Technology In Education Online

I’m ending the first couple days here at the conference. It has been a very busy two days.  I ran a full-day workshop on Mondy, “Getting Started on the Moodle”.  Tuesday, I completed a half-day workshop on Joomla and just finished a presentation, “Moodle and 21st Century DETAILS: A Constructivist Approach to Teaching.”So as I reflect on the first couple of days, what are my thoughts?  Well, after completing these workshops I am more convinced that giving educators the opportunity to participate in the process is critical. My afternoon presentation on reflecting on how you need to take a more constructivist approach while using a Moodle. One interesting point came when I was discussing about the Workshop component whereby students could participate in peer evaluation and grading, following the guidelines of a rubric. One teacher emphatically stated she would never allow students to participate in grading.  The bottom line for me was her not having a level of trust in students to fairly access another students work.  Now here is the rub, why can’t teachers trust their students to be responsible and accountable? The other question is: Is there a power and control issue here?  I think, at times, it is really hard for some teachers to empower their students.  Do they see their role as commander and chief and students don’t have enough expertise to enable to handle the responsibility?  My thought here is, and it may relate or not, we don’t  teach students what is involved in the process of working in groups yet we throw students together a lot of times and expect them to handle the responsibility.   All I’d ask people to do is to reflect back on their own experiences of group work in school and ask the question: how did it work for you?  I’ve heard from educators the thing they disliked most when going back to school was having a class where the instructor would state that there would be group projects during the semester.  Inevitability, i would hear such statements as: “I wound up doing most of the work” or “Person A didn’t do anything. What happened? What went wrong?  The biggest problem is that we never teach, and perhaps because we were never taught our self, what makes up the group process. How group dynamics work. How you look at members or potential members and determine where their strengths and interests are and grouping students based on their strengths and interests.  Why do group members usually get disinterested? Usually, my experience has been due to people in the group being the controllers.  They want the project to go their way.  On the other extreme you have those that simply tune out due to feeling the group wasn’t hearing what they had to say. So how does this relate to peer review, which was the main point in begin with?  In today’s world students are going to be working collaboratively.  They will also have to know how to peer review.  So if we make the same fatal error with not teaching peer review, we are going to repeat the same errors we have made with group projects. We must step away from this thinking that my role as an educator is to hold all power and control in the classroom.  We have to open up our classrooms to be interactive, peer-review, and restructure group dynamics.

OK, so I maybe a little late to the revolution but I’ve got the religion now! Open source is my new found call to arms!  The latest- Joomla!  A great open source resource used to create a website.  In looking at a collaborative approach to web development I looked at several options – Joomla!, Drupal, DotNetNuke, and Mambo.  I settled on Joomla! after setting up some test sites and running through the various options.

At a recent NJAET executive board meeting I demoed a mock site I set up using Joomla! and people were amazed out the power behind it and what it can do.  With the additional extensions that are available, and the ease that they install, I’m convinced that utilizing a CMS is the best solution.  My goal to find ways for educators to collaborate and not work in isolation.  The great thing about Joomla! is that no one needs to be the sole source of disseminating information.  You now have the option to assign a variety of roles to individuals. You can have users, authors, publishers, administrators, etc. all contributing to creating an active website. For those that like to be in charge it means giving up a little bit of the power to allow others to participate. So all of you control freaks out there take a deep breath and plunge right in. You’ll find it all works out for the better in the long run.

As time moves along I find myself moving away from the mega software publishers to open source solutions.  The great thing also is there is a whole new industry out there of people developing additions to these great open source software solutions.  Some of the additional extensions are commercial products. But I’m more open to spending a little to support these developers than continued to feed those hungry giants out there.  So if you’ve been contemplating a transformation of your website, take a look at one of these open source CMS programs.

This website will focus on technology in education. Discussions will revolve around how educators are utilizing technology in the classroom. Topics such as integrating vs. use and the confusion around wht the difference is between the two will be included. Other topics will include reviews and comments on software and hardware. I hope people find this blog useful and will contribute to its’ development.

Alan