Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008...1:29 pm

Moodle Helps “Meet Our Students Where They Are”

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By Kimberly Mayo
Washington (NC) High School


My name is Kimberly S. Mayo, but most people know me as Kim, and I teach a variety of business classes as well as Computer Engineering Technology I and II at Washington High School, Beaufort County Schools, in Washington, North Carolina.

Although I am 52 years old and I believe most people my age are afraid of change and avoid it, I embrace change and I am always looking for ways to engage my students more and find more effective and easier ways of teaching them.  I welcome the use of Moodle, Quia or any other on-line resource because after all, today’s students have grown up in a technology rich society and have come to expect it in all aspects of their lives. I firmly believe that to be an effective teacher, we must meet our students where they are and with their cell phones, text messages, iPods, iPhones, digital cameras and all the other electronic gadgets found in their world, classroom instruction should include as much electronic medium as  possible.

I developed a paperless society in my classrooms last semester.  I used Moodle in my CET 1 and 2 classes and my students appreciated it and expected it.  They loved the instant feed back provided for testing.  They loved completing their assignments electronically and sending them to me electronically.  I used Quia for testing and daily bell-ringer activities in all my other classes.  I set up a classroom e-mail account for the transmission of completed work for those classes that did not use Moodle.  Students used their e-mail accounts to send work to me and received their graded work from me through their e-mail accounts.

My EOC scores were very good.  Although I don’t have the exact figures right now at my fingertips, I believe that approximately 80-85% of all my students met proficiency in my classes.  I plan to use Moodle for all my classes next year.  I completed the Moodle training with LearnNC this summer and look forward to uploading all of my work to the Moodle framework for all of my classes to use.  By using Moodle, I will not have to have “outside” student e-mail accounts and my school network will remain more secure.  Although I have created many tests on QUIA, since it is web based, I am planning to provide the link to the existing tests or upload my tests to Moodle.

Grading student work was easier for me, too.  I didn’t have to tote work around for grading.  If I had an Internet connection, I could grade papers and in today’s world, Internet connections are not hard to find.   I enjoyed great success using Moodle last school year and look forward to its use in all my classes for the 2008-2009 school year.

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