It has been a long week!

We continue the move forward. As a school we have abandoned Quia as a teacher course site and will move the whole school, grades 4-12 to Moodle next year.

Why Moodle? Why use Moodle to enhance classroom learning? It’s a question that many asked. Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Enable greater communication and collaboration in the classroom, anytime/anywhere.
2. Enables safe modeling of social networking tools (e.g. blogs, wikis, online chat, RSS, audio/video podcasting).
3. Easy sharing of videos embedded in Moodle web pages.
4. Allows for online/offline assignments, individual and group work, online assessment that can be graded or ungraded
5. Central location parents, students, teachers and other can access.
6. Access can be controlled to safe-guard copyrighted items used under fair use
7. Calendar of classroom-related events
8. Paperless assessment via quizzes, uploaded student documents with option for teacher comments.
9. Modules that include questionnaire, photo galleries to collect and share information with constituents.
10. The Moodle environment includes a platform for several features including: assignments, participant profiles, chats, wikis, an interactive glossary, e-mail, lessons that the teacher can create, quizzes, surveys, and workshops. Chats, forums, wikis, and workshops enable students to work collaboratively.
11. Students forget their homework, are away sick, on holidays or traveling for sports and can’t get the course material? Material is always available online.
12. For those parents who want to be involved in their child’s education. (and we know that student success is dependent on parent involvement) Everything will be available to them online.
13. E-learning provides parents and students with flexibility, allowing students to work at their own pace.
14. Technology to support the creation and sharing of knowledge.

All material will be differentiated to meet the student’s individual learning needs and available online.

Wikis, forums, and chats serve as useful platforms for brainstorming, discussions, and debates.

On the teacher’s side of Moodle, there is a platform for creating and delivering lessons, which the students can access independently, or in groups. Teachers can also post resources, including text or links to web pages that the students can use to complete their assignments and for further independent learning. Feedback for any task can be given in plain text or HTML. If teachers wanted they now have the ability to go completely paperless.

The train has left the station… We are on the move!