Thursday, March 24, 2011

Monitoring My GAME plan

Hi Everyone,
I am so sorry to be posting a day late--the week just gets away on me.

I am always looking for creative ideas to ignite interest in students--to keep them engaged and interested. Sharing with colleagues is one way I can do this--I also stay abreast of creative ideas that others have used successfully via journals--Learning and Leading with Technology and other publications have been very helpful to me. Finally, I enjoy reading colleagues' blogs to learn about new websites or novel ways to use familiar technology. As I have mentioned, some of my favorite ideas have come from the Walden learning community.

One challenge that remains for me to work on is my organizational skills. If I don't immediately bookmark a great resource I will forget it--I tend to bookmark on a variety of computers in a haphazard way. I am a very NF learner--and I want to develop my ST abilities.

One technology tool I'd like to explore more fully is Moodle. I'd like to work with this to a great extent and need to make some time.

I look forward to others' thoughts.

5 comments:

  1. Hi Susan,

    What is moodle? I am not sure if it was in the last class, perhaps it was, but there was a piece of technology that was shared that I really liked that kept track of websites we go on without having to bookmark it. It was the one assignment where we needed to find a lot of different websites for the unit we were creating and you can categorize the sites.

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  2. I am the same way when it comes to learning about what I consider "new" technology resources. If I don't bookmark the resource and take detailed notes on it, I might as well never come across it. While I am always interested in learning new things through our course resources and other professional learning opportunities, I find I learn more through our interactions in our course discussions and blogs. I don't know if we have all just gotten accustomed to engaging one another or what, but everything just seems easier when our classes openly discuss it. I wish I had that type of interaction with my own staff at school. What are some of your ideas for implementing a tool like Moodle? Good luck.

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  3. Hi Cherese,
    Moodle http://moodle.org/ lets you create online learning environments--it looks really exciting to me--I want to find some time to play with it more.
    I wonder if you are thinking of social bookmarking? That is also really valuable.

    If you get to play with Moodle at all, let me know what you think. I wish I had more time to explore....

    Thanks for posting to my blog.

    Susan

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  4. Hi Ross,
    I know what you mean--I learn SO MUCH from our discussions--I get my favorite resources from our classmates sharing their sites--the great thing about this way of sharing is that another teacher has used the resource--likes it--and has tips for use--this is something you don't get from a print resource. On the discussion board I can ask someone "how did it go? How did your students like the activity" and get a lot of valuable information.

    One goal I had for Moodle is to create a few basic activities that students could work on at home. My nephew is homeschooled and I was thinking I could make up some fun learning activities for him. (I am not teaching a class of my own now so he would be my "pilot" student.)

    I can see Moodle as a great tool for connecting home and school--as a possible way to increase interest in homework. It could be another way to develop learning communities.

    Thank you for posting to my blog.

    Susan

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  5. Susan - I also have a problem with organizational skills. Last year I lost a flash drive that had so many valuable lessons, etc. that I use in the classroom throughout the year. I didn't find it for 8 months and then suddenly appeared in my drawer. By that time I had already spent many hours re-doing many of the lessons and documents I had lost. Now, I not only save to a flashdrive, but also save on my PC. I am finally realizing that if I just take a couple of extra minutes to put things away properly, it can save me hours in time down the road.

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