LMS: Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment

 Moodle es un entorno de aprendizaje desarrollado por el   Dr Martin Dougiamas como plataforma de aprendizaje escrita en PHP  de uso libre.  Al ser una una Free and open-source software (FOSS) permite el uso, copia, modificación de manera libre de la plataforma, existiendo una comunidad de desarrolladores.

El aula virtual en Moodle es parametrizable, según el sitio https://docs.moodle.org/ los administradores de la plataforma una vez  instalada, pueden proceder a subir los cursos uno por uno o en masa, Bulk, desde plantillas predeterminadas, desde el nombre de algún curso pre existente o  desde un archivo CSV con campos personalizados.

Moodle desde el punto de vista operativo permite

1.     Servir como gestor de una clase: Organización, cronogramas, tareas,etc.

2.     Blended learning Uso presencial durante una clase si los estudiantes tienen dispositivos

3.     Envío de tareas, exámenes, recursos

4.     Utilizar diferentes Plugins y conexión a  distintas aplicaciones

5.     Foros e intercambio de mensajes

Estas prestaciones académicas se pueden desarrollar en medio de la seguridad que otorga la plataforma al tener diversos tipos de usuarios con privilegios parametrizables desde Webmaster hasta visitante. Adicionalmente la plataforma no utiliza los datos de los usuarios con fines publicitarios y sus constantes actualizaciones  trabajan en parte en eliminar vulnerabilidades.

La plataforma al tener código abierto y tener grandes posibilidades de parametrización y agregar plugins es altamente flexible facilitando la integración con otras aplicaciones o utilizando los Web Servicies y API  como se detalla en https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Web_services_API .

Esta variedad de opciones de integración y uso de plugins permiten añadir elementos de variedad, esparcimiento y gestión mediante la gamificación del contenido.

 

Finalmente una característica especial es la posibilidad de generar interacción en cada grupo mediante foros o debates que Moodle.com describe como:

• Foro estándar para uso general
• Discusión simple simple
• Cada persona pública una discusión
• Foro de preguntas y respuestas
• Foro estándar que se muestra en un formato similar a un blog

En general Moodle es una plataforma poderosa, flexible desde la parametrización a la programación, presentando sin embargo el inconveniente de necesitar ser instalada en un sitio web.

Fuentes: Wikipedia, Moodle.com, www.inspiring.es, Moodle.org

Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web : The End. Week 10

This has been an incredible program, and I had the privilege to work with a great instructor as Robert Elliott, and meet great teachers from around the world,my course mates.

 I will miss the weekly stress, but chances are open to stay in contact with all trough the web. 

Regarding the program: 

In order to  help the  students to take advantage of technology, you must start setting clear objectives  for your activity or program, the  ABCD Model is a practical and accurate tool that describes:

The Audience, desired Behavior, Condition (Academic Context), and Degree (Accuracy and grading). 

Once you have the problem defined, you may plan your CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) program or activity, you may focus on one communicative skill: Listening, Speaking, Reading or Writing, and/or on any sub skill: Grammar, Pronunciation, and Vocabulary. 

It is very important, when possible, to include the activity as part of the course curriculum, this Integration will help you with your planning and with the overall goals achievement. 

Keep in mind, that resources available on the Web and the way to use them are thousands, but there are less available resources planned toward Speaking, due the fact that Speech Recognition systems are expensive.

When planning your activity or program, probably you will need an online environment to interact with the students, this is the Platform, it will allow you to interact and organize the students’ activities, we have explored tools like Nicenet, Googlesites, and ANVILL.

Using the technology as part of the learning process has a number of benefits:

• Help your students become autonomous learners, and be responsible of their language acquisition
• Change your class environment, motivating students and making it more appealing
• Approach different learner styles and different intelligences through different resources, tools and ways to use them
• Increase English practice, changing your six-sides classroom for the Web
• Carry out parallel projects to help students reduce their weaknesses in terms of communicative skills, so that the Web gives you extra time that is not available
• Sharing Rubrics at the beginning may help you to motivate the students and drive their behavior toward the desired performance
• Consider your students’ aim to learn English, how are they going to use it in the future? Technology may give a meaningful content to their practice, and according to your students’ profile a  PBL (Project Based Learning) program may help them for their future requirements
• Large classes? Use technology to help the students, and help yourself  managing the group
• Look for other teachers' experiences with CALL activities, there are Blogs, Sites, Facebook Pages, Groups, Twitters, where many colleagues share their experiences, and there is always the possibility to contact your class mates. 

Luis

Cluster Bombing Week 9

Week 9 has left a lot to apply to teaching English:

How Gardener has developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences, there are 9  intelligences  by now,  and no one is black or white in terms of fully belonging to a specific kind of intelligence or learner style.  

The idea or suggestion in the article: Technology and Multiple Intelligences, is that you may use a different technology to approach different learners/intelligences. Applying different technologies implies a second benefit, changes the learning environment, making it more effective; this environment is defined as background in the article: Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits, by Benedict Carey, and according to him, changing it helps you achieve your teaching or course goals as human brain relates the content with the background.

