Social networking meets the classroom

By Leah Shaffer

Math time in Nate Gabel’s fourth-grade Prairie View classroom means Moodle time. Students roll out the carts packed with laptops – the COWS, or Computers On Wheels as they’re called.

Once the laptops are open, the students access Gabel’s Math MOODLE or Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. Moodle is a free software that sets up an online classroom.

“A classroom automation system,” is how David Sandum would describe it. Sandum, the techonolgy director for Eden Prairie schools, said Moodle gives teachers the ability to organize and conduct entire lessons in classrooms electronically.

“[It] takes things to the next level where you’re able to basically work in a collaborative form.”

It breaks down the traditional four walls of the classroom, to create “anytime, anywhere learning,” he said.

“It really puts the social networking elements into learning.”

For example, the teacher will use it to post assignments or problems, and have people work in groups or individually. Within Moodle students are able to collaborate with each other or the teacher, they have access to links and other Web resources.

Classrooms have had their own Web sites for years, but students might not have been able to access them.

“This is really curriculum automation, and has the ability to help conduct your class, versus just share information about it,” said Sandum.

Moodle is an application that’s been used in the district for a number of years, but primarily at the high school.

As part of the Classrooms of the Future process, staff started looking at its effectiveness and how they could use it in other grade levels.

They did pilots at CMS “and that worked quite well.”

This year, they started bringing it into the elementary schools.

 “It’s going phenomenally well,” Sandum said.

Classrooms of the Future

The Classrooms of the Future initiative is funded through the technology referendum that passed in 2004. Voters approved $4.6 million annually for up to 10 years for technology. Of that, $2 million goes annually for technology improvements, with $1 million going to instructional technology, or the Classrooms of the Future work.

As part of that work, teachers across the district have access to a number of new tools. What has become more common in the classroom is the use of an interactive white board, basically a screen that teachers can write and work off of on their wall.

To understand how it’s used, look back to Gabel’s classroom. On one particularly day, Gabel used the interactive white board to display his Moodle site. On it, students had posted their work for a previous math problem and Gabel went over some of the answers. Then, the Moodle site listed a new story problem related to the Golden Gate Bridge. Before students could solve the problem, they first had to find out how many cars cross the bridge in a day. Students broke out the laptops and set to work, logging onto Moodle and then scouring the Internet for such a factoid.

Gabel doubles as a technology coach, which also goes hand in hand with the Classrooms of the Future approach. New technology is not just dumped on teachers without guidance. New tools are integrated into the classroom through the help of instructional technology coaches.

Sandum explained that the role of the coaches is to work with the teacher in defining the goals and the strategies that they’d be using in a classroom.

“… and then finding the best technology tool that fits their goals.”

When they’re looking at Moodle, it’s not about the tool, “it’s really about the strategy,” he said.

If their goals are to move toward a social networking, 24/7 learning environment, “Moodle is a great fit.”

Educational network

Ultimately, the concept of social networking is not something left to the domain of the personal, but also the educational.

A subset of the district’s technology coaches are part of a vision committee, looking at what’s next.

That could include “blowing out that Moodle into a larger solution,” said Sandum.

He said they are looking at social networking as a business model in the district.

If you look at kids and where they’re at right now, “walls shouldn’t exist.”

Sandum said they looked at Moodle as a pilot to see if its adoption went well, as far as student learning. It turns out that they may go beyond Moodle. Sandum said their goal is to basically create and support, internally, an Eden Prairie MySpace for education.

“It’s in development.”

Other tools that can enable anytime learning could be videoconferencing (which has been used to talk to students in Loudi, China) or more mobile applications, use of digital storytelling, audio/video, pod-casting, etc.

In other words, the ball has just started rolling.

Moodle: An open source course management system – it can help teachers bring their classroom online

Visit: http://moodle.org/ for more information.