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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Moodle is an open source virtual learning environment that is coming to be used in more and more schools worldwide. History and Moodle complement each other perfectly in terms of content and delivery. This book will show you how to set up tasks and activities that will enable your students to forge a greater understanding of complex issues, bringing History into the 21st century.History Teaching with Moodle 2 presents new and exciting ideas for the delivery of History content making use of tried-and-trusted methods of teaching the subject. By following a sample course, you will find it easy to transform your existing lesson plans into a Moodle course that will become even more efficient, attractive, and useful over time. Make the past come to life using a range of tasks and activities that can consolidate learning for some, enhance understanding for others, and enthuse all. Learn how to add an RSS feed to your home page to display daily 'On this day in history' posts. Create a one-minute quiz about how the Second World War began. Post video footage of a trip to a castle and set some questions for students in anticipation of their next visit. Set up a wiki so that student groups can create their own story about 'murder at a monastery'. Moodle's built-in features allow students to get a better grasp of historical concepts and will rejuvenate their interest in the subject.
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Seitenzahl: 256
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
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Table of Contents
History Teaching with Moodle 2
History Teaching with Moodle 2
Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: June 2011
Production Reference: 1090611
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-849514-04-0
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Charwak A. ( <[email protected]> )
Credits
Author
John Mannion
Reviewers
Mary Cooch
Kyle Goslin
Susan Smith Nash
Acquisition Editor
Sarah Cullington
Development Editor
Meeta Rajani
Technical Editor
Ajay Shanker
Project Coordinator
Vishal Bodwani
Proofreader
Lynda Sliwoski
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Graphics
Nilesh R. Mohite
Production Coordinator
Kruthika Bangera
Cover Work
Kruthika Bangera
About the Author
John Mannion is from Manchester and has been a teacher in Primary and Secondary level education since September 1987, working in Manchester, Liverpool, and Madrid. He has worked at St. Gabriel's Independent Day School for Girls, Newbury, since January 1998. He is Head of ICT in Teaching & Learning and also teaches History.
I would like to thank my wife, Clare, and children, Louisa, Patrick, and Isobel for their understanding and encouragement. I owe a debt of gratitude to several professional colleagues whose contributions over the years have been inspirational Jim and Anne Keogh, Sue Cocker, Ian Edwards, and Ben Lewis. The staff and pupils of St.Gabriel's have been wonderfully supportive, consistently providing invaluable feedback. Lastly, I would like to thank Sean and Josie, Mary, Ger, and Cath, my first teachers!
About the Reviewers
Mary Cooch is the author of Moodle 2.0 First Look and Moodle 1.9 For Teaching 7-14 Year Olds, also published by Packt Publishing. A languages and geography teacher for 25 years, Mary is based at Our Lady's High School, Preston, Lancashire, UK, but now spends part of her working week traveling Europe showing others how to make the most of this popular Virtual Learning Environment. Known online as the moodlefairy, Mary runs a blog on www.moodleblog.org and may be contacted for consultation via the training center based in her school, www.ourlearning.co.uk.
Kyle Goslin is a researcher and Ph.D. student at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, Dublin and has been researching and developing Moodle plug-ins and all things e-learning for the last number of years. Kyle's main areas of research are e-learning, user interaction, and enriching e-learning environments.
You can find his website and blog at http://www.kylegoslin.ie.
I would like to thank Dr. Markus Hofmann for introducing me to e-learning and Moodle and showing me how it's a platform for every idea.
Susan Smith Nash is currently Director of Education and Professional Development for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma. She was associate dean for graduate programs at Excelsior College (Albany, NY). Previous to that, she was online courses manager at Institute for Exploration and Development Geosciences, and director of curriculum development for the College of Liberal Studies, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, where she developed a degree program curriculum for online courses. She also developed interfaces for courses as well as administrative and procedural support, support programmers, protocol and training manuals, and marketing approaches. She obtained her Ph.D. and M.A. in English and a B.S. in Geology from the University of Oklahoma. Nash blogs at E-Learning Queen (http://www.elearningqueen.com) and E-Learners (http://www.elearner.com), and has written articles and chapters on mobile learning, poetics, contemporary culture, and e-learning for numerous publications, including Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (3rd ed.), Mobile Information Communication Technologies Adoption in Developing Countries: Effects and Implications, Talisman, Press1, International Journal of Learning Objects, GHR, World Literature, and Gargoyle. Her latest books include Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques (Packt Publishing, 2010), E-Learners Survival Guide (Texture Press, 2009), and Klub Dobrih Dejanj (2008).
I'd like to express my appreciation to Poorvi Nair for demonstrating the highest level of professionalism and project guidance.