Finally, if you apply the different technologies in different moments but on the same topic, giving a break from one to another, you will help your students to benefit  of the process of “forgetting and learning”. Recalling the information after some days will help your students’ brain to retain it for a longer time. Cluster bombing comes to my mind, as you can apply different technologies to reach different intelligences, at different moments.

This week, was the deadline to present our Final Project Report, my project American Holidays, accomplished the objectives with the second group of students after failing with the first. The process finished with three Power Point presentations through Skype for a group of students of the CBA Sucre. We have the final week ahead, and is time to start processing all the huge amount of information, tools, and experiences we got in this course. 

Preparing the Project, doing the tasks, and reading was demanding, you could feel like under a bombing, but it is worth the experience and all knowledge acquired. 

Luis

Peer review and Nicenet week 8

Regarding  my project American Holidays, I started a second group:

1.       Registered 10 students

2.       7 students are participating actively

3.       I have created a Hand Out, and changed the instructions on the course site

4.       I send alerts , and try to keep in touch

5.       I think results and feedback will be on time to evaluate the project  for the final report to our  teacher Robert Elliot

This week I had the chance to read Said’s project, he is going to implement it on his school in Egypt, and I learned many things, also from his comments on my project:

•      Teachers commitment is not restricted to class hours
•      Technology can be used to help change teaching style, Said will try a major change on the logic of grammar-translation and exam focus strategy used now, toward a communicative approach
•     Said blended the course content of his class with the project,  that is something we learned with Robert, and  is turned from theory to practice
•      Said recommended me to do things on an easy way, so students can more easily engage in the activities, I will keep his advice in mind.

I also reviewed Angels work, in this case not a project but an activity on a school in Spain:

•     It is possible to combine English with other subjects, as Biology, using in this case a Webquest for children
•    Multiple intelligences approach is possible with technology: Graphs, Videos, drawing are examples of different approaches used by Angels
•     Angels, recommends to work closer with the Institution to ensure students access to the Internet, and it is implied also that internet access should be part of the planning.

Finally, this week we concentrated on the Projects, but we had some Readings.

 I found it very useful to receive instructions about Nicenet. Although we use it almost daily since the course started, I hadn’t explored it properly. This week I created a sample course site for Debates, with the idea of helping student improve their writing skills. This is the course key: E346908O50

Luis

Week 7. Reflections

We are about to finish these great course, as we keep on moving, I see that resources on the Web are almost infinite, so when reading my classmates experiences and projects,

 I discover always new ways to use the same technology, or a new technology to work with the same idea, problem or skill. This universe of options, limited by time, program textbooks, and/or mandatory procedures, can be accessed inside a six-side environment (classroom) with only one gate or computer, with specific activities, and sometimes with resources provided by the course text book.

Technology is a means for the teacher to help students become more independent or autonomous learners, leaving the six walls of the classroom students may explore and discover new ways to improve their English command, at their own pace and perhaps setting their objectives, but student’s motivation to learn a new language is the key element here, so as teachers the challenge is to wake that motivation or help students develop it.

I see a double challenge when teaching English as part of a career or program, thus, students are in your class because they have to, not because they want to.

In terms of our final project, I’m working with Said and Angels, we are already on the class Wiky, I will learn a lot of their experience as teachers through their projects. For more on this, visit the blog on Sunday 26!

Implementing the Final Project Week 6

This week we started running our projects for the E-Teacher Program, so it’s been very demanding.  During the week, I have:

• 
  
•           Defined the details of the American Holidays WebQuest
•         Created a Google Site to work with the group on the WebQuest and  instructions
•           Enrolled the students as long as this is not a project for one class but for a group of grantees of an English and Leadership Scholarship Program
•          Shared the resources and created a Reading Comprehension test with Google Drive- Forms

·         For the future, I would have an introductory session P2P before launching the project, as this is the first time students participate on an online program, some instructions are not being followed properly-

·         Balancing the students knowledge and English content of the program is a hard and important issue.

Working with Large Classes

One problem with large groups or classes, specially in language learning is that students don’t receive individual attention,  feedback and perhaps also an individual chance to practice, so we have learned that:

1.       The “old trick” of making groups is still useful

2.       The use of technology through online tests, videos, interactive presentations, helps the teacher save time in class, and students have the chance to practice and learn individually at their own pace

3.       Team or Group work in the class require a random selection of the groups to control their work, if possible all groups should participate in the control process

4.       If you have a large group, creating an application that saves students answers in the form of a spreadsheet, it will save you a lot of time of the correction process, and you may give individual feedback to the students. Using the results to drive the in-class  discussion is possible too.

5.       From my point of view, although technology helps the teacher to work with large groups Speaking is the skill that need special  attention, so the time saved using the web could be used in the class to practice Speaking