Technology In Education Online

As the saying goes, the best laid plains of mice and men often go astray….I’ve always been one to be on time and prepared.  So this AM I get up, get ready for the conference, walk out of the hotel, walk down the street, enter the civic center, and no one is around! I look around and then quickly check my confirmation for the conference and it is at the Convention Center!!! Back to the hotel, take the shuttle, and I’m sitting here at this conference getting ready to present.  I sit down and go to check over everything on my computer for the day and I have no plug to plug into and I can’t get a wireless network connection.  I scramble around find a wireless connection and I’m sitting here typing out this blog. </p>

When preparing for my presentation at this conference I wanted to change things up a bit to how I’ve presented it in the past.  I have often thought about how do explain a Moodle to someone who has never heard of it before or if they’ve heard of it,  how do you share your excitement over the use of a moodle? The best example of the excitement is to watch a teacher who heard about this “Moodle thing” but weren’t sure what it was. After taking them on a brief tour, they are off and running. As they discover what they could do with a moodle the ideas start flowing from them on how they can use a moodle. And this is what I want to share with those that attend my presentation today.  The technology is great but the excitement is the real payoff

Now it’s on to the keynote address

More to come as the day progresses.

As I arrived to setup my presentation this afternoon I wondered how many people would show and whether people would walk away as excited as I am about using a Moodle. It is always amazing to me when talking to people about using a Moodle they are absolutely stunned when you tell them that it is free!  The next comment usually is ….”so what’s the catch?” It’s always a re-energizer for me to present at conferences. The energy that I get from peoples’ interest always sends me back to my usual work with a renewed sense of energy (of course after I’ve caught up from all the traveling). I will be posting my presentation here later on this week as a podcast. I’d like to hear back from people that attended today’s presentation

Working with teachers today I had time to reflect afterwards on the day.  Often times after doing a training or in-service I spend time reflecting on how things went.  The thing that struck me the most was how much energy people can devote to resisting change or looking at things from a different perspective.  The in-service today was a follow-up on teachers having recently completing the 21st Century Details Questionnaire.  Several teachers could not move away from the focus of it not working for them.  The thought came to me…what if instead of saying “this doesn’t apply to what I’m doing” or “this if fine for older students” teachers thought how can I make this work for me!  How can I take the concepts and strategies that are applied to older students and tweak it to fit my grade level?  What a novel concept. At times it does feel like I’m battling those windmills!

At times the stars and planets align perfectly with each other.  As I was working on my doctoral EPP, I was trying to look at how using a Moodle would fit into what I was attempting to accomplish.  Mainly, my goal is looking at how possibly can a Moodle fit into a constructivst approach and at the same time evaluate teachers use of it.  Well, back in May I went through training to become a <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.loticonnection.com” title=”LoTi Connection”>LoTi </a>certified mentor. After completing the training I began to look at the various LoTi levels and it dawned on me, they fit very well together. By assessing how teachers are using the Moodle, I’m able to determine their current LoTi level.   From here, professional development can be focused on a teacher’s needs not simply throwing  a teacher into a one shot in-service or training.

Let me know what you think. Until next time.

Alan