Good Morning, My name is Jacqui Land and I am Director of ICT at Papanui High School in Christchurch. I have been at Papanui for the last 8 years. In this presentation we will look at how we are using Moodle at Papanui High School. I will cover our journey to Moodle 2; Some of the advantages of Moodle 2 and how we are using it to Single sign-on to other resources. I will also share some of the ways in which we are using Moodle to enhance teaching and learning. I am happy for this to be an informal session, so feel free to ask questions. I have set up the presentation as a Powerpoint, rather than flitting from page to page in our Moodle site, which can waste time, but if anyone wants me to show them something on our live site, just let me know.\n
So, what are we using? Just to give you a bit of background as to what tools we use at Papanui and where Moodle fits in. We use Kamar as our Student management system, Moodle as our Learning management system, MyPortfolio as our e-portfolio system, we use Google Apps for our documents and mail. We also use School Interviews, the Kamar parental portal, e-cast and Wikieducator and we have just begun to look at using Facebook and Twitter. \n
Just to give you a bit of background of where we began. We first introduced an LMS about 6 years ago. Initially we decided to go with Interact, which came out of the College of Education in Christchurch. It was initially trialled in the Science Department. We had just started to spread the word to other departments when we found out that the College of Education and Canterbury University were going to merge and that it was likely that Interact would disappear. We decided to do some further research at this stage and decide the best option before going any further. We were in quite a good position as we had not gone very far down the Interact path, but if we had waited for the University to complete their research into LMS then we potentially would have to move staff from a system that they had become familiar with. Our research led us to Moodle (which incidentally is the LMS that the University decided to adopt 2 years later).\n
So having chosen Moodle....what next?\nWe set up our Moodle site. We also decided to use Moodle as our school web site as well. This was our first attempt, but we din’t find it particularly user friendly. Staff found it quite hard to navigate, and find their way around. There were also complaints about the green background being too much.\n\n
But we still had a way to go. Having come up with our site, we began to run into other issues....mainly that the menu’s were not really relevant for the audience. We had menu’s that were relevant for Staff / students / parents and material that was relevant for the outside world.\nSO we decided to run a competition to come up with a name for the school part and we decided to separate the two.\n
We then had a web site area (green) and a papNET site (Blue). \nThis worked to a certain degree, but because they were both part of the same Moodle site when you hit home it took you back to the website, not the papNET home. It also caused a few other issues. So at the start of this year we moved our papNET site offsite and went to Moodle 2. (Our web site is still hosted on-site and is still Moodle 1.9).\n
We now have a Moodle 2 site, which is our papNET site. We now use this as our hub to all other tools and resources that staff students and parents might want to access.\n
It has taken us quite a while to reach this stage. Each change has had its own issues and it has been hard to build momentum. This video demonstrates a bit of what it has been like and how it has felt at times. I am sure many of you who have tried to introduce new ideas will be able to relate to this....\n.....we have now turned the corner and feel like we now have motion....\n
Some of the things we have done to help get staff on board, is to improve the navigation. This is actually much better in Moodle 2 than in 1.9, as the breadcrumbs are much better, which helps. But other things we have done were first of all to choose a theme that had menu’s. We have also tried to get rid of the course categories page and the huge lists of courses. Our staff and students never go to this page. They either access the courses via menu’s or their own MyMoodle pages.\n
Went to a menu system.....\n
We have also made papNET the hub for all other tools and material. In order to get staff used to using Moodle, instead of our G drive, we began to put duty rosters, notices etc on papNET. Now if we want to give a document to staff we create it in Moodle or Google docs and e-mail the link rather then printing off.\nAlso it means that staff can find the latest current document. As usually once they are printed they are incorrect and staff are working off several different versions.\n
We have also set up links from our papNET site to other tools. We are trying to get as many of these as we can set up using the Single-Sign on. The SSO at the moment logs them into Google and Moodle, MyPortfolio, and e-cast.\n
When staff or students CLICK on Log in, they get taken to the SSO login screen. This has been themed to match our papNET site, to help make users feel safe and confident. The more things look familiar the better. \nAs I said when they login it logs them into Moodle, Google, eTV and MyPortfolio.\n\n
My portfolio. We changed the theme, to make it part of papNET. This is aimed at helping to make the transition for staff easy. \nWe have tried to add all the tools, with SSO and integrating them. Not all staff are using them, or even know they are all there, but they are there for those that want them and for those that don’t....\n
We have looked at how we have set up our site, now we will have a look at some of our courses or departments. \nWe have exported all of our data from Kamar and used this to populate our Moodle site. This has created a page for every timetabled class and has enrolled the students into the right classes. If you are enrolled in a course it will appear on your MyMoodle page, but we have also created courses for Departments. These vary from Department to department and from course to course. \nThis is an example of a course page for Year 9 Science. The topic pages link to a course for each unit. There is also then a course for each class.\n
What then happens in the course varies greatly. The example above shows a course that just lists lots of resources / activities. It really doesn’t mean much and probably isn’t making the best use of Moodle’s features. Recently, we have been doing quite a bit of research on course design and trying to make the process of setting up a course easy. We have done quite a bit of work with Derek Wenmoth from Core Education, looking at this and came up with a template that could be used to plan out your course before staff started to add material.\n
We have then transferred this to a course template which staff can restore into their own course to use.\nThis course uses SIngle sections. We like this format as it isn’t cluttered, and it is easy to see the latest news etc. \n
This is an example.....\nThe resources are all stored under a Resources topic, which can be hidden.......so students don’t see the long list of resources and it makes more sense.\nOne thing we are trying to do with our Moodle site is to make it fun.....we want students, teachers and parents to want to use the site. Just to give me a break. This video shows what can be achieved if you make something fun.\n
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This is our papNET homepage now. As you can see we have links to information and news. We are trying to embed photos and videos where we can to add interest and are getting students to send us information.\n
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With conditional activities you can set up each resource and activity with conditions. You can either set it so that students can mark an activity themselves as completed or you can set conditions. The condition might just be that they have to open the activity or it may be that they need to gain a certain grade, before it will be marked as complete. You also can set it so that they have to get a certain score on a previous activity before it will show them the next one.\n
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The learning resources, activities and features are modular which means it can stand alone but they are also designed to complement each other. Examples are: the default news forum can be complemented with the calendar which is offered as an optional block. Resources like text and web page can be complemented by uploading files like podcast to enhance the learning experience of your students.\n
Google gives us additional options for Moodle. Moodle is great for lots of things, but Moodle allows you to use the best tool for the job....You could use the Feedback tool in Moodle, but it isn’t as pretty.\nWe used a Google form to collect student course selections. \nAlso exported data and imported into Kamar....easy as.\n
In terms of the best tool for the job...Wikieducator is another good tool. Collaboration / sharing....an on-line text book or for booklets...integrates well into Moodle.\n
Our latest addition is Facebook. We have recently surveyed all our students and 89% of them have Facebook pages....so why not tap into their world. The page is read only. so it is really only a notice page at the moment, but we are looking at how this will work and can be developed. We are also trialling Twitter.\n
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We use the Kamar parental portal....but students can access notices through papNET....Integrates well.\n
