Patty Papers

I had the opportunity this morning to talk with attendees at the 2009 MUG-NW Summer Bootcamp.

The Moodle User Group Northwest in partnership with NCCE holds a summer Moodle Bootcamp for both system administrators and instructors. This multi-strand event will allows participants to focus on either installing and administrating a Moodle environment or teaching and learning using one of the hottest online content management systems available.

If you’d like to see my course, just click the pic above. If you are interested in any of the activities you see, just let me know.

I had the opportunity on May 27th to talk with Jeff Patterson, IT Director for Great Falls Public Schools, and teachers in that district about the ways I use Moodle in my math classes. Using Adobe ConnectNow, I was able to take them on a virtual tour of my Moodle sites and show the activities my students have participated in this year such as our choices activities, glossary, Hot Potatoes quizzes, ExamView assessments, and other tasks.

As I look at ways to improve my use of Moodle next year, I’m inspired by this article at the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt:

• Math students in this high-performing school district used to rush through their Algebra I textbooks only to spend the first few months of Algebra II relearning everything they forgot or failed to grasp the first time. So the district’s frustrated math teachers decided to rewrite the algebra curriculum, limiting it to about half of the 90 concepts typically covered in a high school course in hopes of developing a deeper understanding of key topics. Last year, they began replacing 1,000-plus-page math textbooks with their own custom-designed online curriculum…

I will be teaching three sections of Algebra-Geometry 2 next year and think this may be perfect! I guess now I have my summer project.

Thanks to all who attended my NCCE session, Moodling in Math. For those who would like more information, here is a link to our session’s Moodle site.

Session Highlights:

• Creating a Course Glossary

If I could suggest one way to begin using Moodle with your students, would be to begin creating a class glossary.

• Using Forums

Forums are a great way to continue class discussions beyond the classroom. They help teachers to assess student learning and get students to talk math!

• Hot Potatoes!

The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available on the web.

• Assessments including Moodle Quizzes and ExamView

Students regularly complete a variety of formative and summative assessments via the web including formative quizzes, “tickets to retake”, and summative assessments.

• Using Video to Support Learning

As the instructor, I regularly provide video tutorials of class lessons/topics to support student learning in the classroom. In addition, students typically create several video projects throughout the year including screen recordings of their work, math music videos, and an end-of-year movie.

• Non-Traditional Assignments delivered, collected and graded using Moodle

I use Moodle to deliver projects and assignments other than the typical “book work”.. This allows students to access class presentations, handouts, and templates, and assignments are typically uploaded and graded through Moodle.

I’m currently preparing to present at NCCE 2009 in Portland this February. My session is regarding the ways in which my students and I use Moodle in our math classroom. It should be a great conference and I hope to see you there!

Find out how school districts are saving money with Open Source Software and how it can improve teaching and learning in the classroom!

Workshops

• Open Source for Schools
• Moodle for n00bs (newbies)
• Web 2.0 Basics: You mean you can do THAT on the internet?
• Create Powerful Learning with Moodle
• Free Internet/Online Tools to Increase Student Achievement
• Multimedia Moodle Marvels
• Managing Moodle for Teaching and Learning
• Web 2.0: All you can eat buffet
• School 2.0: Living Learning and Leading in a flat world
• Making Moodle Matter for Learners and Families

Educators, Administrative Leaders and Technical Staff will experience how Open Source Software increases both access and opportunities for students and teachers.

Concurrent Sessions

• MUG-NW (Moodle User’s Group) Gathering
• Web 2.0 – Voice, video on the web for free! Skype, UStream, Voice Thread
• Moodling in Math <— This is my session
• The IT Admins Guide to Managing Web 2.0 in Schools
• Open Source Smackdown
• Web 2.0 – Collaboration Tools you can’t live without. Delicious and Google docs
• Content Management Systems for Schools (Drupal, Joomla and others)
• Using Moodle: Supporting Administrators and Professional Development
• Opening Doors to Learning with Moodle

SEARCH LEARN and EXPLORE @ www.ncce.org

Despite my long summer absence, I have been very busy preparing new technology for this upcoming school year. My most recent project is developing math courses using Moodle. Four of us (3 teachers and our tech director) attended the MUG NW Summer Moodle Bootcamp in July and two us us are currently participating in an online Moodle course, Create Powerful Online Learning with Moodle. We are also working on developing our Moodle courses for this upcoming school year; you can view my courses (they are works in progress!) at Woodland School District Courses. I would appreciate your feedback!

In the midst of all that, I spent two weeks in Maui which was fantastic – I snorkeled with a shark and a barracuda (not purposely, believe me!) and learned to surf! Click on the pics below if you’d like to see more Hawaii pics on Facebook.

Aloha!