Moodle and crack

I sat through a district meeting the other day with tech leaders from a bunch of districts. One of the topics that came up was Moodle. From comments I heard, most of the district leaders seem to be jumping on the Moodle bandwagon, or at least on the online learning bandwagon. Moodle seems to be as addictive as crack. Quit a few of the high schools have some sort of online component, many of them using Blackboard. Our district is no exception, with the intended audience our staff development program.

Yet I feel that few leaders understand the time and effort it takes to create a compelling online course. Nor have I run across guidelines or descriptions of how to teach an online course that offers depth of content. Designing a traditional class takes a lot of time to do well. The creativity, interaction and course content all depend on the teacher’s effort and commitment.

I fear districts will jump on the online learning train, and do it poorly. All we need are teachers to experience online learning done wrong, and come to predictable conclusions.

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