Reflections on the last month ...

Wow, where did that time go!!! It has been so full on with creating resource materials, maintaining the moodle classroom, doing student placement and helping students in the computer lab at Bower Place I haven't had time to blink.

I have got to say though this course has been unbelievably successful. I can't believe how much the students love it! No, I mean really love it!!! After the first couple of weeks settling in and feeling their way, they have taken to all of it with such gusto and enthusiasm like I have never seen before. They are still madly moodling and blogging and continue to read each other's blogs regularly and comment on them also. I always expected this to abate after the fun wore off, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I am so glad we perservered with the blogs especially after the initial reluctance from students to post their thoughts for others to see.

The blogs have probably caused us more hassle than moodle overall too. The biggest problem has been privacy and keeping blogs closed to the public. Whilst we have been able to get around some of this with having "invitation only" blogs the implementation of this has been a pain. Students have had to invite everyone in the class to their blog - this wasn't such a problem though because I collated a list of everyone's email which they just had to copy and paste into the blogger security option. The nuisance has been everyone having to accept 35 invitations and not everyone has done that. The other pain in the neck has been the inability to track blogs via google reader or bloglines when they are private. Blogger has just incorporated a new feature called "following". This would have got around some of this issue but there has been some inconsistencies in being able to follow private blogs so we have not been able to successfully implement this feature.

For future semesters we need to investigate what other blog options are open to us. I am wondering if edublogs is a better option and if they have the same issues (I need to follow this up with edublogs guru Sue Waters). Ideally we want the privacy but we really want to be able to do feeds to make reading blogs easier. I am also wondering if we had blogs hosted on the TAFE servers would privacy be any less of an issue but I'm tired and it is late so I could just be delirious at this point.

We also need to make sure we plan for extra time in orientation to ensure all blogs are set up correctly. I think it would be useful to have two sessions with students not just one.

Whilst we haven't had too many problems with students who have had no computer experience, we have had a couple of students who have fallen into this category who I think we could have served better. We really need to identify these students during enrolment and ensure they have extra help prior to orientation. These students would need at least a couple of days being taught computer basics as well as internet and email basics. All students should be able to access web pages, as well as send and receive emails before the orientation sessions. All students should also have a current email address as well so time is not wasted setting these up for some students.

I think that is all for now. I leave for Brisbane on Tuesday for a three day Moodle conference and then a week's holiday with my family in Brisbane and Byron Bay. I will still get to be part of everything that is going on via Moodle and our blogs so won't be missing out on much at all.

Protopage

I have just created a protopage for the competency Legal and Ethical Framework which contains feeds etc the students can use to access current topics in the news. The protopage also contains feeds from two Australian lawyer blogs and del.icio.us links as well. The page can be viewed at http://www.protopage.com/chccs301a.

The moodle contains a link to this protopage as well as the fantastic powerpoint presentation that Helen and Claire have been working on. This contains audio from Helen who narrates the slides.

Week 6

Have had further thoughts of the Legal and Ethical powerpoint so shall talk to Claire about making it more 'lively' also need to add direction regarding what needs to be posted on the forum.
Have had to address a matter of breaching confidentiality in a student's response. Have told students that identification of clients needs to be as brief as e.g Monday's client.
Shall talk with Cheryl and Susan regarding the resource books and questions that we have used this time. Need to be clear about their purpose and if we could do something more innovative next time.
A few students developed discussions on the forum so have directed the other students to look at these examples.

Week 5

Cheryl and I have been working on the unit Recognise and respond to domestic and family violence. We are pleased with the end result. I am trying to encourage students to discuss ideas in the forum. My forms of encouragement have been modelling and face to face encocuragement. Not much success so far but the answering of questions from a resource book limits the opportunity for discussion. Hopefully the format of the domestic violence unit will encourage discussion.
The course content for the next unit Maintain Organisation's Systems is ready for Cheryl's magic.
The students continue to support each other with helpful hints like how to make sure you save your work as there have been a few sad stories about lost work.
Cheryl's contribution continues to be invaluable.