Welcome ORVSD Grant Folks
Spring break is over so I thought I would send you all a little announcement via our ORVSD Community Forum. To begin I would like to thank you for attending the training prior to Spring Break. It was really nice to put a face to the email.
I also appreciate the feedback most of you gave us in the grant training questionnaire. On that note; however, some of you did not complete the questionnaire and we would really appreciate it if you would do so. So if you did not complete the questionnaire for what ever reason (left early, brain dead, long drive, etc.) please do the following:
- Go to my ORVSD course (http://oetc.orvsd.org/moodle/) then click on ORVSD Grant Training March 20-21 link under the sub heading Course Categories -Miscellaneous.
- Once inside the ORVSD Grant Training March 20-21 course scroll down to course subject #7 and click on Individual ORVSD Grant Training Questionnaire
As for the rest of the group who completed the Individual ORVSD Grant Training Questionnaire we ask that you please address the following questions in this ORVSD Community Forum:
- What ideas do you have for the ORVSD site? What does it need? What would you like to see it address in the future?
- What do you need on the homepage? What do you like about the homepage? On the contrary, what do you not like?
- Give me some ideas of what you would like to see in the May training? (What would you like to see more time spent on? What do you need to have done by ORVSD at or prior to the May 19-20 training in order to develop and administer your region/district training? What new piece/type of content/tools would like to see?
Moodle example with students
To me the most benifical thing would be to see how a full moodle works. For example if I have 30 students per class, all of which have done an assignment, quiz or forum etc. What does it look like when students have done work and then I need to evaluate it. The usefulness lies in understanding how a moodle is being used and what are some fundamental best practices. I recall that the Redmond school district has some working moodles. Maybe they can model one?
Moodle in depth
Site and May Training
As for the site, I find it easy to find my Moodle, but difficult to get to find others. Perhaps a 'search Moodles' option is called for?
Also, I think Mahara was too difficult and 'My-spacey.' I think Joomla(CMS) with a pre-designed template would be more suited for E-Profiles/Plans.
The best part of ORVSD hosting this stuff is capacity. Plans/profiles have to be retained for 7-10 years, with student's posting 'verification' of skills (such as powerpoints, movies, reports, etc.), that adds up to be terabytes upon terabytes of capacity the District doesn't have to provide.
It would be nice to have attendees bring Moodle backups of classes they would be willing to share. AND/OR show the repository & add a Questions exchange? (Would like to see additional lower High School courses in Repository.)
It would also be cool (in addition to the exchange) to have a Moodle Tools where you can host Flash tools, How-to's on embedding, etc.
Look forward to seeing everyone in May!
-Josh Kesecker
Technology Coordinator, Region 18 ESD
Good ideas
Thanks for the great feedback, Josh!
Re "Search Moodles": Interesting idea. I'm not sure how to do it offhand. I suppose we could do a pull-down that allows you to select which school's Moodle site you want to visit. I'll put some thought into it and try to get something up for testing before the next training.
Re Mahara/Joomla: I agree that Mahara is not the ideal tool. It seems to work well for some, but it's definitely not the end-all-be-all of social networking/content publishing sites. That's why we're also planning on offering Drupal-based sites with an education-focused set of templates - including e-portfolios - as an alternative for sites that are not finding Mahara a good fit. We looked at Joomla as an option, but found Drupla to be a somewhat more flexible and powerful platform.
Re howtos & tools: We're definitely looking at collecting a library of howtos - both as text as well as possibly video and audio. I'm also working on developing a more in-depth repository site that contains not only complete courses, but also discrete learning objects - quizzes, lesson plans, activities, etc. - and a search engine that indexes them all so they can be easily found.
-Greg
ideas for ORVSD
I like screencasting.
I think it would be helpful if you developed a library of Camtasia/Captivate videos (there's an open source solution as well--CamStudio) that let users revisit some of the processes we learned in March.
I like your idea of incorporating Google Tools.
Perhaps a look at some effective Web 2.0 tools might be helpful. (I like jottit.com, the instant wiki that is filter-friendly in our district and doesn't require an email address, but can be password-moderated.)
May 19, 20 ideas: Setting aside some time to simply revisit what we did in March would be helpful. Hear from those who have delivered trainings (i.e. Corin from WESD has done so already and will deliver on April 16 as well. I'm attending to see what 'works' for the participants as well as the presenters.)
Hear other participants' ideas about scheduling/delivering their trainings.
Perhaps even talk budget. I'm attending, but I don't have a clear vision of how much we've spent and have to spend, deadlines to deliver trainings, etc. I know some of this can/should be covered by a visit with our administrator, but your insights/advice would be helpful.
The homepage is fine. Again, if you want to add a list of video or screenshot tutorials, I'm thinking that might be helpful for us and for future visitors to the site.
And with that...I'll sign off.
th
Tim Haag Curriculum and Technology Support Teacher Greater Albany Public Schools Albany, OR 97321 tim.haag@albany.k12.or.us
Re: ideas
We're definitely looking at adding some sort of video howtos. Haven't worked out the details yet but they're on the list. We're going to be greatly expanding the materials available under the "Help" link, but perhaps a "howto" link in the "Resources" section would be a good idea, too. Can't have too many links to help, can we?
You refer to "Web 2.0 tools". Sadly, that term has been so buzzword-ized that it lacks much real meaning any more. Can you be more specific beyond jottit.com?
By the way, since Google purchased jotspot.com and re-released its wiki tool as Google Sites, that it one of the things that can be used via the Google tools, both individually as well as through the ORVSD-managed versions.
-Greg
Screencasting
Excellent Idea!
We use Camtasia for training vids as well.
Perhaps a repository @ ORVSD?