Using ICT for communication in teaching is great, and it’s what hooked me to adopting technology as a professional focus. It’s the “personal” quality of Web 2.0 tools that opens up new kinds of learning.
But systems really shine when they are allowed to be, well, systems. In teaching they need to be well-designed to provide the right kind of feedback to the user. They’re good for formative analysis – guiding the student in his or her learning process – and for final evaluation – passing the benchmark. How you set up the exercise or test visually on the page and how you word the feedback is important. When I run my next Moodle course for teachers, I’ll need to teach them how to make multiple choice tests. I’m not looking forward to it, though: the Moodle interface is so awful to use for input, and you can’t do much with it visually. Oh, well. It’s free 😉 – I’ll have to see what I can do with Hot Potatoes now, and whether that’s simpler.
Oh, boy. How many hours do we have?
