You ever make a mistake that gets in the way of the learning that you want to have happening in your classroom?
Boy, I sure did. And it’s been bugging me for the last week and a half. Consider this post a confessional of my error, as well as a bit of free writing about how in the world I’m going to get out of the pedagogical hole that I’ve placed myself in. (Okay, it’s not a hole, but it’s a danged ol’ pothole, and that’s frustrating enough.)
See, after my first writing assignment in my 10th grade course, I found myself with several really good pieces of student writing. Really interesting essays, the kind that demand to be read.
I had originally planned for my students to publish these to our school Elgg. But at the last minute, in a moment where I could see that my students, pushed to the edges of their patience by new classroom computers that almost worked perfectly and a Moodle that took them a little while to learn to navigate, I made a decision that I thought was going to save time and create a neat way for my students to publish from right inside the Moodle.
Instead of directing students to the Elgg, with an entirely new login and password and profile creation process (hurry up, OpenAcademic gang!), I sent them to the blogging feature of Moodle, hoping they could taste the sweet success of instant publishing. I covered all the safety basics, making sure identities were appropriately protected, and it was easy to push their writing into a public place.
Kind of. See, while anyone can come along and read what my students wrote, and chose to publish, no one can comment on their work, because Moodle blogs don’t allow for that. I’m sure I could (or someone already has) create a way to do commenting, but I need a simple solution. Yesterday. Comments are an essential piece of the feedback and publishing model that I see in my classroom. I forgot that for about five minutes when I called an audible in the heat of a classroom moment. Does that ever happen to you?
The frustrating piece here is that when I created the Elgg, I created a simple solution.
I just didn’t use the simple solution, because I was afraid that one more setup process would kill the writing community that I’d created. Turns out the teacher can do a good job of that, too. Just needed to vent. I’ve discussed the issue briefly with my students. They’re a little burned when it comes to publishing online right now, and I don’t blame them. My bad. Big bad, too, if I’ve turned them off to one of the best motivators for their future success as thinkers and writers.
The question is — what do we do now? (My hunch is that we move forward anyway, especially when their next assignment comes due at the end of this week, trying to ease hurt feelings as I go. It’s just so frustrating to slam smack into this wall when I saw it coming and had a plan.) Any suggestions?
A Post in Which The Author Self-Indulgently Wallows in His Frustrations for a Moment
7 thoughts on “A Post in Which The Author Self-Indulgently Wallows in His Frustrations for a Moment”
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Have you tried the Elgg integration for Moodle?
Hello, Bud,
I’d say you handled the immediate situation pretty well — it’s a good thing for students to hear an instructor (especially an instructor they respect) admit to making a mistake — depending on the nature of the class, you could open today with, “I’ve been thinking about what happened yesterday, and I feel bad about my role in slowing things down” — and then, bring them into creating their Elgg profile. Because of the nature of the Elgg profile (it asks more questions, and the answers then become tags/searchable, which some kids will discover) it might actually be fun. Also, if you separate the acount creation process from the publishing, your students will be ready to go when it’s time to publish the next assignment.
WRT OpenAcademic gang hurrying up: look for news on this SOON! We have some testing to do, especially with regards to documenting the best hosting environment and the install procedure. I just need to stop commenting on blogs so I can get some work done 🙂
If it makes you feel better, we’re struggling with this too. We’re going to do elgg, and we’re probably going to hand-code all the same passwords into elgg that we use for moodle.
But yeah, the need for that one stop shopping school portal is growing by the day.
I’d ask your students which way they want to go. Do they want to spend the time learning Elgg, or would they rather keep using Moodle?
It seems like when Moodle added blogging without commenting, the argument from the Moodle folks at the time was that discussion boards (or whatever Moodle calls them) was where they thought the discussion should take place. That makes me wonder if there is any way within Moodle to “attach” a discussion to the students’ blog entries. It would definitely still be a work around, but if you could create discussions for each of their pieces of writing and link to them somehow from their blog entries, it might work.
Bud,
It was hard for me to find those essays on your Moodle (they’re in the blog section, correct?). I assumed they would be attached to a course so I tried to find them that way, but couldn’t get into your courses as a guest. I then created a login, but those require a key as well to get into the courses. I kept looking and eventually found the “View Site Entries” on the blog menu. Now, there’s probably a big ‘ole link somewhere that I missed (if so, please ignore this comment) but, if not, you might want to figure out an easier way for folks to find them if you want feedback for your students.
And I meant to add last time, don’t beat yourself up too much over this. I think it’s very powerful if you share with your students the struggles you go through as a teacher, as well as ask for their input. As you try these new ways of engaging your students and helping them learn and grow, you inevitably will have times when you make the wrong move. Learn from it, share with your students (so they see that even the best have bad moments), and keep doing all you do for your students.
I admit that I’ve been slow on the uptake lately as I haven’t been following the development and use of Elgg, but I’d say that you stumbled into a pothole that I feel will only be ever-more present in the world of Ed Tech. With the seeming overload of technical solutions for instant publishing it’s only a matter of time before more of us run into the problem you had Bud. Being the first one down the highway has those wonderful perks, but at least you were wise enough to catch your mistake and make ammends. There are many people out there, including myself, that would have difficulty swallowing that pride and admitting to teenagers that you’ve made an error.
Bud, I’m afraid I’m rather unfamiliar with the subject matter, but I did want to tell you that I think every one of us has made our share of “goofs” in the classroom. I wouldn’t dwell on it too much. Just chalk it up to experience and know you’ve learned something in the process!