Una bona professora

Una bona professora

Primera part: La bona professora vol millorar

Hi havia una vegada, una bona professora. Els seus estudiants i les seves estudiantes --també els consemblants-- reconeixien que era una bona professora. Tan humil com era, a ella també li semblava que era una bona professora, i n'estava orgullosa.

Malgrat tot, com tot el bon professorat, volia ser encara millor professora.

Parlava amb col·legues que li proporcionaven consells valuosos (encara que a vegades sospitava que alguns flaquejaven una mica).

Parlava amb l'alumnat, i les seves observacions sovint eren interessants i feien pensar.

Va anar a veure la directora del centre i va donar-li consell (ho va fer, de veritat).

Llegia diaris i llibres, es va apuntar a una llista de correu, visitava pàgines web, s'apuntava a cursos, tallers i conferències, i normalment extreia coneixements nous d'arreu on podia. Estava molt motivada.

A poc a poc, va començar a aplicar estratègies i tècniques noves a les classes. Per exemple:

• Va començar a pensar que hi havia varietat de models d'intel·ligència per tenir en compte a l'hora de planificar les lliçons;
• Va començar a tenir-les en compte a l'hora de planificar;
• Va començar a utilitzar l'aprenentatge cooperatiu a la classe;
• Va integrar més aprenentatge basat en projectes al seu ensenyament;
• També va començar a fer servir un canó de projecció.

Algunes vegades, estava una mica saturada. Exhausta, de fet. No anava tot com havia suposat. Però va perseverar, perquè volia que els estudiants aprenguessin tant com poguessin.

Encara, però, trobava a faltar alguna cosa. Volia fer alguns treballs amb els estudiants que encara no havia pogut fer mai. Coses divertides, atractives, coses que els estudiants es sentissin atrets per fer. Sobretot, coses que fessin agafar ganes d'aprendre als seus alumnes.

Però no arribava a trobar el què de la qüestió.

Acte 2n: La bona professora troba el Sr. Ferrer

Un dia, va llegir un article al diari local sobre el Sr. Ferrer, un professor que feia coses molt interessants per Internet amb els seus estudiants. Semblava interessant i va pensar si allò era el que no havia arribat a trobar.

Coneixia l'escola on ensenyava, i li va deixar un missatge al telèfon. Li faria res quedar un dia per xerrar?

L'endemà, ja tenia una resposta. Es podien trobar qualsevol dimecres, per parlar una mica. Però havia de ser un dimecres.

Va anar a veure la directora i li va explicar que necessitava algú que la substituïs el dimecres. Li va explicar el perquè i amablement se li va concedir un dia de treball a fi de fer investigació. De veritat, va passar.

Va anar a veure el senyor Ferrer, que la va saludar acompanyant-se d'un somriure afable.

"Benvinguda", va dir, i va somriure. "Va bé que hagi vingut avui. ELs dimecres, Moodlegem"

La bona professora va mirar al voltant. Hi havia uns vint-i-cinc alumnes davant d'ordinadors. Semblaven alumes d'uns tretze anys. Molts, ni la van veure, perquè estaven absorts en el que feien.

"Què fan?" va preguntar.

"Un piló de coses", va dir el senyor Ferrer, "un piló de coses. Alguns treballen junts per crear un glossari de termes que han trobat en els articles d'actualitat que llegeixen cada setmana."

"Ja saben com fer-ho?". Ella es pensava que crear un glossari en línia havia de ser una mica complicat a aquella edat.

"I tant." va dir el senyor Ferrer. "No costa gaire de fer, al Moodle."

"Ah, sí, el Moodle.", va dir ella. "Vaig llegir-ne alguna cosa a l'article del diari. Què és?"

"És el programari que utilitzem a la classe virtual", li va contestar mentre l'acompanyava cap a un monitor.

"Ho veu com van emplenant senzillament un formulari per crear les entrades del glossari?", li va preguntar. "Això és el Moodle."

No semblava pas que els alumnes tinguessin cap problema.

"I alguns altres alumnes", va continuar ell, "debaten sobre com s'està conduint la guerra contra el terrorisme actualment. S'ha convertit en una discussió força comuna.", va concloure.

"Ara fan un debat en línia?", li va preguntar ella.

"Fan servir un fòrum de discussió per parlar entre ells i elles i estan avaluant les intervencions de la resta, segons els criteris que vam acordar tots plegats.", va dir ell.

"I poden, tan joves, assumir-ho correctament?", va preguntar, altre cop.

"Alguns encara aprenen com han de treballar construint críticament, i com no entendre-ho tot com a una qüestió personal.", va replicar ell. "Però estem a punt d'arribar-hi. Amb una mica de control, de coratge ..."

"No, si jo em refereixo a la part tecnològica.", el va tallar ella.

"I tant!", va replicar el senyor Ferrer. "Al Moodle, els fòrums són fàcils de fer servir."

