TIP Progress

I received initial feedback from our profs about analysis. I stated that I was surprised to find out that the teachers using Moodle for me this year would all be considered tech savvy. One is a little less tech savvy, but is very interested in using tech in her classroom. My initial conclusion was that teachers who use tech in the classroom are already tech savvy.

Two of my four teachers adopted Moodle right at the beginning of the school year. The other two did not implement a Moodle assignment until the Spring. The two who adopted Moodle later had quite different reasons for doing so.

One is an elementary teacher. This presented a couple of problems. One is that her class has very limited time in the computer lab, the other is that Moodle requires and email address to create a user account. Most elementary students don't have an email account. Once we solved those problems, she was happy to use it.

The other is a high school English teacher. She may be least tech savvy of the four, but is very interested in using tech in the classroom. I would still rate her tech savvyness as above average. I think a big reason she was a later adopter of Moodle is because she was afraid it would take too much time to set something up. That and she had to teach an extra class this year, so she had less time to play with. When she finally did do something, she was amazed that it didn't take very long at all to set up an assignment.

Part of my conclusion is based on the fact that 10 people initially expressed interest in using Moodle, but only 4 actually used. Of the 6 that did not use it, none of the 6 considered themselves to be tech-savvy, and they cited time as the biggest reason they could not use Moodle. I would submit that this is a valid concern. Will using Moodle take up too much of a teacher's time? This leads me to the question, "Does it take too much time?"

It probably takes more time for a non-tech savvy person to use technology because they are not familiar with the use of it. So while it might take me 15 minutes to set up my class for the week in Moodle, it might take one of those 6 teachers 30 minutes or more to do the same task.

It could also be that it actually takes about the same time to use Moodle no matter who you are, but that a tech-savvy person would enjoy using his time in that manner and maybe even see the benefits of using it better.

So, how do we get teachers who are not tech-savvy to invest the time to use tech in their classrooms?

TIP "Progress"

I'm not sure weekly updates are going to show too much to the very end, but I'll try to make a few observations.

I have two teachers that continue to use Moodle in various capacities. My two new teachers are planning on using Moodle in the following ways:

High School English Teacher: Plans to use the glossary module to have her students create a vocab list for their current unit. With my help she now has her classes set up, but I do not believe her students have started using it yet.

4th Grade Teacher: The main problem she encountered was that her students are too young to have email addresses. Moodle requires an email address. Looking through the Moodle forums, the best option I could find was to have her add her students with dummy email addresses. She is currently planning on creating quizzes for her social studies units, but has yet to actually use it with her students.

In an informal survey of my students who currently use Moodle, most of them related that they like Moodle because there is always a list of their assignments there and they can turn in their assignments online.

That's it for now.

TIP Update

We had last week off for "Energy Break," so there wasn't any real progress made on my TIP. I have two current users of Moodle and have just talked to two more(A high school English teacher and an elementary school teacher) who will implement something in the next week or two.

It seems as though time is the biggest issue for most teachers so far. It's hard for teachers, especially those who are less computer savvy, to learn something new to use in their classes even if they want to. I don't have much trouble convincing teachers that it is a useful tool, but it seems to be quite a big task to actually convince them it's worth the extra time they'd need to put in to actually use it. My thought is if I get a few people on board this year that find it really useful, other people will be more apt to use it in the future.