Moodle birthing

I have generally been a teacher approaching Moo from the front-end. My interest has always been from a curriculum focus – what new tools I can incorporate into my courses to inspire my students.

Today, however, I became a back-end fella, and installed Moodle to run locally on my own machine.

I had a couple of reasons for doing so; firstly, I have been asked to be part of the process to phase in Moodle at another school. The second reason is simply curiousity.

I found the installation process to be pretty fascinating. Having downloaded the install pack, and already having a webserver running locally, installing and starting up Moo was a sinch! Literally a 5 minute job. Knowing what I know already about Moo, I was able to set up a few users and courses and began nutting out how to enrol one into the other…..

Anyway enough of techie stuff. what I found quite thought provoking was the sheer emptiness of the site once it is up and running, even with a couple of courses created. Our e-learning developer has spent the better part of 3 years building the monster that is now our multi-campus college moodle site, and I had to stop and reflect on the sheer volume of development that has gone into making a really neat, tight LMS.

It struck me that to make a site that really works on a curriculum level, a serious amount of planning, and thought needs to go into the ‘what-goes-where’ questions. I remember having arguments with our Moodle-development committee trying to decide how to create the links to separate Primary from Secondary, and one campus from another. Let’s not even get started on the difficulties we faced considering how to create links to subjects that had students taking the class cross-campus.  But if the site is to be student-friendly (and novice IT teacher friendly), this needs to be thought through.

The other thing that the blank canvas made me consider is the many uses of Moodle. Having adopted moodle at an ‘in-construction’ phase, the new courses we inherited already had some basic formatting and topic titles added. Yet when the course is empty, one tends to consider how many possibilities there are for a moodle course. Extra-curricular pages, welfare pages, pages for year levels…the list is endless and only limited by your imagination.

The thing I have come to love about Moo is its flexibility, the variety of ways in which you can use its courses, and the way that a teacher can shape a course to suit their needs. The other big positive with Moodle is the way it promotes collaboration, but more on that another time…….

Remember Michael Jordan?

My son and I found a 12 year old VHS tape with a classic Bulls game on it. The game was great – so were the ads!
I doubt anyone has defined their sport more thoroughly than MJ and his Chicago Bulls. Aside from Pippin, can you name more than one of his team-mates?

Basketball has moved on, but who could forget moments like this?

Marking….and the morning person

Had a bit of an ‘A-ha’ moment this morning.
I have been trying (without a lot of success) to find time to sit and mark my IT students’ major assessment task over the last couple of weeks. Seems like every time I would sit down to get into it, my phone would ring or the email goes bing and something urgent would come up. Seems I spend most of my working day either teaching or putting out IT-related spot fires. Ah, the worry of being the IT go-to man on campus; a mantle I am happy to wear…. most of the time.

I set aside time last night to nail the last part of this marking task, only to find that once the kids had got settled in bed and I had half a moment to scratch myself I was yawning like a cavern and thinking of bed myself. So I set the alarm for 5am and turned out the light.

5 o’clock comes, out of bed I jump (sort of,) make a cup of tea and away we go. Dialled in (yes, I know – its a long story….) and was able to upload student feedback to Moodle without worrying about tying up the phone line. The brain was ticking, the keys were clicking – it is all coming together….By the time the family all got up, I was basically done! Nice one! The house was nice and quiet. I was being nice and quiet so as not to wake anyone. No distractions, other than the Ipod, and a time limit to work to. The ADD part of me had to be settled with nothing to distract me, so the job got done.

You may remember from my post in March on bodybuilding, that I am used to getting into my day early. Nothing better than lifting some heavy weights before brekky. Early mornings were also the way of things for me when I was a kid – there was me sitting on the heater at 6am waiting for the cartoons to come on. After years of guilt for never finding time to read my bible, I suddenly found 20 minutes at the start of my day – regular quiet time suddenly became a habit.

The only problem with all this is a wife who is a night-time person. She picks on me, calling me an ‘old man’ as I am getting sleepy at early hours, in bed dropping the book I am trying to read on my face. There must be a balance in there somewhere, but it strikes me that we work best when we run in our natural stream. For me, that stream seems to want to flow early, rather than late. So the alarm gets set early again tomorrow…off to the gym, or perhaps to the lappy.

Sonny Sandoval

A band that I have come to love over the past couple of years is nu-metal act P.O.D.  Sonny is the lead-singer and heart and soul of the group.  The band is held up by their hardcore back-end, but it is the vocals that stand out.  Sonny’s blend of screamo, rap and reggae make for a very unique mix.

What draws me to Sonny is his heart for the lost, his way-cool dreads (which he has now cut off sadly,) and the tattoos.  Would love to have mad hair and tatts like that, but my middle-class station in life makes that a little hard.

Having journeyed with the band since ‘Satellite‘ in the early nought-ies, I have enjoyed watching the music and lyrics mature as the boys have wrestled with their own identity as a band, as well as issues of faith.  Aside from the music being interesting in itself, P.O.D. display a heart for the average metal-loving Joe, seeking to get into nu-metal air time with some really positive messages. I was fortunate enough to see the boys do their thing when they seconded to Disturbed in concert last year.  Was quite moved to see all the kids in their black t-shirts  singing “I feel so alive for the very first time, and I think I can fly.”