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Preface
Moodle is an e-learning platform that has transformed the way in which many teachers deliver their subject to students. Teachers who create courses for students can now build online versions with choices and possibilities that might not previously have existed. It has made this transition to online courses a straightforward and exciting process. The basic building blocks or modules such as forums, lessons, and workshops simply reflect good practice in the classroom. Moodle makes such tasks easier and more accessible. Other modules such as wikis, polls, chats, and databases encourage student collaboration and thus enhance the learning experience for students. Courses created with this technology provide reassurance to uncertain students and challenges to more able students.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Course Structure looks at different course formats, effective use of labels, and the creation of a simple forum.
Chapter 2, Create Attractive Courses demonstrates how images and word clouds should be used to enhance course pages.
Chapter 3, Adding Interactive Content focuses on important procedures including uploading of files and creating links for students to submit work. A glossary is also created.
Chapter 4, Quizzes looks at different types of learning objects that can be created and also demonstrates good practice in organizing questions using categories and the question bank.
Chapter 5, The Gradebook looks at ways in which the Gradebook module enables teachers to replicate their markbook electronically and use it for the collation of reports, target setting, and more.
Chapter 6, Student Collaboration examines ways in which students can be encouraged to work and learn together. The chapter looks at wikis, polls, and databases.
Chapter 7, Lessons and Blogs covers modules that reinforce learning. The first module enables teachers to create exciting content that captures their expertise and the second enables students to pursue independent learning.
Chapter 8, Using Xerte and Audacity looks closely at two examples of open source software that enable teachers to add rich content to their Moodle courses.
Chapter 9, Moodle Workshops demonstrates how this important module empowers teachers and students to conduct meaningful and rewarding peer-to-peer assessments of work.
What you need for this book
You need access to:
Who this book is for
This book is for History teachers who wish to make use of Moodle within their lesson plans and schemes of work. It is also suitable for aspiring and newly qualified teachers who are looking to extend their repertoire of skills at the chalkface! Teachers of any discipline would be able to extract ideas or improvise with the activities discussed in this book in order to add the constructive use of ICT to their teaching.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "Enter the following formula: =average([[5]],[[6]], [[7]])."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "We are going to use the Topics format in preference to the Weeks format or the Social format".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Course Structure
In classrooms far and wide vivid accounts of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and explanations of the siege engines of war are brought to life through the innovative use of ICT. The advent of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in recent years has added a whole new dimension to the use of ICT in the teaching of History. One VLE in particular seems to have been created with History teachers in mind because of its ability to capture their enthusiasm and expertise and facilitate the creation of vivid and dynamic courses that mimic effective History teaching practice.
Moodle—Ideal for teaching History
Moodle, the VLE in question:
Without being prescriptive in any way, Moodle brings together an arsenal of weapons to make the teaching of History even more exciting and relevant.
It enables a teacher to radically alter the pace of a lesson through the use of a quiz or a lesson. It challenges students to make informed judgments about the work of peers in forums, blogs, workshops, and interactive discussions. It creates opportunities for collaborative work in wikis and glossaries. It captures the expertise a teacher has to offer and makes it more accessible to:
"History Teaching with Moodle" includes a number of assumptions, which I have made with confidence. The activities and ideas will appeal to good teachers, and it will enthuse the young teacher starting out in the profession. It will occasionally challenge the History technophobe to say, "Actually, that is not a bad idea!". Some of those mentioned above will spot Moodle's potential to harness skills and expertise and do something different with them. Others will quickly develop opportunities for themselves to be heard in conversations where it has not always been the case, in the staffroom or the classroom. And some will just pick up the ball, run with it, and see where it takes them.
One further assumption is that you are in a position to begin building a course. It could be an entire Key Stage 3 course about:
The course may reflect the new modular approach to teaching GCSE History. It could be based upon:
The institution may have its own Virtual Learning Environment but limited contributions from the History department. Courses may not have progressed much beyond using them to host resources. Readers will hopefully be in a position to take up the teacher role to create tasks and also to test them using student accounts. If this is not the case, then it is likely that having patiently read the book, readers will be in a strong position to beat down the Senior Management's door and demand some help in getting the ball rolling. As a consequence of reading this book, the relationship with your technicians in the ICT Department will alter dramatically as the nature of requests becomes more challenging and diverse. "Is it possible to try to do this?" sounds much more interesting to an ICT technician than, "Please could you fix this!".
Moodle—the Extra Dimension
So what extra dimensions does a Moodle course offer to a History teacher? A few examples can only scratch the surface, but might help.
