Week 8

A quick status report:


I have been working on Moodle setting up the class. It is quite a process to set up the class. You have to register for the Moodle account and begin to set your class sessions up. You have total control on what you want to include and I am still trying to figure out all of the ins and outs. Moodle allows you to use Hot Potatoes to set up quizzes. If you have not checked out Hot Potatoes, it is a free program that allows you to create quizzes that can be multiple choice, matching or a variety of them. Once you set up the quiz, you can save it as a webpage that keeps track of the score.

Registering students for Moodle is a chore. You have to sign up for a log on at the Moodle site. I am using k12hsn.org that is for teachers to set up the account. It is through the state. You register and they send you an email that you have to confirm. You then give the students the enrollment code to join your class. I was hoping it was easier but no luck. My son’s school has moodle on their server so they must have been able to register the students on their end and all the students needed are the enrollment code.

Ok now to this week’s post

As I set up my project I am looking at having it set up for my classes that start after Thanksgiving. I have been working on the pages and will beta test it with my students this trimester. I know that I was able to log onto Moodle through my account but am curious how it will work on the student’s end with the firewalls from the district. This week I will be having both of my kids test the program at home as well as a student account that I created. I have linked to videos on Youtube but the district blocks it so I was hoping to download the movies using Youtube downloader but it says that the program cannot find flash movies. I may need to use CamStudio to record the movies off of the screen and save them and upload them. I know I can use Teachertube at school so I am searching for videos on there.

I am currently working on the content and will use web pages and podcasts to share some of the information. I will use Audacity to create the podcasts and will create the videos on Camstudio with the narration as we go and place the video clips into Movie Maker with text. Moodle allows you to embed video into the web page so I am interested in including it on the page.

I will be using Hot Potato for the quizzes because I have the quizzes that I have created before that can be included. I will also be using web pages, videos, podcasts and chats and blogs. I also set up a discussion forum for the class. I will be the first to admit that I still have to learn more about Moodle.

I am planning to use Moodle for my class for the first two weeks of my class for the trimester. The online class is set up to go with the curriculum. After I beta test Moodle with my classes for two weeks I will modify the lessons to make it better and introduce it to other teachers at my campus. We are operating on a shoe string budget so I am trying to make sure that I am using free software. Audacity, Camstudio, Hot Potato and Movie Maker are installed on my computer and I signed up for a free Moodle account on k12hsn.org. As I set up the curriculum for the class, I want to keep the costs to free or a minimum because of my budget and how long it takes to purchase new software.

I will be testing the class on my wireless network at home with different speed computers and Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari to see if it affect the appearance. My class has a faster network that is hardwired on the network so I shouldn’t have a problem. My concern is that Moodle could be blocked on the network so all of this could be for naught.

To test media fidelity, I will test the different media on different computers here at home. I have a wireless network and wired network that I have access to. I have 4 laptops on a wireless network and 2 computers on a Fios network. I am also going to test the Moodle pages on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

To test instructional quality, I am going to review all of the directions myself before having my kids test the directions. I will have my students test the directions when I have students log in after Thanksgiving. I will be having the different testers look at the directions and let me know if anything needs to be changed.

I am not sure how I could change my project if I was going for a wider audience. Currently most of my class is on web pages on the network at school. I don’t see the reason to change the web pages to Moodle because they are already on the network and don’t require use of Moodle. After I create and test my class, I know there are a few teachers that are interested in using Moodle in their classes so I would help them set up their classes and test it with them.