Day 9: Utilizing Lesson in Moodle

Today was our second-to-last day and we spent it learning about lesson in Moodle. It is a powerful tool that is highly underused. The shear amount of planning it takes to use lesson effectively makes it too time consuming for teachers to tackle. This did not daunt my group! They diligently created, edited, revised and made lessons. Some had technical difficulties that hindered their progress. How can you create the lesson, try to make the question page, save it and have it not available? Especially when it still appears on the course page! Also, one poor girl had all most of her topics simply disappear and the 'Add a resource' and 'Add an activity' went missing from the topic she did have remaining. The solution was to redo it all. :(

There was continuation of previous work: building questions in the question bank, finishing rubrics in projects and embedding videos in courses. It was grand to listen to them work with each other, helping each other solve the issues that arose. They have been looking in Moodle.org for solutions and finding more information about the things they are trying to do. They are resourceful and helpful and generous. My work with educators in Dominica last year left me unconvinced that teaching practices would change once I left. So it was quite a compliment when one of the IT guys observing my group said, "For a change, I think these teachers will actually use the things they are learning". I agree. I see them making things to use in their classrooms. It is satisfying!

I am not sure if I have mentioned how traditional the school settings are here. Teachers are called 'Miss' and 'Sir' by their students. I hear "Miss! Miss!" every day. On a particularly difficult day, I hear it way too much! To give you an idea of what it is like, here is a set of classroom rules from the school I am working in:

If you cannot read that, it says:

"301 [Room number]

Class Rules

Respect all teachers

Show respect & kindness to each other

Keep the classroom clean

Always sit properly on the chairs

Do not deface school property

Leave your seat ONLY with permission

Speak softly at ALL times

Cell phones, MP3s, laptops should be OFF

Be honest, do not steal or gamble

Eat outside of the classroom

Stand when a teacher comes in

ENJOY LEARNING!!!"

Now I know most of these apply to a typical classroom in Canada, but our students do not stand when a teacher enters the room, rarely wait for permission to leave their seats and speak softly only when they are unsure of the answer they are giving! And many of us are trying to use cell phones and laptops as part of the learning process. 

Tomorrow we say goodbye. I hope all of these teachers will stay in contact with me, but I know I will be lucky if even a few actually do.

Day 8 Dominica: More Moodling

Another fantastic day! This group is Moodling like crazy. We went through course settings and embedding. At the same time, they learned about SchoolTube and Voki. They enjoyed this so much, I may have to show them ImageChef, BigHugeLabs and Blabberize.

They embedded video and web images on the course page, on a web page within their course and in a block on the side. They also played with the HTML code to resize the images so they would sit side-by-side on the screen. Some continued to work on quizzes as well.

We also began setting up the gradebook for their courses. Weighting of categories and items took a while to figure out, but we got it.

Yesterday, one teacher brought me a bag of snacks - Tamarind Balls, Coconut Tablet, Gooseberry Jam, and what I would call Peanut Brittle, but she had a different name for it. Today she brought me a bracelet with my Zodiac sign on it. Another student brought me mangoes. Did I mention how much I am enjoying this group?

 Not much else to report, though. We only have a day and a half left together! So sad. Tomorrow will be building a lesson in Moodle. Scary stuff!

Day 7 Dominica: Moodle Quiz

Today the teachers began working in the courses I built for them. We have been playing a little with various assignments and links, but now it gets serious!

So I took them through a step-by-step of quizzes. We discussed the various settings such as unlimited attempts and the power of immediate feedback. They are all excited about getting this done as they will not have to carry papers back and forth between home and school. They are also excited that the quizzes are marked for them. They experienced how much work it is to put all the questions, responses and feedback into a quiz, but they also noted how lasting the work will be.

They are a traditional group. They certainly did not like the idea of a student getting 100% on a second attempt at a quiz. Most felt there should be a penalty given if a student got a question wrong on his or her first attempt. However, they could also see that there could be learning for that student while figuring out the right answer. One exclaimed, 'They are going to get a heavy penalty for a wrong answer' another noted that the students take it much more seriously if they know ahead of time that each wrong answer will cost them, even if it is only a small penalty. I hope to return to this discussion later in the week.

The day went well. They created quizzes consisting mainly of multiple choice questions and then they tried the quizzes of their colleagues. This allowed them to see the results they would get when their students took a quiz. They were impressed and we all had a good laugh when one teacher went to manually mark the essay question on her Social Studies test to read the first response, "Miss, are you serious?" Let's say we can't excel at everything.

