As I have said in my Edge Hill Blackboard introduction, I have only been in my current post since September. At my previous school, I began my mini version of e-learning by making an area on the school’s ‘shared’ system that was just for my 6th formers. In it were all the course materials that we covered in class, including theory work and assignments, as well as any interesting websites and articles that I came across and wanted to share with them. Soon the students became used to regularly checking for updates, and knowing that they could find any mislaid paperwork; we also used it for them to add drafts of written assignments that I needed to check and refer back for editing several times before final submission (saving printing costs!).
After a while I began to wish this was more interactive, and asked our trusty technicians to set up a ‘moodle’ for me, which they duly did. To cut a long story short, my HoD (who shortly after joined SLT) hijacked my moodle idea and opened up a departmental and subsequently whole school discussion forum on a couple of current issues. Putting aside my personal feelings of being usurped ;-) this worked really well, like a virtual staffroom where everyone could get across their viewpoint. We were all then given subject areas where we should add course details, assignments and info. Unfortunately, as I then left the school, I never got to realise my dream of moodling all my 6th form work and more.
Now in my current post, I have been so very busy in my first year dealing with all the new responsibilities and general STUFF that comes with Subject Leader status, that I haven’t got around to doing anything about it yet. We have a VLE, and have had some training on it; our generic whole staff target for this year on performance management is to upload something to the VLE. This year the school have been rolling out a programme of netbooks to all students, and it has just reached the point where all years 7-10 have them, meaning obviously 7-11 in September. This means that we can put all our booklets for KS3 on there, save on printing and never again have lost booklets…all my assignments and theory work for KS4&5… however we do have loads of broken, uncharged, forgotten netbooks making any lessons planned with their use rather tricky. Amazing how quickly the novelty of a virtually free laptop wears off!!! We are currently cracking down on this quite effectively I think, although it is early days. A common complaint from students is that they ‘never need them’ in lessons, which has an element of truth, but it does take time for us to get our act together and really take advantage of their availability; we have been OFSTED’d this year which was a major event that loomed over us for many months, and there is generally high pressure and workload in my school (perhaps why we got outstanding?!). Hopefully next year will be better.
So, on my to-do list for this summer hols (apart from a large assignment for my MA…) is to get lots of stuff onto the VLE ready for September, and hope it doesn’t crash!