Where to Begin!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Cory Plough on August 1, 2008 at 11:05am

Nancy- Are you saying that you are moving f2f classes online? Will those online versions replace the f2f classes?
The first thing I would do is look into buying software solutions, a curriculum development specialist to build the courses, or purchase pre-made courses from somewhere like Aventa or FLVS rather than having teachers build it. One of the biggest problems with turning f2f teachers into online curriculum developers and teachers is that they tend to just move a traditional class online (which does not make the class anymore relevant for the student).

Plus, it takes a ton of time to build courses when teachers should really be focusing on student communication and individualizing instruction.

Another problem is that there is tremendous inconsistency when you have 10 teachers building 10 different courses and the result is 10 different environments the student has to figure out how to learn in.

Permalink Reply by Nancy Pratt on August 1, 2008 at 12:10pm

Hmmmm yes, that is what I was saying...and we will be using Moodle as the system. So I will research the pre-made courses as you suggest. Are they costly? and How do you make sure the content is accredited?

Your other points are very valid. I appreciate your info.

Permalink Reply by Beth Still on August 2, 2008 at 9:56am

Nancy,
I am so glad that you joined this group because I think many of the members will be able to answer your questions and help you out as you begin to make the transition to Moodle. I was far from a project manager, but I was in the loop as my school began to explore where it wanted to go with online learning. Even though I am far from an expert on the subject, I have gained valuable insight on what it is like to build a program from the ground up.

Over the last two years we have wrestled with all of the questions that you have asked. I will be glad to answer these questions from the perspective of a teacher. However, I strongly encourage others who are more qualified to share their insight.

The answers you are looking for depend on so many variables, but I will start by saying you are definitely headed in the right direction by starting with PD. I appreciated knowing what the long terms goals of my school were. It made PD more meaningful to me because I could see the purpose in it. I believe the most important thing you can do is keep your staff informed of what is going on.

Two things that have made our transition fairly smooth is that my school planned everything very carefully. They also kept the teachers (me) in the loop about what was going on. Teachers are much more receptive to shifts if they feel that they have been part of the decision making process. But you already know that!

Permalink Reply by Cory Plough on August 2, 2008 at 10:41am

I agree with Beth that Shared Leadership is really important in a school and especially a young program that is feeling its way through. The difficulties that you will encounter with online learning will be easier to deal with if you have several qualified people offering their insight into the vision of the program.

I would look specifically at Florida Virtual School to see what classes they have that you want and how affordable the license is. The MIT open courseware project has a lot of free material that you can easily implement into a course. Itunes U is great for podcasts and mobile learning. United Streaming has a lot of educational videos for every subject.

Permalink Reply by Beth Still on August 21, 2008 at 7:53pm

Nancy,
We are all anxious to hear how things are going at your school. Have you had a chance to talk to your teachers about Moodle?

Permalink Reply by Nancy Pratt on August 21, 2008 at 11:48pm

Hi Beth,
I have been thinking about you and how things are going. Yes, we are starting..I am having some technical difficulties-just some glitches that are pesky. I had my meeting with my Technology and Instruction team and launched our "administrative space" where we will conduct some business. They all seem interested. The principals were at that first meeting and I am hoping to spread out to them as well.

The counselors are ready to put their course together for the parents. They are using it for their outreach classes called "Second Step" and will invite parents there instead of having the face to face forums. They never got much attendence at the forums, so they are hoping busy parents can come to the moodle site and find what they need.

That's about where we are at so far, but I hope to use moodle for some Flat Classroom projects we have in the discussion fazes right now. We'll see.

How's it going with you guys?

Permalink Reply by Beth Still on September 17, 2008 at 9:17pm

I am so glad I waited to answer your question because if I had answered two weeks ago I would not have been so positive. Things got off to a rocky start mainly because of poor communication. There was a breakdown somewhere, but more about that in a personal email.

Here is what it boils down to.....We have some great classes and some great students. There are about 40 students in the online program (NEVA-Nebraska Educational Virtual Academy) this year. Many of them are NOT good candidates for online learning. Some were recruited for the month of September to bolster numbers. Some are on IEP's and need accommodations well beyond what we can provide. A handful of the students were students who were simply dumped into our program because the teachers were fed up with them and did not want them in their rooms. We will work with the clientele we have, but unfortunately it is not up to us to tell schools who they can send to us. The biggest problem was that we offered "credit recovery" classes. Our idea of what that entails is vastly different than what the schools had in mind. We expected most of the students who had failed to be average students who had failed because of attendance or health related issues. Quite a few of our students are reading well below grade level.

On the bright side I have seen an improvement in the quality of work submitted this week. Students are really starting to catch on to how things work. Simply learning how to navigate inside of Moodle is a challenge!

We are meeting with our state senators in a few weeks to discuss becoming part of an online learning pilot program for the state of Nebraska. We are getting a lot of attention, which is nice, but a little intimidating at the same time.

I will say something that I have heard over and over in this group. It takes a lot longer to prepare and teach online classes than it does to teach in a traditional setting. Simply using Moodle (or other LMS) to manage lessons is not the same thing as offering classes online to students who are offsite. It is necessary to keep on top of them and it takes time to do that............a LOT of time!

Let me know how you are doing.

Permalink Reply by Ann E Darling on September 19, 2008 at 8:13pm

Oh how true! I have been running myself ragged trying to keep the online things going and I have the luxury of being able to grab a student and sit down with them to work out whatever issues are preventing them from being successful with Moodle! When our only contact is confined to online the time required to maintain doubles in my mind. I am tempted many times to revert to face to face practices but I am encouraged by the quality of work my student do when they know they have to post it.

I will be very interested in hearing about the online pilot program, I do hope that the teachers are afforded the time necessary to manage the classes and are not overloaded (just in my district the debate about adding more computers to a lab to accomodate more students as opposed to keeping instructional numbers low rages.) I, being new to this do not have a good idea about research and best practice for student/ teacher ratios so this could be really thought provoking.

Ann Darling