LINK TO THE VHSG MOODLE SITE
Moodle is an open-source software for producing and maintaining internet courses - a course management system. The odd name comes from an acronym for  Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. If you look the word up in the dictionary, you will find that it existed before the learner management system was created. To moodle means and enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. 

We have Moodle installed at our http://www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.com/ web address. That is where we have nearly all of our course content and where the students do most of their work. It does a good bit of heavy lifting for us because it is the main location of course materials and activities. The best part is it is free. Much like our VHSg project, it is built and maintained by volunteers and has a very active community. Using Moodle means that instead of having to pay heafty licensing fees for using a commercial course management software, we have only the costs of running it on a server so that people can access the site/software through the internet.

For those of you that have been with us for a while, you probably are wondering why I didn't title this section Elluminate. Well, Elluminate was bought out by Blackboard.

You are probably still scratching your head wondering, "What is it?" It is an online conferencing tool. People click a link at the time of the class and arrive to find their classmates and instructor(s) all in live time attendance. It is a well-tooled environment with full-duplex audio so that students can hear and participate via their computer. It has a nice text chat function too. It has been interesting to see that the younger the students are the more they take like a duck in water to using the mic. The teens seem a tad more shy and jump in to communicating more through the text chat until they have been students a while and gotten to know their classmates and instructor a bit. There is a fantastic whiteboard which lets slides not only be shown but let's the instructors and the students have a lot of interactivity with visual content. I am so visual and love to move things about as well that the whiteboard is my favorite feature. There are other tools as well such as web tour, application sharing, media library that make sharing everything from seeing desktop application how tos through short video clips and Flash interactive activities possible. I love our live, online classroom!

Voice Thread is what we provide for our course designers volunteers and instructors to make recorded course content for the at-your-own-pace students and for the live, online students that need to miss a class presentation. Last year we did a limited pilot of using Voice Thread for students to use to create their projects and complete assignments. The kids had several tools available to select from and Voice Thread had nearly 100% of their choice. They loved the tool! This year, I am hoping that we will be able to budget in the use of Voice Thread as an integrated option in Moodle for teachers of all the classes. Each student will get their own account to use in their classes and for personal use too. Personal use will still have to follow the VHSG rules of content though. The student accounts are behind a  safe walled environment so that only specified audiences can see the content. It isn't out on the world-wide net unless the parents, student, and teacher all agree to make it fully public. The students will have a great tool to make creative projects which are integrated into our Moodle course management system. Instructors get notified through the Voice Thread/Moodle tools that a student has submitted their assignment and the instructor's comments and grades will automatically go to the Moodle grade book. I am so excited about the really neat possibilities that this tool will give to all of the classes at VHSG.

Last year we piloted the use of VoiceThread. This year I would like to pilot Weebly as a possible tool for teachers and students to use. You are on a Weebly right now. It is a website building platform that has become very popular among educators because the drag and drop design tools makes it very easy to teach students how to create website content and build student portfolios. Yet, like VoiceThread, the students are in a walled garden. Their website/portfolio accounts are not open to the entire world-wide web unless parents and the instructor approves. The automatic access is within the class or VHSG-wide distribution only unless the parent opts to share the password with someone such as grandparents or a portfolio reviewer of their student's work.

What I am thinking in the adoption of this tool is to give the students a place that they can turn in to a portfolio to show their growth as a student, use for assignments, and share with the class a bit more of who they are. For families that are required or want to use a portfolio to show student work, this will be an excellent tool. The best thing is athat Weeblies made by the student can keep on going. After they graduate from a class or from VHSG, the Weebly they build can be continued under their own account. I can see students using their Weebly for college applications and latter for job applications.

I am hopeful that the pilot of Weeblies this year will be a big success. If your familiy wants to or has to keep portfolios as part of state or umbrella school requirements and you are interested in being part of the trial, please let us know by using either the contact tab above or by dropping an e-mail to Tammy Moore at armoorefam@centurytel.net. The volunteer instructors will be trained in on how to use Weeblies for class assignments and how to encourage students to take pride in their Weebly as a portfolio. Not all the volunteers may opt to participate in the trial, but I am expecting that we will have at least a handful to give it a try.

Here is a YouTube video from Weebly explaining the features.