Thursday, February 22, 2007
PAETC Day 1: Moodle and Podcasting
Today was a half-day of workshops. There were two workshops held at 1 and another set of two held at 3. I attended Marcie Hull's session on Moodle and Brian Gall's session on podcasting. The other two were Jean-Claude Bradley's on Blogs and Wikis and Michelle Sims' on Powerpoint. I hope to have resources to link to for those.
Marcie gave a nice overview of the Science Leadership Academy and how Moodle fits into its philosophy. Many of the notes for her talk can be found on her website. She talked about Moodle as an open source application that allows a lot of flexibility and showed us some of the ways they're using it. Not only is it their course management tool, but it's also being used for professional development for the teachers and as a communication tool. In addition, they've connected Moodle to ELGG, an open source blogging tool, where students often write reflective pieces. Reflection is one of the cornerstones of the philosophy at SLA, so ELGG as well as journaling tools within Moodle provide ways for students to reflect on the work they've done. I found lots of things about what Marcie had to say interesting, but two things really struck me. First, I thought the way they were building a community was fascinating. It was just teachers building their courses in isolation; there really did seem like there was a lot of collaboration. That collaboration is also part of the student community as well. Second, I thought it was interesting how organically things were developing and I think that's in part due to the nature of the tools they're using. They're able to adapt as they need to and able to adapt to individual needs. Moodle definitely seems like an interesting tool that's worth trying.
Brian did a nice presentation on podcasting. Because we didn't have access to the technology we needed, the presentation turned into a nice discussion instead of a hands-on workshop. Most of us in the room were familiar with podcasting and so we spent some time sharing ideas and talking about challenges we face as we're getting podcasting off the ground. All of us were using slightly different tools, so we talked about some of the pros and cons of Audacity, iTunes, GarageBand, Camtasia Studio, Breeze, and more. We also discussed some of the copyright issues related to podcasting and screencasting and the production issues. Brian showed us some examples of how podcasting is being used at Philadelphia University, many of them student created. I was interested in some that had students create a photo montage and talk about each photo and how it related to the course topics. There are so many interesting possibilities. It was nice to hear what others are doing and to brainstorm a little about what's next in podcasting.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow's lineup--should be a lot of interesting information.
Marcie gave a nice overview of the Science Leadership Academy and how Moodle fits into its philosophy. Many of the notes for her talk can be found on her website. She talked about Moodle as an open source application that allows a lot of flexibility and showed us some of the ways they're using it. Not only is it their course management tool, but it's also being used for professional development for the teachers and as a communication tool. In addition, they've connected Moodle to ELGG, an open source blogging tool, where students often write reflective pieces. Reflection is one of the cornerstones of the philosophy at SLA, so ELGG as well as journaling tools within Moodle provide ways for students to reflect on the work they've done. I found lots of things about what Marcie had to say interesting, but two things really struck me. First, I thought the way they were building a community was fascinating. It was just teachers building their courses in isolation; there really did seem like there was a lot of collaboration. That collaboration is also part of the student community as well. Second, I thought it was interesting how organically things were developing and I think that's in part due to the nature of the tools they're using. They're able to adapt as they need to and able to adapt to individual needs. Moodle definitely seems like an interesting tool that's worth trying.
Brian did a nice presentation on podcasting. Because we didn't have access to the technology we needed, the presentation turned into a nice discussion instead of a hands-on workshop. Most of us in the room were familiar with podcasting and so we spent some time sharing ideas and talking about challenges we face as we're getting podcasting off the ground. All of us were using slightly different tools, so we talked about some of the pros and cons of Audacity, iTunes, GarageBand, Camtasia Studio, Breeze, and more. We also discussed some of the copyright issues related to podcasting and screencasting and the production issues. Brian showed us some examples of how podcasting is being used at Philadelphia University, many of them student created. I was interested in some that had students create a photo montage and talk about each photo and how it related to the course topics. There are so many interesting possibilities. It was nice to hear what others are doing and to brainstorm a little about what's next in podcasting.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow's lineup--should be a lot of interesting information.
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