As usual, we set the plan for tomorrow before leaving class today. We will cover course administration and embedding objects in a course or web page. This will also allow a little playing with various web tools.

This is a great group of teachers. Have I mentioned that before? I am going to miss them. Hopefully we will keep in touch. What are the chances?

Days 5 and 6 Moodle and Access

 Friday was a busy day. We started by trying to finish the projects and the work in Microsoft Office. The time after snack was spent introducing Moodle. Instead of having them all work in their own course pages, I gave them each one topic [I used their names as headings] and had them upload their projects and create an assignment. This worked out quite well. The day finished with a discussion of what they needed for the final week. Many wanted to learn more about Access and Moodle, with a couple who wanted to complete their projects and learn more about Excel. I spent the weekend building course pages and preparing lessons for Access.

Monday was spent getting Access databases together. I had a series of five lessons prepared. We went through the lessons, took the self-checks, practiced by looking at examples and completed assignments. It is so refreshing to work with these teachers; they work diligently on any task they are given. They created tables. They related the data in one table to another. They even created forms. We had planned to do a little work Moodle after snack, but we did not. They were very focused on getting the work done in Access. When some of the computers did not work in that first week, I allowed them to bring personal computers to class. This was a great idea until I realized they all have varying versions of Access. Most have 2003, but others have 2007 or 2010. By the end of the day on Monday, I had gained more experience in these programs then I will every actually need.

The day ended with the men laughing. This is a good sign, right?

Dominican Weekend

So it is now Day Seven of instruction in Dominica and I am behind in posts. WAY behind. I am going to cram Day 5 and Day 6 together, but first I will tell you about my weekend. Friday after work we went to see a couple of sights: Emerald Pool and Mero Beach. My Facebook friends have already seen this picture of me on my anniversary, without Alvin for the fourth year in a row. The Cafe at Mero Beach was named 'Romance Cafe'. Maybe next year I will be home. Maybe.

Saturday was spent preparing materials for Monday's class. This was time consuming, but my class wanted to learn more about Access and so that is what I did. Normally I would just take screen shots of the steps to guide users through the process. Problem? I have Access 2010 and the computers in the lab I am working in have Access 2003. BIG difference. So I spent a lot of time on Microsoft's website gathering tutorials and putting together PowerPoint presentations for lessons as well as various assignments and quizzes. Since part of the course is instruction about courses in Moodle, I tried to use a variety of the tools so they get a feel for the platform before we jump into creating courses.

I fit in a pedicure from a spa called 'Spanish' where a couple of women from the Dominican Republic work. It is little more than a closet. The water is taken from the bathroom sink and heated in a electric kettle. My feet soaked in a foot bath with just enough water to cover them. However, the lady vigorously removed all rough skin off my feet and proceeded to scrub my feet like they have never been washed before. She did a great job on the nails, too, I think. There was so much going on in that little room, people coming and going and loud music blaring ... it was not the same 'spa' experience one gets back home. Not by a long shot!

It was a rainy weekend here. The rain wasn't misty or light, it poured at times through the night and day. The sun was hidden behind clouds and the temperature dropped quite a bit. This made it better for our huge day out on Sunday. We went up to Freshwater and Boeri Lakes. The view of the valley from the roadside on the way up was spectacular. The hike to Boeri Lake is described as moderate. The sign indicated it was a 45 minute walk. It was something, let me tell you. Up, up, up and down, up, down, across a stream, along a path to get to a lake that is surrounded by boulders and is filled with cold water. The lake is covered with steam coming from Boiling Lake, just over the peak. All three lakes are craters in the same dormant volcano. Freshwater and Boeri are cold, but Boiling Lake [you guessed it] is too hot to enter. The hike to Boiling Lake takes something like six hours and is quite challenging. I don't think I will ever see Boiling Lake.


The next stop [of which I sadly have no pictures] was to swim through Ti Tou Gorge. These rocks have been carved out by water and an amazing channel has been created. You can swim through the gorge to the falls on the other side, the source of the water that has over centuries carved away the stone. The water was deep and I was quite nervous. I turned back once, concerned by the sound of the falls and the depth of the water. After being assured of a ledge somewhere in the middle of the cavern to rest on, I went back in. It was fabulous; no regrets.

The day ended with a stop at Trafalgar Falls, which are actually two falls; one side has hot water and the other cold. I visited the falls last year, but this time I went further over the rocks and into the pool of cold water from the falls on the right. Then we went carefully back over the rocks made slippery by the rain to the pools of hot water from the falls to the left. I was very tired by the time I got back to the hotel, but it was an excellent day. I managed to get more work done, but called it a night before 10 pm.