Quick and useful: history links
Here are some interesting links for history teachers:
- The National Archives have complete lesson plans over here. Very nice stuff. I wonder if there are similar sites for German history teachers.
- Similar to the above, but mostly useful if you are teaching history in English is SchoolHistory.co.uk – online history lessons, revision, games, worksheets, quizzes and links. Definitely a fun site to use!
- And last but not least: If Historical Events had Facebook Statuses. I think these would be great lesson starters if I only knew how to adapt them to our curriculum.
“Digital Natives”
I’ve always shunned the assumption that people who grew up with something that was introduced before they were born and is in widespread circulation when they grow up are inherently inclined to have superior knowledge about it. Like, you know, these “digital natives”.
From personal experience I can say that lots of my students are web-savvy. They have accounts at Facebook, SchülerVZ, MeinVZ, you name it. At the same time they have problems judging the validity of their Google search results. Additionally, they have trouble finding the correct expressions to feed into Google to actually get meaningful results.
But this is not all. A lot of their peers have trouble using a computer, connecting to and/or using the web with a web browser. Can we call these students “digital natives”? I think not. What is most interesting to me is that research has apparently come to the same conclusion by now.
Moodle web 2.0 or not?
Over at Moodle News they are having a poll whether Moodle is web 2.0 or not.
Frankly speaking, I don’t care. Moodle is a fine LMS, period. I couldn’t care less if it is or isn’t web 2.0. It suits its purpose perfectly and that is what counts!
Moodle Plugins (a lot of lists)
You can pimp improve your Moodle with numerous plugins. The official Moodle website lists hundreds of them, ready for your or your pupils’ enjoyment. To give you a starting point, here are three shorter lists of the best or most used plugins:
- Best Moodle Modules & Plugins : Part 2
- What are the most sought Moodle Modules/Plug-ins?
- 5 Moodle Modules
Our Moodle uses the following plugins:
- Lightbox Gallery Resource (To give the students some eye candy. LMS don’t need to look boring!)
- Book
- Feedback (Very good for surveys and feedback.)
There you have it: Four lists of plugins. Now explore and enjoy!
I like this a lot!
Thanks to @blauerpunto for focussing my attention on this: The Alot is Better Than You at Everything. I’m not going to enjoy forums or IRC chats anymore. Just because of the image of the burning alot in my head.
I might use the comic when we discuss chatspeak in class, though.
Drag’n'Drop in Moodle
In case you are sick of all those clickable arrows you usually use to arrange your resources in Moodle, why don’t you enable drag’n'drop?
I simply wonder why this isn’t turned on by default. Or, to be more precise, why AJAX is turned on but deactivated for course editing by default.
Moodle 101
I just love this (old school) introduction to Moodle by Steve Williams (@MrHSIE):
(via Moodlenews)
Another day, another Moodle install
Let’s see:
- new hosting provider for our school-website: done!
- new domain name for our school-website: done!
- contents transferred from old to new site: done!
- installing Moodle on new sub domain: done!
- configuring the freshly installed Moodle to our preferred settings: done!
But: Why on earth does it take around a million clicks to setup Moodle with sane (for our school) settings? I wish there was an option where I could set these things during installation. Or maybe even something like: “Do you want to install full multimedia (+links to Youtube) support?” and/or “Is this Moodle for your institution/school only or for a broader audience (=guests allowed)?”
This would make it much quicker and less painless to set up a Moodle. With most school-Moodle-admins being teachers–who might not be computer science experts–security might benefit, too. I hope that Moodle 2.0 will offer significant advancement in this area.
More on youth (the changed kind) and teachers
More pupils with traumas or cases of neglect enter our school system every year. These pupils need a lot more attention than our regular students. So we as teachers should be in a situation to give these troubled characters the attention and time they deserve. They have the same right to learn as the other pupils but have to come to terms with their life/circumstances to be able to do it.
Now, as teachers do we have the time or resources to help?
Classes in German schools have (differing according to the type of school) 25-30 students. Now imagine that you have 3 to 5 troubled pupils in your class of 30. Are you ready and able to work with them and help them on their way to learning?
Of course we are ready! But unless you are Superman or Wonder Woman you’ll wear out fairly quickly. This is an inevitable result of multiple mental pressures: curriculum demands, colleagues’ demands, parents’ demands and last but not least our students’ demands.
The powers that be know about this. As previously stated, teacher training takes the changed youth into account. But is there any other important support? Like a better student to teacher ratio?
This would result in smaller classes (perhaps around 15 pupils per class) and likewise more chance to encourage and support each student individually. I think this would not only change the ways to work with challenging students but also teaching in general.
But is this done in German schools? No, because it would immediately double the number of teachers. Needless to say this would be expensive. So, in these monetary challenging times smaller classes are not a viable option for the powers that be.
What a shame, because every Euro spent early in education is two to three spent less on dole-money later.
Argh! Why?
You might already know the famous Horrible Histories by Terry Deary. If you live in the UK and have kids you might even know that there is a Horrible Histories show on CBBC. Here is an example in case you have no idea what I’m talking about:
I want a show like this in German TV (or on DVD or in the Medienzentren) now! No, not now, but yesterday. Why don’t we create such a show or, adapt or dub it? History is full of humour and irony. Time to show that to our students, too!
(via Britische Sitcoms)
