Newsflash: Teacher Provides Inappropriate Access

On a cold, blustery February morning in 2011, a naïve, unsuspecting teacher had unknowingly created a storm of controversy. Unintentionally, this teacher (Mr. B) had set off a series of events that had his principal visiting his classroom, the district itinerant teacher for technology calling, the district supervisor of IT emailing, and the district computer support specialist (E-learning) contacting each of the previously mentioned individuals.

What was it that this particular teacher had done?

It all started out several months before when Mr. B., wanted a better way to share files with his students and for students to be better able to utilize these files in the learning environment. Mr. B. had made contact with a number of his superiors requesting advice on how to best meet his needs. After waiting an appropriate amount of time with little response Mr. B. brought his plight to his principal attention.

At that time, with his principal’s support and permission, he had started a BYOT program in his classroom. Since the school did not have wireless, Mr. B. placed the files he wanted to share on the school’s server. He then proceeded to provide his students with access to these files by having them connect their devices directly into the classroom’s network drops.

Things were going great for Mr. B. and he was quite proud of the success he was having with his new endeavor. He even secured four “new to him” computers for his classroom, which the day before “he got busted” a board IT technician helped him setup.

What Mr. B. did not realize was that it was a “BIG NO, NO” to allow students to tap directly into the school’s network using their own personal devices. How was Mr. B. to know?

Thankfully, all those who were in a kerfuffle were not only willing to accept Mr. B’s apology, but also provide him with some much needed support. Within days, the computer support specialist provided Mr. B. with a Moodle course that was to run off the district’s server, to use with his class so that he could easily share his files with them over the Internet. Also, at the same time, the supervisor of IT was in Mr. B’s classroom installing wireless Internet access to provide the infrastructure his students needed to bypass the school’s server. Soon Mr. B. was singing the praises of Moodle and was moving beyond just file sharing with his students.

So, what is Moodle?

Moodle is an abbreviation for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It is an e-learning platform, also called Course Management System (CMS), Learning Management System (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites. To work, it needs to be installed on a web server somewhere, either on one of your own computers or one at a web hosting company (Moodle Home, Wikipedia - Moodle).

Moodle can be used in many types of environments such as in education, training and development, and business settings. Some typical features of Moodle are:

·         Assignment submission

·         Discussion forum

·         Files download

·         Grading

·         Moodle instant messages

·         Online calendar

·         Online news and announcement

·         Online quiz

·         Wiki

(Wikipedia – Moodle)

Developers can extend Moodle’s modular construction by creating plugins for specific new functionality. Moodle’s infrastructure supports many types of plug-ins:

·         Activities (including word and math games)

·         Resource types

·         Question types (multiple choice, true and false, fill in the blank, etc.)

·         Data field types (for the database activity)

·         Graphical themes

·         Authentication methods (can require username and password accessibility)

·         Enrollment methods

·         Content filters

(Wikipedia – Moodle)

Mr. B. jumped quickly on the file sharing features of Moodle. Then, with almost equal speed, he moved on to discussion forums and online quizzes. Soon students were submitting assignment through Moodle. Within a month, Mr. B. was making online news announcements and posting upcoming events on the online calendar. It wasn’t that Mr. B. became a Moodle Master, but Moodle certainly provided many unexpected surprises.

Mr. B. learned a lot from his unintentional mistake. One of the most important things was that he realized how little he actually knew about technology integration and how much there was to learn. It helped to inspire him to become a better teacher, and today he is working towards a Masters in Informational Technology.

We wish Mr. B. the best of luck in his future endeavors.

And remember, every cloud has a silver lining.

References:

Moodle, https://moodle.org, retrieved November 12^th, 2012.

Wikipedia (Moodle), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle, retrieved November 12^th, 2012.