News
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — While looking over a computer screen, checking through the online thread posts of her middle school science students, Megan Sjoberg said technology will never take the place of teaching.
It can help, though.
Sjoberg and fellow teachers at the Lake Tahoe School are wrapping up their first year of using the open source, online Moodle software as a teaching tool.
“It’s an interesting tool with a lot of possibilities,” Sjoberg said. “We can use it for posting assignments, because despite our best efforts to get the kids to use planners, they tend to forget. With Moodle, they and their parents can look at an assignment at home and get it done.”
The program allows for a host of uses — grading for math teachers, open forums for science students and foreign languages aids for parents to help their children study — in a free, online environment. It can be viewed at moodle.org.
Sjoberg, for example, requires her students to look up, summarize and respond to current events articles through one of the software’s many tools.
The software is useful in cutting out the middle man — in this case a forgetful middle school student who can’t remember all the details of an assignment.
Headmaster Steve McKibben is enthusiastic about Moodle — software typically found on a host of college campuses, including Incline’s Sierra Nevada College — and its uses for K-8 education.
“It’s a revolutionary pedagogical tool,” McKibben said. “It’s a way to continue the educational process with our students outside of the classroom. Instead of wasting valuable class time with students taking vocab quizzes, they can take those online and we can spend time in class with that face-to-face interaction.”
McKibben said the software — which is accessible to teachers, students and a test group of parents through a login and password — helps teachers to tailor curriculum to individual students, allowing them different ways to learn the same material.
“There’s no one-size fits all, and that goes for the teachers as well,” McKibben said.
Tamara Chisholm, the school’s Spanish teacher, said Moodle isn’t very effective as a language teaching tool, but may show promise in teaching students about foreign cultures and reinforcing classwork.
For K-5 students, Chisholm said she records the Spanish songs sung in class so students and parents can practice at home.
“A lot of our help as teachers comes from parents,” Chisholm said. “So all I really wanted to do with the younger kids was to give our parents some instruction and they can help the kids.”
For the middle school students, Chisholm said she can direct her students’ understanding of foreign cultures by providing links to Spanish web sites with interesting information.
Charlie White, a social studies, geometry and outdoor education instructor at Lake Tahoe School, said he uses the program to upload assignments, his syllabi and grading policies.
Sjoberg said that while the grading tools work well with math, they might not with science, so there is give-and-take. But, she said, the possibilities for the students to go beyond the lesson plan by utilizing the software to ask and answer each other’s questions and form intelligent discussion is very useful.
“I’ll admit I wasn’t thrilled about it before I got into the forums,” Sjoberg said. “But I think I’m just starting to get a glimpse at it, when I go home this summer I’ll think of assignments I give and how I can maybe provide them on Moodle.”
The versatility of the program appeals to McKibben.
“I like the fact that every teacher can customize it to fit his or her needs,” McKibben said.
He said blended learning — combining the classroom with the Internet — is the future of education and hopes Moodle is a tool which helps push LTS to the forefront.
“I don’t think it will ever be central to education, nor should it,” McKibben said. “But it can be used an enrichment and acceleration resource and can serve students individually. I don’t know if anything does it better.”
It can help, though.
Sjoberg and fellow teachers at the Lake Tahoe School are wrapping up their first year of using the open source, online Moodle software as a teaching tool.
“It’s an interesting tool with a lot of possibilities,” Sjoberg said. “We can use it for posting assignments, because despite our best efforts to get the kids to use planners, they tend to forget. With Moodle, they and their parents can look at an assignment at home and get it done.”
The program allows for a host of uses — grading for math teachers, open forums for science students and foreign languages aids for parents to help their children study — in a free, online environment. It can be viewed at moodle.org.
Sjoberg, for example, requires her students to look up, summarize and respond to current events articles through one of the software’s many tools.
The software is useful in cutting out the middle man — in this case a forgetful middle school student who can’t remember all the details of an assignment.
Headmaster Steve McKibben is enthusiastic about Moodle — software typically found on a host of college campuses, including Incline’s Sierra Nevada College — and its uses for K-8 education.
“It’s a revolutionary pedagogical tool,” McKibben said. “It’s a way to continue the educational process with our students outside of the classroom. Instead of wasting valuable class time with students taking vocab quizzes, they can take those online and we can spend time in class with that face-to-face interaction.”
McKibben said the software — which is accessible to teachers, students and a test group of parents through a login and password — helps teachers to tailor curriculum to individual students, allowing them different ways to learn the same material.
“There’s no one-size fits all, and that goes for the teachers as well,” McKibben said.
Tamara Chisholm, the school’s Spanish teacher, said Moodle isn’t very effective as a language teaching tool, but may show promise in teaching students about foreign cultures and reinforcing classwork.
For K-5 students, Chisholm said she records the Spanish songs sung in class so students and parents can practice at home.
“A lot of our help as teachers comes from parents,” Chisholm said. “So all I really wanted to do with the younger kids was to give our parents some instruction and they can help the kids.”
For the middle school students, Chisholm said she can direct her students’ understanding of foreign cultures by providing links to Spanish web sites with interesting information.
Charlie White, a social studies, geometry and outdoor education instructor at Lake Tahoe School, said he uses the program to upload assignments, his syllabi and grading policies.
Sjoberg said that while the grading tools work well with math, they might not with science, so there is give-and-take. But, she said, the possibilities for the students to go beyond the lesson plan by utilizing the software to ask and answer each other’s questions and form intelligent discussion is very useful.
“I’ll admit I wasn’t thrilled about it before I got into the forums,” Sjoberg said. “But I think I’m just starting to get a glimpse at it, when I go home this summer I’ll think of assignments I give and how I can maybe provide them on Moodle.”
The versatility of the program appeals to McKibben.
“I like the fact that every teacher can customize it to fit his or her needs,” McKibben said.
He said blended learning — combining the classroom with the Internet — is the future of education and hopes Moodle is a tool which helps push LTS to the forefront.
“I don’t think it will ever be central to education, nor should it,” McKibben said. “But it can be used an enrichment and acceleration resource and can serve students individually. I don’t know if anything does it better.”
