blog. mrstacey. org.uk

Talking to some colleagues at school recently we were reflecting how there were less opportunities than there had been in the past to get together with colleagues from across the school and share ideas around teaching and learning.

So, rather than cursing the darkness, I lit a candle! Having spoken to the Assistant Head we announced a weekly lunchtime drop in session in the school conference centre. It was inspired in part by the ‘TeachEat’ adaptations of the teachmeet format that are taking part in some schools – although we decided to make it even less formal than that at the moment.

We picked the first topic (starters) and sat back to wait to see what happened.

Some great ideas where shared. Thanks to a suggestion from another member of staff we created a Google Site where we’re putting the ideas each week. At the end of each session we pick a session for the following week and head off to start putting some the ideas in action.

We’ve now done two out of our three training sessions on Moodle now, and the reaction has been very positive. Lots of people making the right noises, and lots already getting stuck in with some courses for next year.

The sessions were a little different that how I thought they would be when I last blogged. In particular:

• Our idea of splitting people into two groups (beginner / intermediate) was scapped in favour of having one group with both of us available. As much of the course is self directed anyway, having both of us in the same place made more sense
• In the end I settled on a generic paper guide, rather than one personalised by department. I just didn’t have the time to justify the extra work in the end

Feedback has been very positive, and I’ll come back to this topic with some more reflection when I have more time (whenever that will be!)

In the meantime, I thought I’d share the resources that we’ve put together so far. I’ve opened up both of the courses to guests, so you should be able to access them (although not all the linked courses, the county course for example continues to be our staff only as it’s not mine to give away). If you’d like copies of either or both, please do drop me a line.

The online Big Friendly Guide (inludes links to the training course, help forum and more introductory information)

VLE Intermediate (although as I said above, in the end this was the course everyone was using!)

We’re having a big push on the VLE during gain time. This involves:

1. I’ve set up courses for each department. As a basic they’ve got for each key stage they teach. In some cases we’ve done for one for each year group and where asked, we’ve done some for specific topics. They’ve all been set up to a common format, with all the teachers from that dept given teacher rights on those courses.

2. I’ve created the following framework to guide me (and the staff) in terms of rolling this out. After our experience with Kaleidos I’m keen not to overload people:

1. How to add resources to a page so students can access them
2. How to set up ‘assignments’ so students can upload their work
3. How to set up ‘quizzes’ and other forms of assessment, some of which can be self marking
4. How to create an online ‘classroom’ that encourages students to collaberate and communication online
5. What else can I do with this thing?

3. I’ve written a ‘Big Friendly Guide’ to step one in the list above. Although 90% of the content in the same, I’ve produced one that’s slightly different for each department, listing the courses they have had set up and showing their departmental homepage. While this has taken longer that producing just one I’m trying to make this process as much like a conversation as I can (as opposed to another initiative that people need to do)

4. I’ve set up a course on Moodle to host all the guides and other resources, including a text introduction, a mindmap and a 5 minute introductory video I made using Jing. I’ve opened it up to guests and it’s here. Help yourself if there’s anything there that’s of use to you.

5. Drop in sessions for people to come and work in room with me, Nick or another of our more experienced uses there for consultaion. This isn’t a ‘training course’ where people come, sit and listen. What it is is some protected time where staff can focus just on this, in a supportive environment where they can ask questions if they want.

So far, there’s a bit of a buzz about this at the moment. I just hope we can capitalise on this in the next few weeks to get widespread use of the VLE over next year!