I durant aquell dia, les coses van anar passant així. Moodle per aquí i Moodle per allà. La bona professora va haver d'admetre que fins i tot l'alumnat més jove semblava ser Moodlejador avançat. I gairebé tothom semblava interessat i compromès amb el que feia.

Estava impressionada, però encara dubtava si tot era realment com semblava.

---

During Mr. Dougis' break, they talked over a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.

"Tell me more about Moodle," she said.

"Well," he began, "I use Moodle to complement and enhance my classroom instruction. I might, for example, just upload a Power Point presentation to the site for my students to review or post links to a good web site. Or we might do something more social, more collaborative, as you have seen today."

"So, Moodle helps you do some things differently?" she asked.

"Not just different," he emphatically corrected, "better."

"How so?" She really wanted to know.

"Let's say," said Mr. Dougis, "that we are discussing the effects of global warming. I can send my students to the library to do traditional research and we can discuss what they find out in class. And I can have the students make posters to display what they have learned. We can break into groups create lists of top ten easy ways to fight global warming. And we can have a debate in class about the effects of global warming, too."

"That sounds fine," said the Pretty Good Teacher. "What is wrong with that?"

"There is nothing wrong with that," replied Mr. Dougis, "but we can, for example, also go to Moodle and create a survey about global warming to administer to students here at our school and to students at our online partner schools in Canada and South Africa in order to see to what extent we all agree on the issue. We can design the survey together, invite our partners to take it, and have a discussion with them about where we see eye to eye and where we don't. And that is potentially a rich, valuable educational experience that we could not have without Moodle, don't you agree?"

The Pretty Good Teacher did agree. She wanted this Moodle thing for her students.

Mr. Dougis showed her how to go to any one of several sites and set up a Moodle classroom. That weekend, the Pretty Good Teacher started learning the basics of Moodle. She even got in touch with the moodle community at moodle.org where she found other teachers like herself and lots of people interested in the moodle thing.

Act 3: The Pretty Good Teacher starts Moodling

By the next Friday, she and her students were in the school computer lab. She showed them how to use a discussion forum and urged the students to discuss the novel they were currently reading.

Some students had a good bit to say about it. Others had very little to say. Some comments were insightful. Others were quite foolish.

The Pretty Good Teacher was disappointed. Was Moodle not really all Mr. Dougis had claimed?

A few days later, she tried again. She set up a chat room and told the students to chat about anything, but to pretend they were characters from the novel. A few students did a really good job, but many students did not seem to take the assignment seriously. And the chat room became very confusing when everyone spoke at the same time. Frankly, the lesson was a flop.

Some of her students must have been talking about Moodle in a less than complimentary way, because the Pretty Good Teacher had to endure some snide comments about it in the staff room. Some of her so-called colleagues actually seemed happy to see her struggle a little. It was incomprehensible to her, but it was undeniable. And she didn't like looking foolish.

Now the Pretty Good Teacher was quite sure that Moodle was not as wonderful as Mr. Dougis seemed to think it was. Annoyed, she sent him an email, telling him so.

Act 4: Mr. Dougis you've got an email

She received a quick reply. "You sound upset," wrote Mr. Dougis.

The Pretty Good Teacher returned, "I am upset. I am not so sure that Moodle is right for my students."

An exchange of emails ensued.

"Maybe," he responded. "But let me ask you this: Did your students do what you asked them to do?"

"What do you mean?" asked the Pretty Good Teacher.

"Well, when you asked them to discuss the novel in the forum, did they do that?" he asked.

"Yes, I suppose most of them did," she replied.

"And when you asked them to chat about the novel," he continued, "did they do that?"

"The majority of them did," she answered.

"So, why are you unhappy?" asked Mr. Dougis.

It was a good question.

"Well," she wrote, "the students did not seem very excited about the lessons and I am not sure that they learned much, either."

"Does that ever happen in your traditional classroom?" asked Mr. Dougis.

Now she was offended. "Almost never," came her indignant response.

"Why not?" asked Mr. Dougis playing with fire.

First she planned a very icy and angry response. But after 5 minutes or so, she cooled down and started thinking about it seriously. Normally, her lessons had something like a beginning, a middle and an end. They were well thought out and the students understood just what she expected of them. So that is what she wrote in her response to Mr. Dougis' question.

"Can you honestly say the same of your two Moodle lessons?" he wrote back. Mr. Dougis was definitively a daredevil.

She knew he was right. She had expected Moodle to work some sort of magic on her students, but she had not really designed the kind of good, effective lessons she normally planned.

"What would you advise your students to do in a situation like this?" asked Mr. Dougis.

She decided to give Moodle another chance.

Act 5: The Pretty Good Teacher strikes back

This time, she asked herself, "What do I want my students to learn?" And she wrote down her objectives.

Then she asked herself, "What resources will we need to make the lesson work?" and she collected and organized her resources.

Finally, she asked herself, "What is it I want my students to actually do in order to be successful?" And she designed her activities.

The Pretty Good Teacher wanted her students to recognize and identify the importance of conflict in the novel.

