Mr. Benesh’s Online Community

I’ve recently been using Moodle to create an online course, based on the Saskatchewan Curriculum. It is for an Accounting 10 course, and it has lead me to some interesting thoughts lately. The first one has been about the majority of people teaching in their first year of school. All you typically hear is stories about how teachers are so stressed in their first year. They are so busy prepping new course material, teaching things they are unfamiliar with, and wishing there were some easier way of doing things. Then I thought, imagine if the world were ideal, and you always knew exactly what you were going to teach a few months before you taught it. You would have 2 months to create the course material (notes, tests, assignments, syllabuses), and then on day one, you go into the computer lab, and review the syllabus, and learn how to log in, and you explain how the rest of the year is going to be done. Imagine in a more perfect world, you are already IN your computer lab. All your students have laptops, and your WiFi is going strong.

I get depressed, because I know that for all my classes, I will not have the benefit of this. At least not right now. Let’s say that best case scenario, I will have two Business classes, and one Chemistry, and one random one that someone had to teach. Being in the Business field, I will always have the benefit of being near a computer lab, but likely will not have one of my own, particularly being a first year teacher.

In any case, let’s get back to my first statement. Moodle, after seeing all her capabilities and ease of use, I get inspired to go through every single Chemistry class, and every single (within reason) Business class, and create courses on Moodle. I try to envision what my life would be like in that perfect world (and I do think it is coming some day!), and it makes me happy.

At the very least, if I have one course prepared online for a class to which I have constant access to the computer lab, it will make my life so much easier. And hopefully make the learning better for the students. Here is a practical example of what I mean. On Moodle, you can make quizzes with as many questions as you want. Instead of just having the students take a quiz, give them a mark, and move on to a new unit, and (in their minds) forget everything they’ve done in previous units, with Moodle, you can create random question selections and make it so that students have to get 100%. Talk about teaching mastery. They can do the quiz as many times as they want (maybe on another day, lunch time, spare, at home?, after school, etc…) and the questions may be different, and some may be the same, but answers are in different order, and feedback is given after each question. I know I’m rambling, but I’m really excited about this.

The one big down side that I see to this is that some teachers could get in a rut, continuously teaching the same Moodle course, and never updating the material. The equivalent of putting up the same notes on overhead, year after year, and sitting at the back. Giving the same quizzes, tests, finals, year after year, taking your paycheck, and not really teaching anything. Watching movies in class, so you have to teach less, and so the kids will shut up. I’m sure we all have had a teacher like that at some point in our schooling.

I think the positives definitely outweigh the negatives, and I am very excited about using this in my future. I love the final year of education, it seems just so much more pertinent to my education and what I am going to be doing in the future.

Dan