Sunday, May 18, 2008

A New TwT Class with a New LMS

New summer semester is ready to begin. I am somewhat in between the spring semester (finishing grading) and the beginning of the summer semester (setting up two courses). I had all my courses designed and happily ready to be uploaded to Web CT but... This comfort feeling is gone. The college is now using a Learning Management System MOODLE . It is exciting to explore something new and at the same time it is overwhelming --- you have to start everything from scratch. It is time consuming. I have been exploring this LMS during the spring semseter -- I was teaching 3 course. I also was in a pilot group of 10 MSMC professors who volunteered to experiment with Moodle. Last Friday was our last meeting. :-)

Here is a you tube video "What is Moodle?"

The IT department has just upgraded the Moodle and requested to watch what will be happening and report to Arthur if something needs to be fixed. I have already noticed some of Moodle's misbehavior and also head from my new students that it does not allow the students to easily upgrade the pages -- participants' page, in particular. It brings the user to the MSMC Web Module page. I also noticed that the chat room is not activated. The IT is informed about the problems.

I would like my class to be patient and open to the exploration of the new LMS. Next week I will add students' blogs' links to keep them in one place. I am excited to introduce some new Web 2.0 tools and services to my TwT students and to motivate them to learn to use them in their own teaching!
Let the summer learning/teaching adventure begin!

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