Lounge

• Jane Doe = math teacher
• Joe Blow = science teacher
• Johnny Walker = instructional technology coach
• Slim Jim = assistant principal
• Betty Boop = motivated student

Summer 2007

Algebra teacher Jane Doe begins to learn to use Moodle prior to the start of the 2007 – 2008 school year. She creates a basic, plain-vanilla virtual classroom. It contains a few important documents that she has uploaded (syllabus, behavior contract, tutoring schedule, etc.) as well as links to some good algebra resources on the Internet. It also contains a forum to which students can post questions and a lesson plan section. It’s a good, solid start.

Johnny Walker, her Freshmen Academy instructional technology coach, agrees that she has made a good start, but he makes a note to himself to check in on Jane often. She seems to be inclined to stay in her comfort zone, and he does not want that to hold her back. After all, they will have these freshmen only once.

August - September 2007

Jane and her students become accustomed to Moodle, their new Learning Management System. There are occasional problems when students forget their passwords or the network seems to bog down, but Jane and her colleagues were smart enough to have prepared the students (and themselves) for little glitches. Occasionally, students must be reminded not to post personal information or links to inappropriate web sites to their courses, but everyone is gradually getting used to their new system. In fact, some of the students who have come from the middle school have already used Moodle and they become resources for everyone else.

Johnny is pleased by Jane’s progress. He is impressed by her earnest, no-nonsense attitude and her willingness to learn. But he is now sure that she is moving more slowly than necessary and that he will have to help her make better use of the amazing resources that have been made available to her and her students.

October – November

Jane has been quite diligent about adding to her online Algebra resource each week and she is becoming quite comfortable with creating some of more straightforward online resources and assignments. She is not yet able to create activities that involve much student interaction and collaboration, but she is becoming more confident. The extra training has helped some.

For her students, the novelty is gone and Jane has to work to keep some of the students motivated. She and her students are ready for more. Time to learn a few new tricks!

Johnny is ready. When Jane mentions to him that she and her students seem to be in a bit of a rut, he asks her what she has been doing with the forums in her course. When she replies that the forum does not seem suited to math instruction, he asks her to try an experiment: Have the students use the forums to write a quiz together. Over the course of three days, teams of students will submit quiz questions on the current unit (Solving linear equations for one of two variables). The students will solve the problems, of course, but they will also evaluate the questions to determine which ones are best for a quiz. At the end of the three days, Jane will tell the class which twenty questions to study. She will be using five of the questions on the quiz. Jane gives it a try. The first day is a little rocky, but days two and three are productive, exciting days. And most of the students ace the quiz. Why not, they have written it! Jane is very glad that Johnny made this suggestion.

Meanwhile, Assistant Principal Slim Jim has been talking to a couple of freshmen. He is interested in their progress and enjoys getting to know the students at his school. They tell him that they don’t like math, but that they do like math class. When he asks about this, they say that they write their own quizzes in their algebra class. It is almost as though the teacher wants them to cheat! They giggle and move on. Slim decides to drop in on Ms Doe and look into it a bit. When he shows up, Jane tries to explain to him about how they are using their forum. He does not understand. Jane launches her browser and shows him what they are doing. Slim is no fool and he immediately sees that this is a valuable activity. He is swamped, but he asks Jane to make him a guest teacher in the course so that he can look in from time to time. Jane agrees to do so and is surprised when she later sees in the course logs that Slim really is checking in every few days. What she does not know is that he is showing this to other teachers, too. It is not a secret, he just never thinks to mention it to her.

December

Sigh… The month of December is challenging and Jane has little time for Moodle. Her students are having none of that! They insist that she allow them to write part of their semester exam in their Algebra I. Tired and stressed, but impressed by their enthusiasm, she agrees. It goes well. In fact, the students’ portion of the exam is more challenging than she would have imagined, but, again, the students do very well on that section. In the process, several of the better students have stepped up as mentors to their peers and some have begun finding and posting links to appropriate online resources while evaluating their classmates’ submissions. When Johnny sees that Jane has a good thing going, he asks her to invite the other freshmen academy teachers into her online class to see what’s going on. Jane ends up making a presentation about her breakthrough in the online staff room and she enjoys the enthusiasm she detects in her peers.

Meanwhile, Slim has become a bit obsessed with the idea that there is no reason this e-learning be limited to the freshmen academy. Some of the “regular” teachers do seem to recognize the value in what Jane and the others are doing online, but they are already overwhelmed and simply have no time to take on something new. Slim persists, though. And just before Winter recess, Viola! He shows this Moodle thing to a member of the Sports Booster Club. Could this system be used to tutor athletes in grades ten, eleven and twelve who are struggling? Slim thinks it could work. He pays instructional technology coach Johnny Walker a little visit. They agree to try to make it happen.

Of course, Jane is exhausted. She is, however, looking forward to her two-week break so that she can further develop her Moodle skills. And she does, indeed, beef up her skills. She meets several times with science teacher Joe Blow and they get pretty good at using the glossary module. It is their plan to have their students begin to develop an online supplement to their textbooks, and the glossary module seems ideal for that purpose.

January – February

Working online has become routine and that is a good thing. Almost everyone - students and teachers alike – has become proficient and no one really thinks about the nuts and bolts of their learning management system any more. It’s just there and it just works. The students are helping to write quizzes and are mentoring each other in the forums. The glossary assignment is going quite well.

