Exploring Moodle (Week 1)

Week ones overview was to become acquainted with the Moodle webpage. I have used Moodle in previous classes so I am somewhat familiar with the layout. However this is my first online course so I am excited but I am also nervous. We had to explore the different sections of the page: Learning Online Netiquette, Computers, Internet, WWW, About Copyright, Fair Use, & Plagiarism, Tutorials for PPT Design, Video Tutorials and Blogging: First Steps.
Here are some things that I found very useful:
I enjoyed the article Active Learning by Leslie Hendrikson. The website Active Learning by Leslie Hendrikson discusses active learning in the classroom particularly in social studies classes. Active learning is seen in mock trials were students engage in role playing and take on the roles of characters in a court case, set up a mock trial courtroom and guide their own trial. As a student in the classroom, I tend to be very quiet. I listen and pay attention in class however I do not participate in class discussion unless I am called on by the teacher. Most likely in classes there are the students who like to talk and they tend to lead class discussions. I can recall one of my favorite social studies classes in high school was economics because as a class we made our own economy. I decided to open a bank and I was in charge of lending loans to fellow classmates. Everyone in the classroom was involved in the community and we all gained a great amount of knowledge about the economy by being active learners. If I would have read this from a textbook I would not have had the same experience or enjoyment of learning this new material. I think it is important to incorporate active learning into the classroom. The website gives you ways to do so in social studies classrooms. This is not something that happens quickly as a teacher you need to encourage and support students to make them feel comfortable.
I also liked the video Avoiding Death by Power Point. I have created many PowerPoint presentations in the classroom. I have to admit some of the slides I made could have served as an example of what not to do. Here are some suggestions to improve power point slides are: animation, enlarge screen capture and use call out brackets, you don’t always have to have captions or writing to convey your point, and for charts that are two small you can take the chart make it the background and add an animation so that it appears in front of the chart (keep the context of information because chart is in background).
I also liked the video Integrating podcasting into your classroom. This video is a great introduction to what podcasting is and how you can use it in your classroom. Using podcasts is a great way for students to demonstrate their understanding of the material. You can use it for any subject area. Students can edit their podcasts add music and sound effects for emphasis. They can listen to other podcasts of students and educators as a model. One elementary school has even made their own radio podcast. Some useful information for teachers where the name of websites that integrate podcasts into their classroom and several sites that had free podcast programs.
We also had our first group meeting. Our group decided to use gtalk. I have never used this program before I was not even sure how we were going to chat. After using gtalk I really liked the program. It made communication very easy. Since this was our first group meeting we discussed any problems or questions we had regarding the course. Many of us had questions and we were able to navigate each other through some parts of Moodle. We also discussed what we explored and next week’s agenda.
That about sums up Week One! Talk to you soon.