EWaye_casestudy_2

**Mentoree: Lana Kitik**
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** Moodle – who needs it? ** Lana had been using computers successfully with Cert I/II ESL students for a long time without “needing” Moodle. When the LTM program started, Lana’s students were already in the middle of a project “Describe a Process” which involved using Word and surfing the net for images and information. Although she was interested in learning about Moodle, she wasn’t about to sacrifice her computing sessions to Moodle.

** Starting from Scratch ** We met on Monday afternoons for about an hour. Initially, we looked at what the other 2 ESL classes were doing in their Moodle sites. And more importantly, we talked about what Lana was teaching in the classroom and how Moodle could be used to reinforce or extend these activities. We identified very specific short-term goals that could be achieved using basic Moodle skills and offer students another option in the computing room.

In the first few sessions, Lana uploaded resources that she had recently used in her classroom sessions – a powerpoint relating to vocab development, and you tube videos they had watched and discussed. She also added links to ESL websites and began a discussion topic on their next class excursion. ** Building confidence and skills ** As Lana’s confidence and interest in Moodle increased, she began creating a new unit called “Like The News”. She adapted news stories to her students’ language level – using Audacity she recorded herself as the “newsreader” and created quizzes using Hot Potatoes. So, instead of only adding links to files and URL’s to the front page, she began using “Compose a Web Page” to insert images, audio, transcripts and quizzes for each story.

The more time Lana invested in Moodle, the keener she was for students to be using it. As the semester progressed, there was a subtle shift towards Moodle becoming a more significant part of the computing sessions. The positive feedback from students about the activities Lana had created in Moodle and their pleasure in seeing photos on their class excursion in Flickr gave Lana the encouragement and confidence to do more.
 * Lana’s comments about Moodle – end of the semester **

- a very useful teaching resource and it’s given me the opportunity to tailor support resources to enhance classroom activities - it’s sparked my creative juices – from personal and professional levels – a positive - ideas I had before – in the too hard basket before Moodle - gives students a chance to work at their own pace - in terms of student feedback – has been very positive - students can share their work in Moodle – students very keen to see their work up on Moodle - the biggest benefit for me – reinspired me and reinvigorated my teaching because I’m thinking outside the square