She located a couple of good online resources to give students the information they needed to do this and she posted her own notes to help them better understand what they found on the web sites.

In addition, she wanted them to create a web page for each major conflict in the novel, describing the conflict and suggesting several possible ways the conflict could be resolved. Then she set up a wiki where her students could do this.

Before going to the lab, she discussed the lesson with her students and showed them how to work in a wiki. She used her cool, new LCD projector for that.

She posted clear instructions about the lesson to the web site, reinforcing what she had said in class (and unconsciously stating a contract with her students).

The next day, they went to the lab.

The Pretty Good Teacher was gratified to see how much better the lesson went. While a few of the students did have a little trouble the first few minutes getting used to the wiki, most of them actually caught on very quickly, and it was a pleasure to see how they helped each other get up and running.

After about forty-five minutes, almost all students had contributed to the wiki. Some of their web pages were surprisingly good.

As the Pretty Good Teacher circulated around the lab, she encouraged the students and complimented their work. Of course, she also had to remind a couple of students that playing card games on the computer was not part of the lesson.

While she could not say that the lesson was perfect, the Pretty Good Teacher was pleased. The students had not only learned a lot, they seemed to enjoy doing so.

That evening, she went back to the wiki to reread some of the pages. She was surprised to see that some students had continued to work on their pages from home. They had added graphics and links and some shocking, but enthusiastic, text formatting. She had not assigned this as homework, they just wanted to do it.

And the Pretty Good Teacher smiled a little.

Act 6: The next day

When class met the next day, several of the students were quite excited about Moodle. One said, "When my father asked me what we had done in school, I showed him the wiki. He thought it was great!" It was obvious that she was proud of the work she and her classmates had done.

The Pretty Good Teacher was feeling pretty good.

"Can we go back to the lab today?" one student asked.

"No," she replied, "not today, but we can go back next week. Do you all want to do that?"

When they said yes, she was not very surprised.

"In the meantime," she suggested, "maybe we should think of a name for our online classroom."

They thought of several good possibilities and decided to vote to pick the best one. The Pretty Good Teacher said, "We do not have to vote right now. I will post a choice to our new web site and you can take a few days to decide."

Almost everyone agreed that this was a sensible idea. But a couple of students looked unhappy about it.

"What's wrong?" the Pretty Good Teacher asked one of them as the class was leaving.

"We don't have the Internet at my house, so I can't vote," said the student.

The Pretty Good Teacher hadn't thought of that. But she had an Internet connection in her classroom. And there were quite a few online computers in the school's media center.

"Why don't you stop here right after school and use our computer when you want to Moodle?" she suggested. "Or I can write you a pass to the media center during class one day when we have a few extra minutes."

The student smiled. "Thanks! I'll stop by after school", she said and headed to her next class.

When she returned at the end of the day, she had a friend with her. "You're not in my class," teased the Pretty Good Teacher. "I know," said the friend, "but it sounds like fun."

And the Pretty Good Teacher was pretty happy.

Act 7: She kept on moodling

And so it went. Over time, Moodle came to be an important part of the class. Soon, the Pretty Good Teacher was posting lesson plans to Moodle. Not very exciting, but the parents seemed to appreciate it. After a while, she began setting up little practice quizzes to help students prepare for tests. Together with another class, the students collaborated on articles for the school newspaper. They submitted rough drafts of papers for peer review and discussed class matters online. Some students even used the chat room for occasional online study sessions. And once they discovered instant messaging and blogs, things really got crazy.

After a few months, Moodling became second nature to them. It felt natural. It was fun.

And other teachers at the school began to Moodle. Sometimes, they met with their wireless laptops at a local cafe for "Moodle and Coffee" sessions. The teachers began to look forward to spending this time together--even a couple of the teachers who had made negative remarks in the staff room.

Act 8: Unexpected role-reversal

One day, the Pretty Good Teacher ran into Mr. Dougis at the grocery store. She told him how well things were going. And she thanked him for Moodle.

"Glad to share," he said, and smiled.

"Know what I like best?" she said. "It is cool that we can do a weekly podcast for our new partner class in Australia! My students love that podcasting module!"

"So there's a podcasting module? I didn't know that," said her Moodle mentor.

"Really, well, we should set up a forum where we can share on a regular basis," she replied, secretly thrilled at this unexpected role-reversal.

"Yes, that's a great idea. Let's do that," answered Mr. Dougis, who was clearly pleased. "You know, it sounds like you have become a Very Good Teacher."

And he was right. She had, indeed, become a Very Good Teacher.

Epilogue

She had to convince the school faculty council and the school director, but she finally succeeded in getting some free days for her trip to the next MoodleMoot. Her school administrators even covered the expenses of her trip, writing it off as "professional development" and wishing her well as she represented them to other schools attending the Moot. Once there she, the Good Teacher, gave a speech to other Moodlers about her Moodling experiences.

http://moodlemoot.org/ zh:好教师