Re-invent your worksheets
Encourage students to collaborate
Get them using forums
History teachers are familiar with open-ended questions that bring the subject to life in discussion, debate, and presentation. The same questions can be put to work alongside Moodle's tools to provide a dynamic learning experience for students. They can evaluate each other's work in a workshop or investigate key features of an event in a lesson, quiz, or wiki. The permutations are endless and the opportunities for History teachers in particular, are mouth watering.
Creative use of tools within Moodle provides opportunities to get even more out of students because they recognize the value of the tools. Forums help them to concentrate on one reason why Hitler came to power whilst studying a collection of other reasons provided by their peers. They are thus more equipped to answer that detailed question which asks them to discuss at least three reasons and prioritize the most important.
Similarly, it becomes easier to compose an examination answer that requires explanation and discussion of more than one reason why Khruschev decided to deploy missiles in Cuba in 1962. The same forum becomes an ideal focal point for revision on the Cuban missile crisis. Students learn by doing and forums, wikis, lessons, and workshops allow them to do more whilst notionally appearing to do less. By embracing the way students use technology in everyday life, teachers are allowing them to learn in a collaborative way and in fact helping them to achieve more than they might if they simply wrote up notes from a textbook.
Your first History course
Where to start? The best place is with a scheme of work for a particular year group. Start by building one course and acquiring particular skills. This will inevitably lead on to creating other courses so that those skills can be enhanced and utilized with other year groups.
Key stage 3 courses (11 — 13 year olds)
We are going to create a course for a Year 7 group using a list of key questions, which a teacher might plan to cover in a year. Using this format, it is possible to create a course that has the appropriate structure. For example the Year 7 course might cover the following questions over the academic year:
Schemes of work such as this lend themselves to the creation of a single course. Students tend to like the fact that everything they have covered in the year can be found under one roof and they appreciate the benefits to their revision. They have their exercise books to revise from but the course also provides them with the opportunity to revisit quizzes, video clips, slides that reinforce their understanding, and wikis that demonstrate how to answer particular types of questions effectively.
All the topics for the year will be placed in this course. Students will develop their essay writing skills with the emphasis on style and use of their own knowledge. We can use Moodle to highlight and evaluate examples of good practice in a workshop. Students will also work with sources and evaluate their usefulness. As with a book, the resources will be kept in one place but unlike a book the variety of sources that can be used is much more varied and extensive. A collaborative wiki can be set up so that students learn to empathize with medieval peasants or monks. We can use the book module to ensure that any notes about a particular topic are easily accessible. We can set up links to other sites so that independent learners can pursue their own line of enquiry. The series of eight questions create logical sections within our course. During the course, specific tasks and activities will be assessed such as the essay, sources exercises, and quizzes. The gradebook will record student performance. Marking and feedback will be provided in line with the institution's marking policy.
Key stage 4 courses (14 — 16 year olds)
A slightly different approach is required with Key Stage 4 courses. The modular approach, tackling different skills in examination papers necessitates the creation of a series of separate courses for History GCSE classes. The Divided Union paper concentrates on skills such as source evaluation and the ability to answer questions of a distinct nature. Obviously, to answer effectively requires the background knowledge to the McCarthy period and the Civil Rights movement. Such a course would concentrate on teaching how to write model answers as well as reinforcing students' understanding of important content and issues. Students will find in the course an array of learning materials to ensure good background knowledge such as quizzes, lessons, flashcards, and so on and practice in the writing and evaluating of good quality answers to questions.
The Germany 1918-1939 paper requires an in-depth knowledge and the ability to write good answers to causation questions. A good course helps to signpost strong technique and prepare students thoroughly for the examination so that when they come to sit the paper, there are no surprises. The skills are different within the courses and the courses reflect the differences.
Students at this key stage are able to cope with a greater number of courses in their subject. In History, they also appreciate that the series of questions allows them to breakdown and learn the content and the different techniques required to achieve the higher grades. If they want to work on their ability to answer causation questions then a good course will have clear signposts to the differences between a Level 1, 2, and 3 answer (use a wiki), quizzes, flashcards, notes, and so on to cover key content (examples in each course section), and opportunities to submit answers to workshops and to teaching staff.
There are clear differences between courses at Years 7 and 8 compared to Years 10 and 11. Moodle caters for the difference in needs and the concentration on content or a skills-based approach. Teachers will recognize and share these aspirations. Moodle enhances the way teachers do it at the moment. The Moodle course is another vital component to success alongside the exercise book and folder, the lever arch file, and the textbook.
Naming your course
Before the course can be put together, there are a number of issues that need to be decided upon. Our plan is to create a course called Year 7 History in the History category and it will have the course code Y7Hist
