[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index]

Re: [school-discuss] FOSS Professional development courses for teachers



Hi Richard
This is exciting.  I'm situated just across the border in South Australia, Mount Gambier.

I have a lot of experience with Moodle and suggest that the starting point for people is to explore the range of activities within it. 
http://moodle-tutorials.blogspot.com/
http://moodle.koolskoolonline.com/course/view.php?id=28

One of the key mistakes I made when starting to put my learning resources etc online was to engineer the course so that the students where interacting with a machine.  It is important to design activities to facilitate interaction and so good use of tools like forums is important.  ie create opportunities for interaction with peers and teachers.

Schools have become more complex with students taking on courses where they are in a workplace or have part time work and so it is often rare that all students are in class.  The great thing about asynchronous discussion is that students can pickup easily when they return.  There are also students who are reluctant to engage in discussion.  Mentoring them in a F2F discussion is almost impossible but with asynchronous discussion you can sit with them and coach them about their involvement.

My experience is that generally boys come onboard with online learning quicker than girls.  They invariably say very early in their experience that they really like it because they can work at their pace.  From a teacher perspective, 'pacing' the course is a challenge.  The Moodle logs indicate that their are some students accessing my moodle site at all hours of the day and night.  I have a few students submitting work when they are home sick, and at odd times like late on Friday night etc.

I guess I am saying that exposing teachers to Moodle's tools is one aspect of the training.  It is useful to embed this within an understanding of good elearning practice and theory.

As far as wiki space is concerned I make a lot of use of Wikispaces.  It is free, the UI is very easy and if, when you create your space you indicate that it is for K-12 education you get it advertisement free.  I think there is a limit of 2gig.  I have tried to use MediaWiki with teachers and the UI has been an obstacle for too many. 

Peter




On 13/02/2008, Richard Andrews <bbmaj7@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi all - first post.

I'm a member of a LUG in Melbourne, Australia (http://luv.asn.au) and there is
some volunteer support here for creating professional development short courses
for Australian teachers concentrating on FOSS applications and linux.

The aim is to initially present some of the killer value-for-money edu apps
like moodle and schooltool and build from there into courses on linux servers,
desktops and teaching about open source to students.

I'm wondering if schoolforge has any resources to help us; or any existing
projects with an overlap in this domain.

We're also looking for wiki hosting for gathering material, performing the
editorial process and fleshing out the course material.


--
  Rich




      Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address.
www.yahoo7.com.au/y7mail





--
Free and Open education for all

Peter Ruwoldt
Grant High School
Hosking Avenue
MOUNT GAMBIER  SA  5290

P. 08 87263128
F. 08 87250173

ruwoldtp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://ruwoldtp.googlepages.com/

The devil doesn't need an advocate. The brave need supporters, not critics.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/creativity.html

Please think about the environment before printing emails