VLE Layout 1 - Teach Secondary

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What could your VLE do for you?

THE ANSWER, SUGGESTS I.T. EVANGELIST DAVID MORGAN, IS QUITEPOSSIBLY ‘RATHER MORE THAN IS CURRENTLY THE CASE’...

ADVICE | VLEs

Few things irritate me so inevitablyas the misuse of technology. Takethe Virtual Learning Environment,for example. It should be a fullyintegrated hub for all your

students’ online learning needs… but the realityis often very different. In fact, after a decade ofuse, most VLEs could easily be replaced withan old-fashioned resources cupboard.

When I see a VLE filled with nothing butPowerPoint files it makes me want to scream.It’s the equivalent of using your expensive newsports car as a sun bed for attractive models –sure, it’ll do the job just fine, but that’s not whatthose German engineers spent months craftingit for. Just like the sports car, a VLE is morethan a surface on which to store things; it has

the capability to replace you as a mouthpiecefor your content, to assess, and to promote agood learning dialogue.

I use Moodle (free and open source); yourschool may have spent a fortune buying intoFROG or Smart-assess; whilst a lot of mycolleagues are loving Edmodo. It doesn’tmatter. Whatever VLE you've chosen, it can beused to improve learning. But how?

Supporting studentsBeing the mouthpiece for every lesson can gettedious. Even I get tired of talking on occasion(although admittedly rarely). So why notsupport literacy, and place your instruction andlinks onto your VLE? Using it to direct learnersthrough the objectives of your lessons is a

fantastic way to support all of your students. Itleads to implicit differentiation, especially ifyou take the time to stock your VLE withvideos, audio recordings and help material forthe topic.

This works particularly well with practicalsubjects, to offer more step-by-step advice ifthe students wants to access it. Anyonestruggling can grab resources of differing detailwithout changing the flow of the lesson orsingling themselves out. And it extends ourgifted and talented students, too, where we canfacilitate interesting projects, and provide away for them to submit the work to us foractual marking. No longer will your G&Tstudents be working on extension activitiesthat never see a teacher’s pen.

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ADVICE | VLEs

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MarkingVLEs have changed the way in which I mark;giving me the flexibility to use students’laziness to my advantage.

How? Well, once you take work inelectronically you can cut the printing out ofthe entire process. It also means that thestudent doesn’t need to physically be there tohand something in. Even a piece that’s beencompleted on paper can be snapped anduploaded to the VLE, from anywhere.

Combine these tools: set deadlines for worksubmission for midnight on a Sunday, that wayyou can capture the frantic Sunday night workspurt for your lesson, as the students who leavethings until the last minute are not scribblinganswers down, or copying from others, in thelibrary at break time. Rather their energies arefocused into completing your work when theysuddenly remember that it has to be done.

Marking work this way also means that I cando it from my mobile device. Am I waiting formy other half to emerge from a shop on aSaturday morning? Well instead of playingAngry Birds, I whip out my phone, log into myVLE, and mark two pieces of work in the downtime. Multiply this by the amount of odd two orthree minutes you have to spare in any givenweek and suddenly there is no part of your daywhere you have to sit down and ‘mark’. Reclaimthose long swathes of time for your ownnefarious ends!

AssessmentOne of the most important selling points of aVLE, back in the day, was the ability to giveclassic, quiz style assessments to students. Thiswas great, and a bit of fun for five minutes in2006, but people have seemingly given up onthese really useful features because ‘they’re notproper assessment tools’.

Those multiple choice quizzes are actually areal boon to assessment for learning, becausethey are a really simple way to see if what youare teaching is being absorbed and processed.Sure, over an entire learning taxonomy then itis very difficult to assess the higher levels of

understanding using mere multiple choice(that’s what forums, debates and the like arefor), but for low level retention andunderstanding we can easily get a student totake a five-minute quiz on his or her mobilethat tells us what we need to recap or focus on.

These assessments mark themselves too –that’s got to be good if a few minutes upfrontgives us plenty of data to effectively direct our teaching.

Peer assessmentThis is one of my favourite things in the world:students post their work to a forum, where you set the class a task of peer assessing atleast three other students’ work, then replyingto the comments they've received with plans of action.

This is brilliant because the work andcomments are public – you can easily review,mark and develop effective learning dialoguesbetween the students. In most VLEs you caneven allow students to rate each other's work(ours lets you give a star rating to a piece,which you can then average). Before you evensit down to give a final mark you’ve got a roughidea of the level it will be achieving. All this,and it supports the students to better

ABOUT THE AUTHORDavid Morgan (@lessonhacker) is amoderately internet-famous teacherwho excels at pedagogy and

everything digital; he is also the author of StopGetting I.T. Wrong! (lessonhacks.com, £9.99)

understand the learning objective and thecontent of your lessons.

Discussion and debateOne of the single most powerful things that aVLE can give you is the ability to let studentsloose around a debate topic in a controlled andaccountable way, by simply posting a questionto a forum and encourage the students to debateit out. Having accounts that are linked to theirown identity means we can sanction in case ofsilliness, leading to simple, straight forwarddiscussion. An added benefit is that thediscussions are recorded and available for yourassessment of their understanding.

Student portfoliosI like students to generate and store work overthe long term, but normally their books gettatty, fall apart or disappear into the back of acupboard somewhere. If you can get students tosubmit or display work on your VLE then this isalmost timeproof. Imagine looking back at avideo of a presentation that took place inSeptember, and comparing it with a video of thesame student doing another presentation inJune – consider the level of conversation youcould have and the evidencing of progress youcould give to an Ofsted inspector.

Just the start...All of these approaches aren’t for everyone -and, more importantly, there are a millionbetter, cooler and more effective ways oflearning digitally just sitting out there on theinternet. No one, but no one, should be allowedto stop teachers using these wonderfulresources. So don’t be precious about yourVLE – make it the learning hub for your entireschool, use it as the first place that a studentvisits, but don’t be afraid to link out to othernew and exciting services, too.

With all this in mind, then, maybe it’s time todust off the old VLE and see what it can do. Foryou and your students. Because it can do a lot.

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