I’m enjoying some of the benefits of working with a structured LMS like Moodle. It is forcing me to create better tasks for my students, tasks that require students to think, and are clearly delimited and easy to understand.
Today, I created three tasks for my Moodle and blogging students: 1) Visit this site and pick out 3 things that one should perhaps not put on a public profile. Write those three things in the appropriate forum on the Moodle.
2) Visit some student blogs from past years and decide which ones are interesting and ones which are not so interesting, and why. Then write about what makes for an (un)interesting blog in the appropriate forum on the Moodle.
3) Read some of your classmates’ comments for #2, then write a few reflections on today’s class in the appropriate forum on the Moodle.
Most of them were hard pushed to finish this in 90 minutes. They worked hard, and I had nothing to do (except a little firefighting, of course): one student’s blog disappeared! Going to the blog address just brought up a blank page. I could only suggest she contact blogger help. Any ideas, anyone?
Another student forgot his username for his blog: we figured out how to get blogger to give you a new one. I have asked these 2 students to post their experiences and suggestions in a new Help/FAQ forum I created on the Moodle.
Aaron,
I thought I would mention that I have started a new EFL & ESL Wiki over at my site. It’s fully integrated with my blog and forums requiring only one login to use. commenting on blog entries still does not require login.
I am looking forward to contributions by yourself and if you could post a little promo on your blog I would be very grateful. Sorry for the off-topic comment.
EFL Geek
I like the public profile task -that’s a good one. most of your activites are ones that I assign as homework since we dont’ have access to a computer lab during class time.