light in the shadows

After a false start (abandoned due to the February 4 earthquake) I made it to Wellington for a Moodle 2.0 workshop.  Details here.  If anyone from the TALO group is reading this (especially Leigh) then probably best to move on.

I still value Moodle as a Walled Garden.  I see this as a feature, not a bug.  Moodle 2 is a bit tough at first.  But I’ve taken a philosophical view: new users (or even old users) must experience it first.  Hence I do an EXPERIENCE  > CRITIQUE (DESIGN) > BUILD trajectory. And I think now (for my sanity as well as the good of the populace) it is actual essential for real and meaningful learning.  I try not to put myself in a position to do anything in less than 3 hours.  With snacks, pen and paper and space preferably.
How can you build a course in something using tools you have not experienced as a user?

Field trip to a Moodle course

I do an excursion to a coffee course:

It’s really nothing fancy: most people can find some strong feelings about coffee (either for or against) and you can see a few things in action  like forum posting, comments (in the comments block), watching a video, following a link, downloading a document and actually submitting an assignment.
Then glossary, wiki . .   maybe.

The critical question for my sessions has been “OK, put your teacher hat on now.  You’ve experienced a forum.  Of what value could this be in your classrooms”

Bullet points.  The value of Moodle for learning:

• Enhances communication
• Improves collaboration and interaction (providing some good tools)
• Enables file and link sharing.
• Saves time (Hmm!!)

Upcoming workshop: Monday and Tuesday of next week.  Four hours, including 30 minutes to get logged on and a really nice healthy afternoon tea. This time I think is the critical mass to prevent inoculation and actually infect.  Get some experience of good practice.  Build some relationships.

However, with the latest school project, bringing the science department and the social sciences online (with Moodle) I have made a course subject specific, and I am on the scrounge for some screen snaps of good Moodle courses.

I’ve pondered for weeks how to make a first post on Moodle 2.  Here is my wish list.  I got the idea from Mark Deschler’s wish list post.  He has some great comments on how to get involved.  I’m always surprised with 1,000,000 people on Moodle.org why so few vote in the tracker.

You will notice there is nothing here about Mobile access, web 2.0, RSS.  The people I work with at the moment are not really there yet.

There is a little angst over some aspects of Moodle 2: the filepicker, the navigation, the lack of plugins, video mishandling.  But there is progress coming.

Wishist

a Improved forums

This is my top priority. It was in train for Moodle 2.1 but has gon from the roadmap now.  Most of the items in this list have a tracker items, some have code as well.

1. Save draft posts (How often do we want to write in two sessions?)
2. Subscription at the thread level (Update: requested in 2004 with a huge number of votes tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-1626 now looking like some progress)
3. Ability to freeze a thread
4. Sticky threads
5. Improved ability to mark forum posts for followup
6. Export at the end of a course
7. There are a few more . ..

Obviously the Open University ForumNG (docs.moodle.org/en/ForumNG) has a lot of these features. There has been talk of getting this into the core. (moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=137549) Continue reading Moodle 2 wish list

I have not been quite sure of the future of this blog.  Personal or Work?  Business?  Personal learning?  Probably a mix.

I have moved on from the University of Canterbury.  Below is my old bio.  (From uctl.canterbury.ac.nz/derek-chirnside which is still there as I write this). I’ll be sorting a new version soon.  If I had bothered to update it for 2009, it would have said: “Moodle is in, we now are making the transition to using Moodle.  We have a model for the transition: dividing up the faculties, each with a UCTL contact, introductory workshops and specialist follow on workshops.  Hundreds of courses making the transition in one way or another.

Now I’m doing a contracting work, mainly around workplace learning, staff development and organisational learning – all with an online aspect, and all involving some form of Learning Management System.  (Organisational Learning: there’s a surprise – I’ve been interested in this for a while, but never really had a chance to use any of this except more at a personal level)

(My Old) Profile

I have a background in Physics teaching, having made a switch from Chemistry and Maths. Since 1977 I have taught in a range of schools and settings including intermediate, High School and one year (1998 – at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and CPIT) in Tertiary.

In terms of Educational Design, prior to 2000 I did not even know such a field existed.  However I found I had been doing it for years in a range of teacher professional development projects (including Denis Chapman’s wonderful Riccarton Project) and many national science and physics education conferences. in December 2000 I took over from Alan Cutting at the Christchurch College of Education working in quite a remarkable context: the POLO distance education programme.

In the distance education side of my life I am indebted to Prof Mike Wells (now Professor Emeritus, Montana State University-Bozeman) who taught a distance course I was part of in 1998 (“Real World Problem Solving”, via First Class)  Here he modeled many of the practices I later adopted as my own.  I was ready for 2001 when the courses at the College moved to having a serious online presence with the development of Interact, our home grown learning management system.

In 2002 I was part of the establishment of Learning and Information Services at the College of Education: one of the few institutional restructures I have seen that produced an unequivovably better result than what was left behind.  With Maureen, Rosemary, Kerry, Glen, Bruce, Donna, Rob, Fiona, Angie, Des and Tim we sought to integrate services and support around flexible and distance courses.  This was conceived over some wine and cheese during an Educause conference in Adelaide.

In 2005 I shifted to the UCTL at the University of Canterbury, first on secondment and later as part of the merger.

My role here at UCTL mainly centres around course design, both online and in flexible or blended courses, with some staff development and policy involvement. My specialty areas are blogs and wikis in knowledge management and learning, communities and e-learning.

I use ICT, but I resist people defining me in this light: I am interested in teaching and learning strategies, particularly those that assist engaged or active learning (both online and not). Learning theory has traditionally been classified in three: behaviourist, cognitivist and constructivist.  I see a fourth as significant: social practice and situated learning.

Online learning, using online tools: should help improve learning outcomes, save time and help us feel better about our teaching.

Current Activities

Recently: Moodle trial, podcasting workshops, using video clips in online courses.

December 2008. Currently: I am working with Moodle transition (Gradebook, Groups, Forums and wikis), getting StudentNet set up for another year, helping with some case study approaches to classes and a new project with Massey.

Recent Presentations

2007 Oporto, Portugal. Workshop with THEKA (midway through a three year professional development project): Communities of Practice: leadership practices and planning.  Link to Blog Post on this .

2007 Chuxiong University, China: Teaching Strategies to Support Active Learning
Two days of workshops, mainly physics-teacher oriented, but tons of others came.

October 2008: Podcasting Workshops (Tai Pe Tuni Polytechnic, Greymouth)

November 2008: The use of Web 2.0 tools (Blogs and wikis. tagging and RSS) to support ongoing Professional Learning.  Karero Learning Centre, Greymouth.