Moodle Masterclass! Pupils are now the teachers at one North West High School

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) January 3, 2008 -- Pupils at Our Lady’s Catholic High School Preston are taking control of their learning in a major way by using the school’s VLE, Moodle, to set up courses, advise younger pupils and share good practice in their exam subjects. Head prefects Johnny and Nadia take up the story:

We met Moodle sixteen months ago, when it was being trialled. We liked the way we could access all our work at home and even send in homeworks rather than have to print them off and bring them in. Moodle has made a real difference to the way we learn now. If we missed a class (or weren’t paying attention!) we can go over it again on Moodle; by doing the Moodle and Hotpotato activities we can get instant feedback of our progress rather than having to wait for our teacher to mark it . And having discussion forums in subjects like English is really useful as sometimes you might not want to speak up in class but you don’t mind making your point later, online.
Johnny makes the point that:

‘Moodle isn’t just for stuff we do in school. There are adult courses on there for people who come on evening classes. There are courses especially for primary school pupils who come here on a day’s visit to get started on our Moodle. They even do Moodle Training Courses for teachers in other schools. It’s great for pupils who want to extend their learning: we have a Gifted and Talented section with courses such as German which are outside the curriculum but entirely on Moodle. And Moodle TV gives us the chance to upload our own animations/videos/podcasts to share with others.
This feature proved particularly attractive when the prefects presented Moodle to the Creator of Wallace and Gromit, Nick Park.

Continues Johnny: We’d already been asked at the start of the year to demonstrate to parents how they could log on to view their childrens’ work. We took them into a classroom and showed them where they could find letters home, revision checklists and homeworks. They really appreciated having this facility. So when we found out former pupil Nick Park was coming to present year 11 certificates, we thought it would be a good opportunity to show it to him also. He was fascinated with it!
Nadia feels the empowering of pupils is one of the main attractions to the VLE:
A group of us in year 11 have received training in Moodle and have been given teacher rights to set up courses for the school council and year groups. We can now hold our school council meetings online if we can’t all be present in person. We’ve also now got an area where lower school pupils who feel insecure can chat in confidence to us year 11s.
Johnny sums up their experience:

My friend’s school’s VLE is just full of teachers’ worksheets, nothing else. Pupils never use it. It means a lot to us here that we are trusted with responsibility and given a real say in the VLE. I think that is part of the secret of Moodle’s success at Our Lady’s. It’s a team effort

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