St. Clair R-XIII School District Board of Education members now know how to “Moodle,” at least a little bit.
During their January meeting, St. Clair Junior High School librarian Amy Hall introduced board members to “Moodling,” which is a way to help educators create online courses with a focus on interaction and collaborative construction of content.
Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment and is a free software e-learning platform, also known as a learning management system or virtual learning environment.
With the rollout of the district’s one-to-one digital learning initiative this semester, using e-learning platforms to help educate students will be advantageous, said Hall, who went through a basic demonstration on how the learning environment works.
“With the rollout of our Chromebooks, I can do this in my classroom every day,” Hall said while taking board members through her presentation. “Before that, I would have to go to a computer lab.”
St. Clair students in grades six through 12 have received Google Chromebooks to complement textbooks in the learning process. The devices give teachers and the students almost limitless opportunities to research and learn.
Moodle is one of the virtual learning tools that will be available.
Hall said she can put lesson plans, worksheets, assignments, web addresses and even quizzes and tests on a Moodle site. Students can access it with their stcmo.org domain email addresses.
“I’m an organized person,” Hall said. “With this, everything’s in one place. It makes things so much easier.”
Junior high Principal Steve Weinhold described Moodle as an “electronic file cabinet.”
“It really helps both the teachers and the students,” he said.
Hall said quiz and test grading can be done electronically as well.
“It’s a safe place to organize content,” Superintendent Mike Murphy told board members as they worked their way through the demonstration. “We will be experimenting with it during this semester.”
In the end, Murphy said the goal will be for students and teachers to have one “management system” during the school day instead of seven, or one for each class.
“We’re trying to unify the system to provide some consistency,” he said. “We think this is one way to help achieve that.”