Kevin Biddle's Blog

Applied Informatics Project

Kevin J. Biddle

 

For my applied informatics project I decided to create an online course.  I have never used course management software from the instructor’s side before, so this afforded me the opportunity to learn how.  At Marion Community Schools we currently own rights to Angel software.  We are going to be changing over to Moodle this fall.  I have been assured that the files I create in Angel can be switched over to Moodle when the time comes so hopefully my work will not have to be redone in a month or so.

 

The purpose for creating these types of online courses for our high school students is threefold.  The primary reason is for our students in our credit recovery program.  These are students who failed the traditional course and are trying to earn credit the second time around while not attending classes in the building.  Secondly, some of our AP teachers use web-based course management software so that students who are working at different levels and at different paces can research and submit assignments online for convenience.  The third reason we want to develop more of these courses is to offer an alternative way to provide educational opportunity for those students who may not attend the regular school because of discipline problems.  We have several expelled students who may be perfectly able to earn credit but are not able to attend classes in our building because of behavior issues.  I believe that by offering these courses online, we can serve a group of students who are now not being offered the opportunity to complete their high school education.

I have discussed the possibility of offering these courses to students not attending our school with administrators and have received a positive response.  However, the teachers’ union president informed me that they would oppose it because it could lead to a reduction in teaching staff if many students opted to take courses online.

 

For a demonstration of this course go to: http://www.screencast.com/users/kbiddle/folders/Default/media/ceb0e691-7169-4aa3-9b97-6ab0722750fc

 

It was a great fieldtrip to see MISi in action.  I think the best thing about the program is its capability to generate customized reports.  We have a board policy for retention of students that requires our teachers to collect and organize data on each student.  They have to show attendance, discipline, ISTEP scores, NWEA scores, class grades, and grade point average among other information.  Our teachers always complain that it is too time consuming to have to look up all this data in seperate places to fill out our forms.  With MISi, all of this data is gathered automatically and up-to-date reports can be generated with a couple of mouse clicks.  What a blessing for our teachers by way of saving valuable time.

Another impressive feature of this program is that it already has all of the DOE report templates in the program.  The data is generated automatically and reports can be submitted to the state quite simply.  I'm sold.  I want to convince our superintendant to look at this software or others like it.  The possiblilities are staggering.

I can imagine our teachers being able to have the entire academic background of each student (grades, teachers, standardized test scores, etc.) availble in seconds.  Progress or lack thereof can be pinpointed in seconds.  Parent also have a portal they can access for their child.

www.misi.com

As I interviewed my pricipal and technology coordinator, it became very clear to me that McCulloch Middle School is behind in our use of educational technology.  While we do have an excellent program for managing student information now--PowerSchool, we are woefully lacking in our use of instructional technology.  While a few teachers use some software in their individual classrooms, the standardized curricular software we use is discussed in the attached powerpoint presentation.  Clearly, we have a way to go in our use of technology.  I have added my suggestions at the end of the presentation.  I hope to have an influence in implementing these changes in the coming school year. SIS and IT Profile

 

 

 

 

 

I found a software program called WebQuiz.  You can see a demo on thier website http://www.smartlite.it/en2/products/webquiz/index.asp   WebQuiz XP is the new easy and affordable product that
allows you to create on-line quizzes, tests and assessments in just a few minutes. By using an easy wizard, you can add the questions, choose the options and then set the final evaluation. Quizzes can be immediately answered on-screen, published to the Internet, to a network or to a CD-ROM.

 

 

 

 

 

Our school system has recently decided to switch from ANGEL for our online courses to MOODLE.  I knew nothing about MOODLE until I did the research for this class.  Here is what I discovered:

 

 

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University. (From Moodles Web site moodle.org)

 

Moodle has nearly 30,000 sites and 11 million users.  The best news for me is that my ANGEL course can be converted to Moodle when our school district switches over.