I am wondering if there is a way in the current version or if there could be a way in future versions to give teachers/facilitators the ability to review forum submissions before they become posted "live".
I work in a K-12 environment and lapses in judgement are bound to happen and such control would ease the minds of many teachers and vice-principals
Thanks,
Pete
Hey, I like your way of embedding in bold
And I agree that AUP (acceptable use policy) developed by a school and signed by a pupila and a parent works better than manual filtering (which may be needed to apply once in a while, of course...)
L
. One step outside the school is the jungle, also called real life.
Peter, hi
showcasing essays that meet the requirements is a good way of setting a benchmark - but posting them before they are fully ripe enables the learners to see not only the results, but the process as well. After commenting on a draft-level paper, you can accept the next draft and either replace the previous one - or even post both of them side by side, to make comparison easier. For a conscientious learner (and there is/are one or two in every group), this approach can be more beneficial (at the expense of gloss).
Just my $.02
Lev
Free and open source:
easier to setup: http://d3e.sourceforge.net/ubiquitous-d3e.html
missing:
Yes this is just what happens in the US there is a sue happy spirit it seems. Yet I have not heard of one case where the school was held for a student doing a bad deed. There is a prudence on the students part. We do however have such a contract and each student and parent must sign before Internet usage is allowed for that student.
John, I agree with what youre saying about fostering a kids growth. As educators we all take on the role of parent from time to time. And keeping with Moodle it is just the same. As an educator it is your responsibility to check and make sure your students are not mis using any equipment of the schools including the web site and software.
As a parent we guide our kids internet usage and we tell them not to go to cretin sites for there own protection. But to keep a system flexible we must make the responsibility of its content the teachers not the system administration.
Where we fall short is expecting the worst from our students. If you give them guide lines and rules to follow there must also be consequences. Truly the control needs to come from the classroom management not the server itself. I do think we need a better way of validating the users and maybe a way to limit access times. This will cut down on mis behavior when the student is away from the classroom and give the teacher some kind of control over time on the system. But lets not lose site that Moodle is a means of providing content not a means to provide a safety net.
And lets not forget there are a wide range of users for this system. From preschool to colleges so the system must be open.
We decided long ago that something had to give. Family life or the TV. The TV lost. In retrospect it was one of the best decisions we ever made. We still watch movies (on video/DVD) and we don't mind the kids watching TV at their friends' houses. But at home our TV is not even tuned in to the local channels. The payoff has been increased interaction with the kids. We communicate, we talk a lot. The kids also read for pleasure. They read for information. They listen more. They do well at school too.
I think that one of the reasons for the disengagement of parents and children is TV. One of the overwhelming influencers in youth culture is TV. We were not prepared to 'deliver up' the minds of our children to people who had no interest (other than a financial one) in their growth and well being. TV is not the benign influence it was when I was a kid. Nowadays there is unbridled content of a kind that is inappropriate for young children and the role models that they see on TV do not come close to meeting our expectations. I believe that young children lack an affective filter and so are influenced much more by what they see on TV as they perceive it to be at least a 'version' of reality. This affects how they speak, want to dress, relate to each other and adults... everything. By cutting out TV I think we have reduced the gap between us as a family enormously.
I have several friends who have also cut out TV and have never looked back. I think we might get a TV when the kids leave the nest though. 
It probably would be a good idea to have something like that for some situations and schools. I also work in the public school system and am currently trialing it with some Y11's. Needless to say, the very first day I had ~&*%$ expletives all over the place.
I immediately read them the riot act and essentially told them what should already have known:
1.
That access was a privilege and that I was doing something for them that I was not required to do. Something to make their lives and classes more fun, more interesting and more effective. If they could not demonstrate the required maturity I would deny them access until they could.
2.
That I could easily identify each and every individual on the system and track their access but that in any case the the amount of evidence that I required to take action would be minimal and so they had better police themselves and each other if they wanted to stay in the game. Moreover everything they did on the system was in the public domain. They should expect anything they did to be available to their mother, grandmother, the principal and anyone else they can think of.
3.
That fraud, waste and abuse were always against anyone's rules. They would be dealt with accordingly.
I have had no problems since then.
Admittedly it is still early days and but having to actively moderate would be a sort of last resort for me. We don't moderate their offline communication except in 'public', hopefully I won't have to moderate their on-line communication either.
