

Further reading:

1. Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen (2009), moving learning games forward
2. Elaine Pearson and Chris Bailey (2007), Evaluating the potential of the Nintendo Wii to support disabled students in education
3. http://www.ted.com/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html (turn a $40 video game controller into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer)
4. http://www.kinecteducation.com/ (open-source community using Kinect, a motion sensor gaming device, in education)

Transformer QR code

Innovative Practice - Mobile learning

Posted by Kevin Tsang

In definition by MOBllearn., Mobile learning is: Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies. In the recent years, mobile phone becomes more and more popular and mobile technologies had been developed very fast. In Hong Kong, about 99% of people carried at least one mobile phone and about 70% of Hong Kong people have a smart phone that the mobile phone can access internet for multipurpose. Those users can use their mobile devises to interact with portable technologies and learning that reflects a focus on how society and its educational institutions can accommodate and support users. An advantages of mobile learning is that it is accessible anywhere, it can be collaborative and constructive, we can share a huge of information to others, teacher act their role as facilitator which can be give instant feedback and evaluation. Moreover, mobile learning can also provide learning materials in very small boxes that can be easier to create innovative practice in school, learning materials including text book, presentation materials, animation, simulation and internet search.

QR code

One innovative practice by using mobile learning is the application of QR code. QR is the abbreviated from Quick Response, which is similar to bar code but QR code is much more fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity.

One example of using QR code is an international school teacher which is teaching mathematic in Grade 7 students. The lesson is about cardinal direction, teacher prepare QR codes in somewhere of the campus, and ask students form a groups to finish the task. The task is like orientation, At the starting point, students have to scan the QR code by using mobile devices, some questions about Cardinal direction will be asked, if students answer correctly, next check point will shown. Students than have competition to see which group is faster.
I think this is very interesting for student and motivate them to learn.



There are two more innovative practice examples in youtube:

Using QR Codes in the Classroom

QR Codes: Applications in Education


MLearning can create new ideas of teacher to think more about teaching and learning and generate innovative practices.

New Collaboration Platform

We created a google site for our group project and discussion. Please take a look:
https://sites.google.com/site/icttransformers/home

Use the edit button (top right hand corner) to make changes.

Interacting with students through FB

FB is a new thing to myself, mind you but I really started 'actively FBing' for just a little bit more than one year. I never thought of FBing with my students, due to the privacy issues and well, students sometimes post things on FB that as a teacher you'd rather not see it.

This idea of FBing with students was actually suggested by the students of my class, they created an FB group for the class and invited me to join. I didn't want to reveal my 'real' FB account to them, so I registered a new one. The students also know that, but they didn't mind.

Since I am also teaching them science, I decided to occasionally upload some interesting pictures, videos and links to useful websites that may help them learn. The students welcomed what I did and I am also glad to see from their comments that the links added motivation to their learning.

Therefore starting from last month, I decided to make FB groups for the other subjects that I teach, compared to groups for class, less activities happen in pure groups for subjects. Students seem to prefer asking me questions through private messages instead of posting their questions in the group, if a question that is worth discussing came by, I will put the question into the group and invite for some discussion, however this usually doen't work very well and I eventually had to answer the question myself.

I think the FB idea changed my role as a teacher in the way that I became more accessible to the students, it also granted me a very convenient way to share resources with my students, which used to be quite tedious and even paper-costly before we had FB. Students are also more willing to ask questions because doing so in FB seems to be less threatening to them, compared to that you have to wait for the teacher outside the staff room.

In order to be able to utilize FB in a better way, I am thinking of using it as a formative assessment tool to several of my classes, I think the idea works somehow similar to what we are doing now in this MITE course, which is to ask students to post something related to their learning on FB regularly. Some self-assessment and peer-assessment tools can also be posted on FB so that the students can try making use of them out of the classroom setting.

NEW Blogging Platform

We created a google site for our group project and discussion. Please take a look:
https://sites.google.com/site/icttransformers/home