My First "Moodle"

It's a few days before the new year, and I finally have time to comment on what has happened during the two weeks before the Winter Break. (As I understand it, if you call it "Christmas Break" the Thought Police come and shoot you) I finally launched a Moodle with my Freshmen. "Thank you, Larry Tuura." Anyway, it was a lot of fun, albeit fairly confusing. It's for a class called "Life Skills" which has no fixed curriculum & is basically a bunch of brain building exercises. Those of us in the Alternative Program have a hard time with this class, because it is so nebulous...but at least it gives me the chance to force the students to experiment with stuff that they don't get a chance to work with very often. So I bring the kids down to the media center and have Tina "The goddess of all things technical" Christopherson show the students how to do it and WOW...it sort of worked!!! The kids generally got into it and had fun.
Here were my frustrations: I work with some kids that have attitude issues. About 3 of these kids could not figure out what to do after about 2 minutes, so they pouted and stomped their feet like four year olds. Instead of simply raising their hands to ask for help, they started cussing and stewing. If you don't hold their hand and show them every aspect, then they give up immediately. I get so tired of this that it is difficult to explain. Never the less, most of the kids got into it and even had fun.
Here are my hopes: I really, really, really want to use this stuff in my classes. To me, it is all very exciting. I think that there is great potential for using a Moodle, or a Wiki in particular, in a Social Studies class. (I am very excited to learn how to use a Wiki over the coming weeks) Many of the students that I work with have no familiarity what so ever with this technology. So exposing them to the use of this could be a big advantage for them. Furthermore, it is a great way to get them to think beyond their normal borders.
Long Term Goals: At this point, I would really like to be able to use at least a portion of this stuff for a part of every chapter that I teach...especially in my World History class.
BTW: I am NOT afraid to admit my own mistakes in front of my classes....which can be plenty. I forgot to plug the mobile lab into the proper computer socket & I loaded the second Moodle into the wrong spot. I point these out to the kids to tell them that you really learn best when you make mistakes. If I can admit & learn from them, then they can do it too. It's the best way to grow. (I call it the theory "that you never pee on an electric fence twice.") So, no need for fear there my charming little gremlins...just go with it. Hopefully these guys will get the point and grow from this. Practice makes habit. (If not, sorry to say but, McDonalds is always hiring.)

To quote Spalding from the movie Caddy Shack: "Double Turds"

Well, I have tried for a few days now, but I still can't seem to figure out how to get a posting on Wikipedia. So my cunning plans to see how long it would take for the "Democracy of the Web" to edit a mistake has not turned out as I had hoped. Oh well, I'll keep trying on & off over time. If for no other reason than that Fat Lorenzo's truly does deserve a mention in an encylopedia somewhere.
On another note, I am stumbling through the initial stages of a new project for the students in my "Life Skills" class. This class has always been a work in progress. There is no set curriculum for it. Last year I began the process of having the kids keep a journal. It generally worked very well. However, this year it has actually worked out to well. I have 30 students, give or take, who turn these journals in to me every Friday, and each one expects a written response come Monday, and they get upset if I don't have a decent response to each and every one of them. The fact of the matter is that I simply can't do it anymore. It has caused me to spend half of the weekend responding...and that isn't much of an exageration. Therefore, since this class has encouraged us to use technology that is what I am going to do. I have to make sure that all of my students know their school codes to get online. Then I have to get them all to set up a Yahoo account if they don't already have one. Then, I will spend one class day getting them all to set up a blog on this site. I will have a second account here that they can all link to.
My goal is that every Monday I will post a single question for the week. Hopefully it will be thought provoking enough and will tie in with a theme for the week. The students will have time in class on Mondays, but need to respond by no later than Thursday. I'm sure that it will take quite a bit of time to work all the bugs out, but I am hopeful. It will be very good for the kids who do not have computers at home. It will certainly be much nicer for me too, since I won't have to carry 30 journals home in my back pack every Friday.

Second time around...but pizza is included!

Last Tuesdays technology class was very interesting to me. The second half of the class centered around Wikipedia & the use of the web as a classroom resource. So now I am in the process of trying to put my own entry onto the Wikipedia site. (It's much harder than I thought)
I will confess two items that gave me initial concerns about Wikipedia. #1. The first time I came across "Wiki" I don't actually remember much about it. I don't even remember what I was looking for...searching for information on some obscure part of a country most likely. At any rate, I remember that I saw this odd looking site that struck me as being something some college kids had whipped together. Actually, I will admit that I thought it looked rather comical. I recall that I saw this site again and again over time, and that when I would go back days or weeks later various aspects of information from the very same site had changed. I thought, "Well, what the heck is going on? Where did that info go that I had been looking at?" #2. The second time I heard about Wikipedia was through "The Onion," the satirical news magazine. It did not leave me with a positive impression.
I suppose that my main concern about using a site like this for information remains the same as my initial concern...although lessened considerably. How can anyone be sure that the information present is truly accurate? The idea that there are thousands of editors checking & re-checking information is great. However, say one of my students is doing research and he happens upon information that an editors has simply NOT gotten to yet. Oops!
Now my thought is as always, and as I would assume any teacher would second, that students have to use a variety of sources for any type of research....just like they always did. Problem solved. Ta da!

As far as my project is concerned, here is my goal: (We'll see if I can really pull it off. If I do, then I will simply edit this present portion of the blog.)
As far as my extremely biased opinion is concerned, there are only two places in the Twin Cities to get any truly excellent pizza; Cosseta's in St. Paul & Fat Lorenzo's in Minneapolis. Every other pizza place is second rate. (And let's not even sully the conversation by commenting on Chain pizza parlours) Well, Fat Lorenzo's is close to where I live and will even deliver to me even though I am 4 blocks out of range. (It pays to be a valued customer) I am going to put information about Fat Lorenzo's in Wikipedia. I took pictures of the outside this weekend. Hopefully I can get some inside shots as well. I will make one mistake about the restaurant. I will count the days to see how long it takes some editor to make a change on this Wiki spot. It's probably not all that fair, since it will be an obscure entry, but what the heck. Give it the old "College try," huh? Also, IF I CAN figure out how to do it, I will include a link to the spot for any fellow classmates to pop over and guest edit. Wish me luck.