How can moodle help teacher educators?
This is a report on work in progress – a teacher education site using moodle.
Moodle is a popular Learner Management System (LMS), a website that offers a range of tools for learning purposes. The main ones are:
* presentation of content in a variety of media
* tracking systems to see what learners have done and when
* means of communication between learners to share ideas
If you want a more detailed background, go to moodle.org. A search for ‘moodle’ at DEOS-L - The Distance Education Online Symposium will reveal a high level of interest in using moodle as a learning tool in distance education. Also, Moodle buzz reports on recent moodle projects.
Articles
I've written a couple of articles on using moodle for teaching:
An article ‘In the mood for moodle?’ written for ETP magazine is available via my webdesign which provides more background on moodle and gives examples of how it can be used with language learners.
On pages 23-25 of the IH Journal there is an article Moodle for CELTA - yes it does work!
Why moodle?
Moodle has much in common with Blackboard and WebCT with a few important exceptions. It is:
* free
* open-source
* built on social constructivist theories
Free and open-source
There are nearly 50,000 registered sites using moodle worldwide. The fact that it’s open-source means that users are free to customise it much more than is possible with moodle’s commercial siblings. If you decide to set up a moodle site yourself, there’s a thriving community of users willing to offer help in the many active help forums at moodle.org. There are even organisations that will install the program for you.
Social constructivist theories
A danger with current e-learning tools is that they may be methodologically regressive, imposing a top-down approach often based on a transmission idea of teaching. A social constructivist approach to e-learning (the use of technology to enable learning) promotes learning through interaction with the materials and with other users. It maintains that “people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment.”
Moodle tries to give users control of their learning environment: of what they learn and how they learn it. It is possible to set up a moodle site so that users can choose how they learn, are prompted to interact with the learning materials and other learners, and can even customise the layout of the site on their computers. A recent Guardian article reflects how successful this is making moodle in UK secondary schools:
Moodle for teacher educators
Fascinated by the potential of moodle I started piloting this site in September 2005. I have since been involved in setting up sites for various language schools and training organisations.
The site allows the creation of virtual courses and repositories of useful documents. The ‘courses’ can be password-protected . Feel free to take a look at one of the courses yourself. This is the url of the ICT for EFL course area. If you are accessing the course for the first time, you will need to enter as a guest or you can create a new account for yourself, which will enable you to participate in forums.
Here are some of the ways moodle is being or could be used on teacher education courses.
This is a report on work in progress – a teacher education site using moodle.
Moodle is a popular Learner Management System (LMS), a website that offers a range of tools for learning purposes. The main ones are:
* presentation of content in a variety of media
* tracking systems to see what learners have done and when
* means of communication between learners to share ideas
If you want a more detailed background, go to moodle.org. A search for ‘moodle’ at DEOS-L - The Distance Education Online Symposium will reveal a high level of interest in using moodle as a learning tool in distance education. Also, Moodle buzz reports on recent moodle projects.
Articles
I've written a couple of articles on using moodle for teaching:
An article ‘In the mood for moodle?’ written for ETP magazine is available via my webdesign which provides more background on moodle and gives examples of how it can be used with language learners.
On pages 23-25 of the IH Journal there is an article Moodle for CELTA - yes it does work!
Why moodle?
Moodle has much in common with Blackboard and WebCT with a few important exceptions. It is:
* free
* open-source
* built on social constructivist theories
Free and open-source
There are nearly 50,000 registered sites using moodle worldwide. The fact that it’s open-source means that users are free to customise it much more than is possible with moodle’s commercial siblings. If you decide to set up a moodle site yourself, there’s a thriving community of users willing to offer help in the many active help forums at moodle.org. There are even organisations that will install the program for you.
Social constructivist theories
A danger with current e-learning tools is that they may be methodologically regressive, imposing a top-down approach often based on a transmission idea of teaching. A social constructivist approach to e-learning (the use of technology to enable learning) promotes learning through interaction with the materials and with other users. It maintains that “people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment.”
Moodle tries to give users control of their learning environment: of what they learn and how they learn it. It is possible to set up a moodle site so that users can choose how they learn, are prompted to interact with the learning materials and other learners, and can even customise the layout of the site on their computers. A recent Guardian article reflects how successful this is making moodle in UK secondary schools:
Moodle for teacher educators
Fascinated by the potential of moodle I started piloting this site in September 2005. I have since been involved in setting up sites for various language schools and training organisations.
The site allows the creation of virtual courses and repositories of useful documents. The ‘courses’ can be password-protected . Feel free to take a look at one of the courses yourself. This is the url of the ICT for EFL course area. If you are accessing the course for the first time, you will need to enter as a guest or you can create a new account for yourself, which will enable you to participate in forums.
Here are some of the ways moodle is being or could be used on teacher education courses.
- Providing information
- Notices , important documents (assignments, timetables)
- Background information on all users in the `profiles' section. This information includes details of personal websites, work interests and a photo or other icon to make users instantly recognisable. Click on a participant’s name to get to their profile.
- A Calendar of events – course assignment deadlines, talks, conferences etc.
- A Database of useful websites which users can add to, leave comments on, users can search by keyword, by author or category. Search results can be presented in printable format. See for an example. Please add your favourite EFL websites! Other uses for these databases are glossaries of key ELT terms or of useful ELT books; buddy schemes to partner teachers: ; and for CELTA teacher trainers, a repository of useful materials: This repository will allow you to post and download anything you would like to share with other CELTA centres – timetables, useful INPUT sessions, lesson plans etc.
- RSS feeds of education news sites. RSS - Really Simple Sindication - is a way of syndicating content from one website to another. It's used for news, and weblogs, but also for any site that has frequent changes of content. The moodle site currently gets regular updates from BBC education, tefl.com and the Guardian Education pages.
- SCORMS (these are portable presentations - imagine html webpages turned into pdfs)
- Podcasts of audio or video training materials. Podcasting is a relatively new technology that allows organisations and individuals to deliver multimedia content to an audience on a regular basis with little or no effort on the part of a user. The user simply subscribes to a Podcast feed and the content is downloaded to the user’s computer when a new Podcast episode/program is available. This Podcast can then be played in a computer media player of the user’s choice, such as iTunes, or synchronised with the users portable music player, such as an iPod. This means that the user does not have to go and look for information and is not tied into accessing media at specified times. I’ve included a podcast player on the site: .
- Demonstrations of materials via video or audio files.
- Presentations using a presentation module like a cut-down powerpoint.
- Stimulating discussion
- WIFIs . These are webpages which are editable by all enrolled users
Last modified: Tuesday, 27 January 2009, 08:51 AM
