Hello my name is Nives and I’m going to try and explain my personal experience in this year’s EVO (electronic village online) within the Moodle site M4T run by Dr Nellie Deutsch
Firstly I had to understand a little bit about EVO – I had heard of it in the past, but actually thought it was some sort of private institution for a select few. But this year’s experience has thrown me into a world of online discussions and workshops which have quite frankly bamboozled my own interpretation of online ‘learning’ and growing professionally as a Teacher.
The opening of the Sessions took off in January and for five weeks buzzed with undue and ongoing activity with Moderators and paricipants almost colliding to get to the sessions to either participate or assist in the forums, communities, etc. – in other words wherever the particular session happened to be on or active – From Moodle sites, to Minecraft, to Machinema, to Copyright and E-books to name a few… all up 13 sessions! The organizers do suggest not enrolling for more than 2 sessions as they are quite packed and full on. So if you are a working Teacher too it does cut into your available time drastically.
Nina Liakos was the EVO Co-ordinator and organized the EVO meets using the Google+ notification in the Community thereby ensuring meet times and schedules would suit a myriad of participating Educators from around the Globe not to mention the Session leaders and their Moderating team members.
Hats off to Nina for doing a great job of rounding up educators and keep the community news active on Google+
Dr Nellie asked that we be present at the opening and I was still trying to wonder at exactly how this marvellous machine would pan out, when during the first live session I tried to comment on our session, but felt definitively like a ‘fish out of water’ – this feeling is still with me now…
However the webcasts were held on Blackboard collaborate and took some time to make sure the tech check was done before hand by each participant willing to join and watch.
Looking closely at the Team Co-ordinators you will notice some renowned names like Vance Stevens, Shelly Terrell, Dr Nellie Deutsch, so what could one expect but high quality and loads of learning to be had all of which is strictly FREE and available to participants willing to do some work to enhance their experience and maybe take ‘home’ a few new ideas to introduce into their own classrooms or professional existence.
Over to the Moodle for Teachers, and what a great experience, there were courses concurrently organized and managed by Dr Nellie, namely International Writing Exchange EVO15, M4TEVO15, IATEFL YLTSIG EVO15.
I was fortunate enough to moderate on the M4TEVO15 and tried in vain to keep up with all the EVO15 sessions managed by Dr Nellie, if only for the experience of understanding just how the EVO15 sessions culminate and grow over the weeks.
Week 1 was all about introducing oneself and learning how to navigate the moodle, each week also included a live online session where Dr Nellie also screen shared so that all participants could follow the ways and means of navigating the moodle course and how to benefit from using the moodle while learning and experimenting.
Week 2 was all about showing off our first badge and then learning how to practice using the moodle with the role of a Teacher within the TPA (Teacher Practice Area) and that was a lot of fun too. First we played around with resources, adding them to the moodle, showing our abilities to add and label our work.
The most important part was to take snap shots of the screen as we worked on adding resources and labelling to then create an ‘artifact’ in either a video tutorial or slide presentation with some audio even if TTS rather than our own voices.
There were tutorials prepared by the Organizer Dr Nellie Deautsh on the moodle manouvering, and tutorials by Dr Ludmilla, Maria JGSMartin, Tom Hodgers, Susan Dixon and myself on the uses of the moodle for various weeks and how to video’s on using programs to prepare the artifacts/presentations – such as movenote, slidespeech, etc.
Week 3 saw the practice of using the Activities in the Moodle and adding them to the TPA (Teacher Practice Area) and then preparing the presentation, a note at this point is that the Moodle has a powerful tracking system so it will not allow the participant to move on to the next level without all steps being carried out and completed. Some check boxes can be ‘ticked’ manually but the majority are checked by the system.
The use of a checklist also permitted the moodlers to keep track of what had to be completed before moving on.
Week 4 was all about practicing the role of Moodle Managers by adding and deleting blocks on the Moodle, the most important thing that wasn’t stressed enough was that once the practice had been done and screen shots taken the next step was to ‘immediately’ delete the added blocks to allow every participant to have their chance at adding and moving blocks around.
Some very adventurous participants added as many blocks as they could and that was a great experience for them also for others to see their colleagues’ presentations.
Week 5 was almost sad as it marked the end of the 5 week roadmap in the moodle and also the final live online class explaining the Final project to those that had yet to embark on their MCL experience. The Moodle Course Lesson better known as the MCL meant the participants had Course Creator rights and were given the opportunity to create their own course.
The total of the participants in the M4TEVO15 were divided into 4 Teams each with 36 participants that could decide to work together as a team or work alone. Some did work as a Team and some worked alone, but one thing was sure we as many wonderful and diverse courses as there were participants from all corners of the globe.
When all was said and done some had fun, some got lost along the way (like me) but found again by Tom and moved back on track, some completed early and wanted their final certificate, but the instructions do state Certificates will be issued after February 28, so they’ll have to wait!
I too finished my own presentations and final project just so that as a Moderator I could experience both sides of the equation, and I did, and I can honestly advocate that one does learn from doing (Thank you Dr Nellie).
I have documented my own travel in the Moodle within my blog, to bear witness to my own learning adventure in the committment to Life Long Learning.
Our very own Team Leader for our EVO15 Session also our Moodle Co-ordinator Dr Nellie Deutsch
In a nutshell I was catapulted into the very gruelling experience of being a moderator along with some of the people I have come to admire most Dr Nellie, Dr Ludmilla, Tom and Susan.
I have learnt so much from these wonderful people and look forward to keep on learning with them in their endeavours.
However being part of Dr Nellie’s session meant working and carousing around on the Moodle 4 Teachers site, which was not so unfamiliar ground for me, thank goodness, but some will tell of my ‘getting lost in space and time’…
The most important thing is to receive feedback, sometimes it’s not so good but then a little criticism does help us grow, but when it’s positive feedback it raises our spirits and brings us a little closer to self actualization.
Getting lost and muddled was not something new, but happened again and perhaps this time was also due to a technical error…
However a very big and heartfelt THANK YOU to all the wonderful feedback we moderators got along the way.
Thank you for listening, this is Nives signing out till next time.