Moodlin’ around with t MacBook Airs at Patto
Teachers, students making use of the Moodle in the classroom The website can be accessed in different ways, giving the teachers a new way to keep assignments updated for students By Tom Sarsfield
T
he Moodle gives a wide array of resources for the teacher to use to augment their lesson structure. Jamie Richter, technology specialist for Pattonville, describes Moodle as, “A one-stop shop for teachers.” This web-based program gives teachers the ability to disseminate resources that they would not otherwise be able to share with their students. Among other things, the
Moodle allows teachers to create forums, glossaries, Wikis, online tests, assignments, quizzes and polls. On the official Moodle website, it describes itself as a “social constructionist pedagogy.” Effectively, this means that the Moodle aims at creating an environment to be used by teachers, for the purposes of building onto the existing classroom activity. What makes the Moodle better is that teachers are doing all of this for free. “There is no cost for Pattonville
to use the Moodle,” Richter said. Pattonville’s Moodle resides on a separate server operated and maintained by Moodle. So, it is not entirely dependent on the school for support, with the exception of the Internet server, which is needed for students to log on at school. Richter said the Moodle is designed to make it easier on students. “They have everything in one place now. There is no need to go to a bunch of individual teacher websites.”
Not everybody in the school agrees with using the Moodle. History teacher Leslie Scoopmire feels it’s easier to have everything on her website. “I don’t think that [Moodle] is dependable enough yet,” she said. Sophomore Warren Li does not have a problem with the Moodle, but just how the teachers are using it. “It’s a cool idea, but the teachers aren’t utilizing it enough yet.” Laptops were only recently handed out to students from Aug. 27-29, and while teachers received
training on Moodle during their professional development last year, they are still undergoing the transition of using the Moodle in a classroom setting. Pattonville isn’t the only school using the Moodle. Over 67,000 organizations and 59 million people across 221 countries use Moodle in their professional settings. Not all of these organizations are schools, either. For example, the Filipino Army uses it to complement its forces.v