Moodle!

I had originally planned to present a number of Web 2.0 applications to my World Language department including Wikis. Wikis seem to be a thing of the past now that Howard County is moving towards using ASPEN exclusively. My school is piloting use of the Moodle for High Schools. We were given four accounts for our four upper level Spanish teachers (including me!) to test out with the students. We were finally approved for these accounts about a month before school began.

In order to better help my team, I spent the last three or four weeks prior to school starting working on the Moodle. I set up both of my courses for the year. I have taken all of the literature/poetry analysis' that my students complete and put half of all of them on the Moodle so that they will grade themselves. I am excited for my students to participate in a hybrid class where they have assignments, discussions, group work, and a place to upload assignments all in one location! I have also provided numerous extra practice and resources for struggling students.

All of that being said, the four of us met today to set up the classes within our preps. I was unsure of how to create groups (classes) within each of our preps, but we figured it out as a group and how we can let the students register themselves by giving them an enrollment key. It took quite a while to figure that out and play with some of the quiz features. I think we spent about an hour and a half exploring all of this!

Take a look at part of my Moodle courses:

I cannot wait for the students to register for all of our classes and to participate in the first online discussion! I cannot wait to continue our monthly sessions on the fourth Monday of the month when we are given opportunities to engage in personal professional development.

Aspen...take 1

I led the first session with my World Language Department today. We are attempting to understand and utilize ASPEN, our new course management system, and all that it has to offer. It has been down most of the week, and we are not even sure if it will be working when school starts next week. This is our new gradebook and attendance manager, student/parent communication portal, class information connection, schedule designer, and parent/student information database.

My staff has been SO unbelievably frustrated with ASPEN, which is now being called the Parent Portal or the official gradebook. Apparently, parents will not know what we mean if we call it ASPEN! The county is not rolling out all of the options for this program, so we will only have access this year to enter grades, take attendance, check student information, email parents, and make course recommendations for the following school year.

We were supposed to hold this session in our newly renovated and relocated language office, however, the wireless Internet is not functioning in the entire building yet. We relocated our meeting to an older classroom that had the wireless installed last year.

For this session, I walked my department through how to access ASPEN at home since the link and log-on are different. I helped them add it as a bookmark to their laptops as well. Then, we set up the general ASPEN preferences again since they reset themselves each year. After setting the preferences, we discussed the student view options as well as the new attendance views. We only used this CMS last year for attendance, so many of the features are new to us. I could have created a presentation for this session and future ASPEN sessions, but I did not feel that this would be helpful because I would need to switch back and forth between ASPEN and a presentation. Instead, I connected my laptop to the LCD and walked the department through each step of today's session.

Before everyone left, I showed them the various reports that can be viewed and printed for student data, schedules, grades, and attendance. While many will forget these options, I plan to remind them about them as we go through the other sessions.

The mixed ability levels during these sessions blows me away! I am doing my best to remain calm and answer all questions, no matter how crazy they may be! After the session, I emailed my department the internship blog with resources and question answers as well as the survey for today's session. Here's to a great first week of school!

First Session!

I am so tired! It was the third day back for teachers today, and we had meetings ALL morning. Then, after a quick lunch, I presented my first professional development session on PlanbookEdu. I wanted to open all of my sessions to all staff members, but this Web 2.0 application is not free. My principal was willing to pay for up to twenty participants. I had 10 participants today, and they were all so excited about the presentation.

It was interesting (and a bit frustrating!) that many chose to explore the program on their own while I was presenting, and they did not follow along with me. Then, they had questions later because they had not been paying attention. There were some good questions at the end, and some things that I just sent the company an email about. A man from the company (Matt) replied within the hour and answered all of my questions. Now, I just have to submit the names and email addresses to my principal, and the man from the company will set up all of the accounts.

There were varying ability levels within the group, and that made it difficult to manage all of the people in the group. For example, some teachers were off and running setting up the application preferences, while others were having trouble just creating an account. I can now see the benefits of having multiple teachers lead one session. I need to consider how I will handle that for the next staff presentation. Only one person requires some follow-up, and I will easily be able to help her because I work with her one-on-one as my National Honor Society co-sponsor.

Although I was nervous, I thought that today went really well! Quite a few people have already taken the follow-up survey too! Now, I will spend my evening preparing for leading the first session with my department tomorrow with ASPEN training. It is technically the second session, since I began before school ended last year, but I am not going to include that in my internship. Here's to finishing the week strong!

Prepping

Now that I am finished with my pre-internship portfolio, I have been working a lot on making preparations for my professional development sessions. I have created some PowerPoints for three or four of the sessions, sign-in sheets, agendas, and some other odds & ends that I will need when I lead a session.

The more I talk to my department this summer, the more I realize that our need is ASPEN and not Web 2.0 applications. While I am still going to lead on those for a small group of non-department staffers, I think that I may have to change what I am doing with my department. The good news is that I do not have to reinvent the wheel. There are already resources created by the county for these. While there are no formal presentations, there are hand-outs and online tutorial videos. It will be easier to teach on ASPEN by showing what I am doing on my computer while it also appears on the LCD.

The first week back for staff, I will be leading two sessions.  The first session will be on PlanbookEdu for my staff and the second will be on setting up the ASPEN gradebook for my language department. I am excited about helping my staff with technology but a bit nervous about presenting in front of my colleagues. I do so much better in public when I'm with my students!