During our inservice, we spoke of our trial usage of Moodle last
year and spoke of success stories of using it in the classroom. Then we
spoke of the expectation that every teacher would post their course
guidelines on Moodle. We shared with them some of the things that
Moodle is capable of doing and shared our hope that like other
technological advances (i.e. a gradebook program, SmartBoards in the
classroom, etc.) that Moodle would be a new tool for their and the
student's benefit. We emphasized that Learning Management Systems are
actively being used in universities and that it will help our students
make that transition to college. One of our students who was not shy in
sharing his anti-Moodle sentiments last year wrote back to share his
gratitude for Moodle when during the first day in class the teacher
asked "Is anyone here familiar with Moodle".
The second part of our inservice gave the teachers an opportunity to
choose either a beginners, average, or advanced user's group. Each
group went to one of our computer labs and had a hands on introduction
that covered loggin in, uploading their course guidelines, and then an
explanation of some of the things that they might be able to do. The
teachers were allowed to poke around and ask questions.
I remember sitting in the first part of the inservice and having a wave
of panic come over me as I realized that we were just about to have
over 100 simultaneous users. We had never tested the
server with that
kind of usage. Happily, having recently converted from a
WIMP to a
LAMP
server it did just fine. I am grateful that we have a wonderful group
of teachers who are open to growth and to be challenged with the new
technology. The students have felt the benefit and encourage and can
sometimes help the teachers by asking that they put something on
Moodle. We are all still learning; however, Moodle has been
enthusiastically embraced and utilized. I am attaching a ZIP file of an
export of a WIKI I created in preparation for the inservice in the
hopes that it may be helpful to you.Peace.