One theme that comes up continually in Sonny’s lyrics is his love for his mother, who he lost to leukemia before the band got underway.  After many years, one can see that he is still processing this loss, showing a deep spirit and empathy for the broken of this world.

Unashamed of their faith and with a mission to enarm the ‘warriors’ to change the world, P.O.D. inspire me to ‘keep it real.’

Great P.O.D. Lyrics
****************

Even though you feel all alone
It can’t rain every day, It don’t rain for ever,
Your sunshine may be gone, but I know
It can’t rain every day,  It don’t rain for ever.
“It can’t rain every day”  When Angels and Serpents Dance – 2008

I think the hardest part of holding on is letting it go
“Goodbye for now” Testify – 2006



One word, a voice unheard
You can change the world
If everyone would stop and listen
“Change the World” Payable on Death – 2003

Time after time, Walk the fine line
Something keeps bringing me back
Time after time, going in blind
I don’t know which way I need to go
Do all these roads lead me back to you?
“Going In Blind” Greatest Hits: (The Atlantic Years) – 2006

I feel so alive, for the very first time
I can’t deny you, and I think I can fly
“Alive” Satellite – 2001

My life, a sacrifice is made new through these confessions
Manifested, this joy is my desire
Light this fire to flames; praise the name, Jehovah Jireh
“Tribal Warriors” – The Fundamental Elements of Southtown – 1999

A classroom without Moodle

I teach senior IT, and am faced with a session without PCs.  This means no typing, no Internet, and most troubling no Moodle.  Our Careers guys are comendeering my lab for an afternoon, so we have to move on.  To make this just a little more interesting, I will be out on PD on that day.

We had a Moodle dropout last week, (see previous post.)  Stuffed up my whole day.  At least this time I have some warning.

So what are we going to do?  If the class had PCs and Moodle but no Me, no problem.  Write up a quiz or a webquest and away they go.  Would be a dream of an extra class to pick up.  But no Moodle!

I decided, on agreeing to give up my lab, that completing a task on paper is no big deal – the kids have to do this in exams anyway, and it is a good exercise to remind them that they have tobe able to verbalise IT concepts, not just do it on a computer.  It is planning the tasks for the class that is getting me down; no previously posted resources, no scanned textbook pages, no messaging instructions, no clever web2 tools to liase with.  It will have to be a case of read this bit in your text book, now do this.  I am going to have to type up instructions and print them out!  Ughh.

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Well the session has come and gone and the kids coped without Moodle.  I guess that they slipped back into paper and pen mode a lot more easily than I did.  I hear that the students made good use of their session and worked away pretty well at the paper tasks set.

Yet, by the time the next opportunity to deal with the info came around, it seems that most of the students had manage to lose their bits of paper.  I can’t help thinking that with a PC and moodle available, students would have completed the task, saved their work and then uploaded the completed assignment for me to grade.   Perhaps the students had no idea what to do with bits of paper, as I have not done photocopying for IT for years.  Perhaps Moodle and online facilities make students less inclined to be organised with hard copies?

Food for thought.

Professional Learning & Good Teaching Practice

In response to AISV webquest on effective teaching strategies.

Having entered IT teaching only in the last few years, I have tried to seek out PD that will give me the skills I need to better student learning in the IT classrooms I work in.  As things have changed so rapidly in the online world, there have been a myriad of new things to consider.

One of my greatest strengths in utilising online technologies in teaching is my willingness to ‘play’ with new tools.  One of my colleagues once noted that I am ‘fearless’ in the classroom and will trying anything.  The same is true with web tools – I’ll try anything once.
The fallback on this is that sometimes things do fall over, or in my excitement at unleashing something new on the students, I don’t think things all the way through, and could produce a better model or a better prepared activity.
Another downside to this is losing track of the ‘big-picture’ in the culture we are trying to create within the classroom.  It is easy to lose sight of the bigger goal in favour of the exciting new tool.  One thing I can work on in regard to good practice is to always work back to the same teaching goal – better understanding of the topics at hand.

I am also a big proponent of the ‘play and learn’ approach.  Rather than standing and speaking from the front, I would prefer to build something that kids can work through or play with, and ‘learn while they are not looking.’  Unfortunately not all students are as creative as some, and prefer to hear information that they know is correct.  The other downside is that in leaving kids to work on something to get concepts into their head, they sometimes lack feedback unless this is diligently followed up.

The other concept that features in the source documents is research.  One thing that teachers struggle with in general is in finding time for the important but not urgent things that enhance effective teaching – reflection is one of these.  I have noted on many occasions that teachers have a habit of  ‘talking shop’; given a little time to consider the fruitfulness of their endeavours, they will always natter on for hours about their kids or what worked in class last week.  Formalise this with structured discussion and emprical evidence and we would have a powerful tool to see how well things are progressing in our classrooms.  But the time…….

