First chat

I had to make a decision quickly when the Mass ran long and a short third hour was pared to ten minutes to review for a test the next day. Reschedule the class? Postpone the test? I decided to go over the most essential material in that time and to offer a review session that evening through chat on Moodle.

It's not a decision made lightly, although a couple of other teachers in our school have done this. I already have been questioned about whether I need to be as available to my students as I am through e-mail. But it seemed like special circumstances. I only had about three or four students take me up on the offer, but it's a good thing we straightened out confusion about the "blinding of Isaac!"

Tools for communication

A last-minute idea over the weekend. (Well, an idea I had in June but decided now to act upon.) A question to pose to some of my students, one that I wanted them to think about rather than answer spontaneously in class. A deadline. So I put the question on Moodle as an assignment, and e-mailed the classes about it. By this morning (Monday) I had received significant feedback, before I even set foot in the classroom.

Quite a difference from when we first started to incorporate "tecnology," and students balked at the idea of e-mailing an assignment to me.

More feedback

I did a Moodle survey about technology in my Justice and Peace class, where tech abounds, and I had a sense that at least some students were getting either frustrated or overwhelmed. And it's true, some were, although there were positive responses as well. The tipping point seemed to be when I assigned the final project to be done on Wikispaces. One more thing to learn! Diigo frustrated some also. In order to cut back on tech I announced that we could drop the blog we had been keeping. There was a bit of an uproar. "Not the blog!" It seems that some of the students liked that very much, writing what would have been assignments anyway in this medium where they could read what one another had written.

The blog has not entirely met expectations. I'm not sure how much they really read unless required. And I haven't pressed for a wider audience. But if some of my students see value in it, that will stay.

As for the final project, someone pleaded, "can't we just do PowerPoint?" I ended up making that concession, allowing for the alternative of PowerPoint plus a paper (because the PowerPoint, I have insisted, is not going to have a lot of text, so the information has to go somewhere for me to read it) instead of the wiki. Now, PowerPoint  -- that is something they are comfortable with.

Docs

The Catholic Theology research papers have been in for a while, and I am finally starting with grading. They take a while, because I check out sources and such, and make a fair number of comments.

But at least all this is fairly painless with Google Docs. The pairs have worked together on their 5-page plus paper, and I can check the revisions to see what form the collaboration has taken. I have editing privileges, so I can insert my comments while reading online. Right now I am using a template in Word for the actual grading, and I mail it to them when I am finished. But it is occurring to me now that perhaps that could be a Doc, too, shared for viewing but not editing.

I required a proper Works Cited section ("page" doesn't seem to work for this), because students still need practice with such things. URL's were not needed (supposedly MLA doesn't  require them anymore), but I did make hyperlinks a requirement for each citation. I love the way I have immediate access to the sites if needed. Of course, this only works for electronic sources, but our subscription to a database of published articles provided some good sources outside the Web.

There are probably tutorials online for some of the things I want students to know, such as making hyperlinks, but I have enjoyed doing a couple of quick and very specific-to-my-needs videos with Jing to reinforce what I show the girls in class, and those are always available to them on Moodle.

Here is another advantage to Docs. The teacher who used to assign this project would offer students the opportunity to revise their work after the first grading. After one try I decided against that policy. But at the same time, I was able to allow for a learning curve. When the papers were first in I didn't read them for content but I did look over them for things like format and following directions of the assignment. I wrote an e-mail to the class suggesting specific areas they might need to pay attention to.With the papers on Docs, students could easily go and revise before I actually got to the grading. For some of them, I will need to take off fewer points in the end, and they also had to go back and pay attention to (and learn) things like how the Works Cited is formatted. Win-win.

The lovely podcasts

A second semester go-around with this assignment. A little smoother, with some ideas for making it even better next time. Just now I was reviewing earlier posts on this and saw a comment from TeacherLady about using Moodle wikis with groups. I'll ponder that. I do like Moodle wiki groups, at least so far for in-class activities.

At one point I was feeling ready to throw in the towel and go back to the written form of the assignment. But I do like the recordings; I think they bring the content to life.

Speaking of Moodle, I'm using the "feedback" feature to do a quick survey about the assignment with my students.

The video

In JP, showed Dead Man Walking. For various reasons, had exactly three class periods to do it. 129 minute movie. Intense movie. I couldn't put it off until next week because the schedule is no better, with juniors taking a state exam and missing some classes. How am I going to show this movie and be able to process it with the girls?

With technology. I wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to do "backchannel" during the video, but I think it worked. Students who were unsure about things ("Doesn't she live in a convent?" "What happened to the other guy?"  "Why are they talking about slavery? When is this movie set?") could get answers on the spot. I didn't have to say much -- the students answered each other's questions.

They also began the discussion about the death penalty.

Then for the first two nights, I gave them discussion questions on Moodle. Some of the questions were inspired by questions or comments during the video.

So when, today, the last day, we finally had some time for face to face discussion, it did not feel like we were starting from scratch. We can get back to it next week, but much of the groundwork has already been laid. All in all, I call this a successful experiment, one I would repeat even when I am not so pressed for classroom time.

Doing Diigo again

I went over Diigo again for my current Catholic Theology class, because their first bookmarks are due Tuesday. "This is confusing," someone whined. A little effort, please. All they need to do is come to me for help. It's not that hard! In the meantime, one student was already well underway with her research when the assignment was on Moodle but I hadn't met with them to announce it. So, here we go again!

Paperlessness

The writer of a blog called TeachPaperless is promoting a campaign to get teachers to sign up to not use paper on Earth Day. I haven't committed. But the fact is, I'm using much less paper than I did only a couple of years ago. Things I used to hand out I now put on Moodle as PDF's. With the Moodle version of Reader, students can't write on the page (we have tablets), but they can easily transfer to Word or OneNote and do so (as a freshman taught me). I also have the option of projecting things to a screen.

There are a couple of things that I have had students hand in on paper still, but most work goes through Moodle, or now, on a blog.

Tests are still on paper (though I've done some Moodle quizzes). But I am fairly close to... paperless. Well, time to go back to grading some online essays.

Angels on Moodle

Okay, have a couple of links to articles on angels posted to Moodle, that expand a little on what we discussed. And, started a forum: one question about angels and another about "church," the topic of the chapter we are on. I'm not assigning it for now. I want to see if students will make use of it anyway, just because they want to share opinions. I don't expect that, really, based on past experience, but they looked interested when I introduced it.

Too bad we're doing a hardware upgrade this weekend and the site is inaccessible until at least this afternoon.

Moodle madness

Oh, what a tangled web we weave... when we try to do everything on Moodle. Moodle is good, don't get me wrong; I use it extensively. But I have an assignment where each student records a podcast, and two other students listen and evaluate according to a rubric, as well as do some summarizing. The original assignment gets points, and the listening gets points. I had the girls submit their evaluations on Moodle. Some are Word documents, some PDF's because they could not open the Word version. Now I can't get some to open for me, AND, I can't figure out a good way to get each student's evaluations (submitted through two other students) back to her.

I believe I will have to give up "paperless" for this one.

The 10 point quiz

I gave my second ever Moodle quiz ever today, to a group of frosh. It was better than the last one because every single student was able to log in and take the quiz. The quizzes are already graded and the students found out immediately how they did and which ones they got wrong. Lovely!

It was matching, which is no where near as cumbersome to set up as the multiple choice. The only deal -- there were 14 questions, and I had intended a 14 point quiz. But Moodle decided it's a 10 point quiz and converted the scores accordingly.