ESOL

Just used the laptops with E3A for the first time today. Took a lot of setting up. They come in a very heay cabinet on wheels that has to be exticated from a small cubby room inside another room with a key pad on it and then they haveto be brought upstairs using the lift (which is also operated by a key). Once in the classroom they have to be distributed, boted up and logged into - all of which can take about 30 minutes cos of bottle neck and 54MB connection…

Anyway got them up and running and introduced the class (17 students) to Moodle. It is not as intuitive as the Moodle people would have you believe (suuurpriiiiise!). Somehow we made it through the hour  and got everyone signed up to the course at least although many didn’t write anything.

How could it be done better? Handouts documenting every click of the way (vvv time consuming) Lock step teaching with the slowest student on the computer attached to the IWB) - painfully tedious for some students maybe but a lot less running around from me. If I can judge ’success’ on how little I hear ‘teacher’ todays session was not good.

My time is precious and I have to work out how to encourage self discovery and independent learning.