The source document on research also points out that the public benefits when proper research and reflection is carried out.  I have sensed, as my skills in using online learning tools has grown, that it is of great importance to share this with others.  Being a PD leader in my school community, I try to drop tid-bits of clever tools to my peers whenever I can.  Yet there are probably ways of sharing new tools in a public way amongst my school community that can be effective on a wider scale.  I have considered using a public forum to drop new ideas and examples of neat things my peers are doing out there, but again it all comes down to hours in the day.

Bodybuilding

Okay, I have to admit it. I am one of these strange people who get out bed at a very unfortunate hour and wander down, bleary-eyed to a strange place where I lift heavy stuff. And with over 500 posts under the tag bodybuilding in wordpress alone, it seems I am not the only one.

Every now and then you have to ask yourself “Why do I do this?” What is going on in my head to make me behave in such a strange way?

I reckon weight-lifting is a guy thing. Strength is the epitome of a successful man – a man who can cope with anything that life throws at him. There is something very empowering about knowing you can lift something heavy that others can’t manage.  There is also an element of overcoming; achieving something that you couldn’t previously.  So in your head, you have control – you can beat things and overcome the odds.  The guy in the mirror is not the same person who peered out at you months earlier – this guy is stronger, fitter, more able to cope.

Then there is the feeling you get when you lift.  There are few sensations as overpowering as squeezing out that last rep knowing there is just nothing left.  Bodybuilders everywhere know that feeling, often 2 days later, when your muscles are aching because you pushed it the limit in your workout.  It is a nice pain, knowing that your muscles are developing under the strain you are exerting.

I didn’t grow up in a household dominated by sport.  We played basketball a bit, but exercise wasn’t high on the priority list.  On joining a gym to lose some weight, something clicked in my head – something I hadn’t experienced before.  That sensation of getting stronger, bigger, fitter is an addictive one.  I have had a break or two at times – ask my wife: I get grumpy!  Not only do you miss the familiar, noisy environment of your beloved gym, your body cries out to be worked and not neglected.

So find below a few shots of notable muscle men.  Few men cannot be impressed by the physique of a built guy – I think it is something all men crave for themselves.  It just becomes a question of whether you are ready to work for it.

The day Moodle died….

We had a storm here last weekend which took out our WAN. We arrived to work on Monday with no Email, no Internet and NO MOODLE!

As my computer tried to log on, I wrote a list of things to do for the day. On discovering that Moodle was down, I immediately crossed off half of the things on the list to be dealt with when the WAN woke up.

My morning then consisted of things I had been putting off for a while; sort out my budget, worked on some IT tutorials the old-fashioned way (in Word grrrr,) twiddled my thumbs trying to work out how my day suddenly became so defragemented…. .

Got to thinking about how much my day now revolves around access to Moodle.  With all my curriculum being replicated online, it made it exceedingly difficult to generate anything new.  I tend to be quite anal in my teaching resources anyway, so I make a lot of new resources. I have spent much of the last week developing tutorials for Access databases.  I decided it was time to fully embrace Web2 and do this online as a wiki.  I figure that I can then update my tutes over time with new ideas or better ways of doing things.  If the kids find a better way, then heaven forbid…they could add to the resources themselves.  Teacher losing control of class….ahhhhgh   With Moodle down, all that ground to a halt. Lots of our curriculum materials are now also stored or interfaced with via Moodle.  So the storm put an end to that as well.

Happily, our technicians restored access to Moo by lunchtime, so the universe righted itself once again.  The experience made me realise how much we now rely upon online content to get through our day.  I was also reminded how much I have come to rely upon the tools and resources that Moodle does so well.

Oh Moodle!  How shall I ever live without thee?
In fact, a colleague of mine turned down a job offer in another school as they didn’t have a decent LMS.  Well not Moo anyway.

Reading Tolkien again…

Well folks, the time has come around again. Time to begin my yearly reading of LOTR.

Am beginning right at the beginning with The Silmarillion this time around.  I figure that I cannot be a true Tolkien aficionado and not be familiar with the history of Middle-Earth.  Plus it drags out the amount of time that I can be reading the thing…

Having got a hundred pages in, I am quite taken with the character Feanor.  He may be the closest thing to an angry elf – tis nice to have some of the blanks filled in, and understand some of the grief that you hear the elves speak of from time to time.

So what of the simarils?  A metaphor for the greed of mankind maybe?  One man made them, but everyone desires them, to the detriment of all.

I’ll go back to my reading now, or at least juggling with a copy of the text that is falling apart…I have two bulldog clips holding the thing together.

Here is a nice post on The Silmarillion from another blog in word press.  (Added 19/3/09)

More on Blogging

..or was that MORON blogging. 

Finding time to add to your blog is very much ‘Quadrant 2′ stuff. 
You know, not urgent but still important.

It’s right up there with reading a good book, planning a holiday, reading your bible, taking your wife out for dinner, wrestling on the floor with your son.  All really important things that can be easily shoved aside.

Blogging is a nice way to organise your mind, put some thoughts in concrete, and then share with them with others.  Reading someone’s blog can open you to new ideas.  Perhaps I should find a few nice blogs to add to my blogroll?

If only there were more hours in the day…..

“If there is no gardener, there is no garden.”
Steven Covey – First Things First