Jane wonders about the best way to use Moodle to help her students prepare for upcoming standardized tests. Her on-site technology coach suggests that create a series of online practice quizzes with high-quality feedback built in for her students. Jane thinks this might be a good idea and begins to familiarize herself with the quiz module. She is impressed when she realizes that she will be able to track her students’ progress and to see their strengths and weaknesses as they submit their answers. Johnny notes the interest in quizzes and teaches Jane how to make highly interactive, self scoring online quizzes using the free Hot Potatoes [http://hotpot.uvic.ca] software. She shows it to her students and they immediately begin creating impressive resources that they upload for each other. Jane is amazed. Johnny is impressed. And he is proud of Jane and her students. With his web cam, he makes a little video telling them so and posts it to their online classroom. He is surprised when he sees in the logs that students are accessing the video from outside school.. They must be showing it to their parents. Nice!

With Johnny’s help, Slim and the Sports Booster Club have set up an “online study hall” for athletes. The class is really just one forum for each grade. Nothing fancy. Most of the athletes are not interested, but Betty Boop, a senior athlete who knows she needs better grades to get a scholarship is very, very interested. Her resource teacher is sympathetic and joins the coaches in supporting the young woman’s efforts to improve her grades. Together, they decide that they cannot work on all subjects and elect to focus on the biggest problems of all: reading comprehension and basic writing skills. The approach is simple. They visit the ESPN web site a once or twice a week and pick an interesting article to read, discuss and write about. To say this works is an understatement. The student enjoys the articles and their discussions about them. And she is grateful for the almost instant feedback she gets from multiple teachers when she submits her written assignments. Betty is at the computer almost every evening and checks for feedback almost every morning. And her grades are, indeed, starting to improve. When Slim sees how well this is going, he is almost shocked. He sends Johnny an email, thanking him for his help. Johnny wonders if they can replicate this “online academic intervention” in the Freshmen Academy.

March – April

Jane is frustrated when she finds the quiz module a little more complicated than she would like. It takes her until the middle of March to get used to it. Her practice quizzes are a big hit, though, at least among the most eager students and she is glad that she has made the effort. Her students, meanwhile, have really taken to the Hot Potatoes software and are uploading practice quizzes left and right. Jane has to make sure that the items they submit do not contain errors, but she is able to do so without too much trouble. Despite losing a week to Spring Break, April is a productive month and Jane even begins scheduling chat sessions once evening a week for students who want a little extra help.

And Jane and her science teacher friend have begun developing activities to help them provide their students with the differentiated instruction they need. They design several projects that cater to students’ future career interests.

Jane, for example, has several students interested in health-related careers. She has her students investigate which math courses are required by schools, colleges and universities in order to become a physical therapist, an x-ray technician, etc. The students document their research in online journals and then create a Power Point presentation explaining their findings. They upload this presentation to Jane’s online class and other students use it as a model for their own presentations about the math courses required by schools, colleges and universities in their fields of interest.

Jane proudly shows her colleague Joe the excellent work her students have done. He immediately “borrows” the idea for his science students. He makes one change, though: He requires his students to use the wiki module to create their own little Wikipedias about which science courses they will have to take and why.

Jane and Joe start to think about a project in which their students can collaborate. Maybe it would be possible to produce a weekly roundup of math and science in the news and distribute it via Moodle as a video newscast. Hmmm…

Johnny knows that they can use Moodle’s blogging module to do this. He shows Jane and Joe how the blogs work. He splurges on a decent web cam, some inexpensive lights, a good microphone and a green screen. Why the green screen? He knows that the students will want to jazz up their webcasts with cool backgrounds.

And Slim is simply elated. Several coaches have become involved in the booster club project and have begun steering their athletes to it. And several teachers have joined the effort. They are already very busy, but they really care about their students and are willing to pitch in. At a meeting of the freshmen academy teachers, Slim shows off his pet project. He tells the teachers that their trail blazing efforts are benefiting students beyond their academy and he thanks them for the time and effort they have invested in showing the way. The teachers are grateful for his kind words. It is nice to be appreciated.

May

The month of May is just crazy. Jane has neither the time nor the inclination to learn any new Moodle skills, but she is gratified when she realizes that she has, in one short year, grown so much as a teacher. She is extremely proud of her students’ progress, of course.

Johnny makes his move. Yes, everyone is tired and time is short. But don’t they want to produce a little webcast before the year ends? Just one? Jane and Joe agree. They are willing to stay after school with a couple of eager students. Johnny sticks around, too. It turns out that the only things they need him for are to show them how to edit out background noise and to go get the pizza. The webcast is well-received in the math and science classes. Johnny, again, invites the other teachers to take a look and several want in on this. Could there not be a regular Freshmen Academy Webcast? Of course there could be!

Jane is looking forward to the summer not only because she needs a break, but also because she has a million ideas about how to improve her online learning space and she can’t wait to get started. In fact, she has already spoken to Joe and another colleague about her great idea for a global warming course that could be great…

Johnny pulls Jane aside before the end of the year and thanks her for her efforts. His gratitude is sincere and Jane responds that the year would have been less wonderful without his support. She, too, is sincere. Man, next year is going to be great!

Slim wants to take part in the next round of training. He has become convinced that online learning can be a valuable addition to what is already offered at the school and he wants to build a course for induction teachers at his school. He can’t wait for August!

Not a bad first year.