Student Book Discussion Ning vs. Moodle

Hello
I am facilitating an online book discussion between my school and a school in Texas. Moodle, the districts' technology of choice will not work for us as guests cannot comment. I have been asked to identify if there are any other OHIO schools who have used Ning for an online discussion. If you use some other medium or site, will you please share that and your experience with it.

Tags: book_discussion, moodle, ning, ohio, online

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Lawrence on January 4, 2011 at 10:21am

Nancy Bosch's reply above had some good insights into this. Last year, we had a big push in our district for Moodle. Teachers used the forum for discussions from k-12, and I did not hear any complaints. The only issue emerges is if you want to involve (outsiders -- including parents), we do not have accounts for anyone but our students. Otherwise, if you do some research about how to ask higher order thinking questions, and prep kids maybe with a rubric (see below) about how to comment effectively, Moodle seems to do the job.

Moodle commenting:

Possible Rubrics for Grading Student Comments in a Forum:

Needs Improvement: Comments seem to be completely out of place - unconnected to the topic. Little evidence suggests that the student thought deeply before commenting.

You're Getting There: While comments demonstrate some connection to the topic they demonstrate simple thinking. Reader is not convinced that the student thought deeply
before commenting.

Rock Solid: All comments are clearly connected to the topic. Comments demonstrate the the students
considered the text carefully and thought deeply before sharing with the
group.

Comment Master: All comments are clearly connected to the topic. Comments are challenging and interesting to the reader -
encouraging further study of the topic and / or selection.

Adapted from: http://digitallyspeaking.pbworks.com/f/Handout_DiigoSharedAnnotatio...