Pope John Paul II High School
Team Members: Pat Cebula, Mary Sevon, Nancy Sullivan
Community: Archdiocese of Philadelphia Community Year 3, 2010-2011
For our project, we have chosen to implement Moodle at our school. The Montgomery County Intermediate Unit has agreed to act as the server for our school. Pope John Paul II High School is redesigning its website, and we are going to integrate Moodle into the new website so that teachers, students, administration, staff, and parents have a central place to communicate and collaborate. The features of Moodle include features that allow for Teacher Pages, Courses, Assignments Forums, Wikis, Blogs, Quiz Creation, Glossaries, Links, and Grades.
Due to little training, some teachers are hesitant to use the technology that is available at our school. Many teachers have websites, but because they are hosted by many different web servers, students forget website addresses. Students miss many lessons due to frequent absences and/or due to missing eighth period as a result of involvement in our sports program. Teachers need a way to easily share resources and collaborate with other teachers, students, and parents.
- Acquire Moodle which will be implemented as part of our school’s new web design.
- PLP Team Members will educate themselves in all features of Moodle.
- Introduce faculty to all aspects of Moodle through a series of professional development sessions to be held at monthly Faculty Meetings
- Facilitate ongoing education of students in use of Moodle so they can access classroom resources both at home and at school.
- Develop and post lessons, quizzes, wikis, blogs, glossaries, calendars, forums, instructional videos, podcasts, and presentations to be placed on respective class sections of Moodle.
- Communicate with every member of the PJPHS community via Moodle, including Faculty, Administration, Students, Parents, Staff, Clubs.
- Share faculty resources (lessons, worksheets, power points, videos, podcasts, etc) through Moodle.
- Host a Technology Fair to demonstrate accomplishments
- Set up Mentor Program for faculty members who need support in implementing Moodle
- Showcase student work
- April 2011 – acquire trial version of Moodle
- July 2011 – acquire yearly subscription to Moodle
- July 2011 – August 2011 – PLP Team set up Department Pages for teachers to add content
- September 2011 – Begin to educate teachers, students and parents in Moodle Use.
- September 2011 – June 2012 – Conduct Monthly Mini Lessons at Faculty Meetings demonstrating many features of Moodle. These lessons will be hands-on mini lessons with each faculty member actively using feature demonstrated
- September 2011 Faculty Meeting-Get started using Moodle -Review basic interface-Create a User Profile
- Set up Courses
- Adding content to courses
- Course Management
- Understanding and using roles-Arranging students into groups-How to obtain reports of student activity
- October 2011 Faculty Meeting
- Individual tools-Uploading and sharing materials-Set assignments-Construct online quizzes-Develop shared glossaries and Data Bases
- November 2011 Faculty Meeting-Use of online Forums and Chats
- December 2011 Faculty Meeting-Gathering and Reviewing online Assignments-Recording Grades – link to Grade Connect
- January 2012 Faculty Meeting- Create Blogs and Wikis-Create Survey for students
- February 2012 Faculty Meeting-Videos/Podcasts-Uses for Flip Camera-Plan for Technology Fair
- March 2012 Faculty Meeting-Managing and Updating Content-Folders/Reports
- April 2012 Faculty Meeting-Committees Work on Technology Fair Projects
- Each Faculty Member will be part of a Committee for the Technology Fair.
- May 2012 Faculty Meeting-Date TBA for Technology Fair
So far we have learned and are continuing to learn the basics of setting up courses on Moodle. We have each set up a page for our Department and added courses under the Department. We are in the process of adding resources to our courses. Pat has experimented with adding a quiz and folders. Since our contract with Montgomery County Intermediate Unit who is our Moodle Server will not begin until July, we are working with a trial version of Moodle, which they graciously issued to us a few weeks ago. To see our progress, you can access our Moodle here: http://pjp2moodle.mciu.org/
- Pope John Paul II High School Moodle
- Team members have explored the use of Moodle at other area Catholic High Schools such as Lansdale Catholic High School. Lansdale Catholic Moodle
- Team members are educating themselves by viewing tutorials on the Moodle Website Moodle.org
- Team members are reading Using Moodle, 2nd Edition which has been downloaded to one team member’s Kindle, phone, and PC.
About Action Research Projects
Action research is a process in which Powerful Learning Team members collaboratively examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully. Action research is:
- Disciplined inquiry into a problem or possibility within the school or classroom
- Collaborative and usually takes place in a community of practice
- Meaningful, positive, and reflective
- Data-driven, action-based, improvement-focused
- Transformative
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Sheryl is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Powerful Learning Practice. She works with schools and districts from around the world helping them to infuse technology into their curriculums and by leading other digital conversion efforts.
Sheryl also consults with governments, educational organizations and non-profits in development of their various professional learning initiatives.
Sheryl is a sought-after presenter at national and international events, speaking on topics related to digital and online learning, teacher and educational leadership, online community building, and other educational issues impacting children of poverty.
Sheryl served on the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Board of Directors for six years. She co-authored The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age with Lani Ritter Hall. Sheryl has four children and four grandsons, Luke, Logan, Levi and Tanner and a trio of dachshunds. You can find out more on her blog and on Twitter @snbeach.
