Ahhh... Progress

It may be Spring Break for you guys, but I am hard at work. All the activities and travel are past for a few days and I am taking advantage of a free weekend.

One of my worries (regarding my Moodle course) was that the language instructors would not take it seriously or would lag in getting me materials. But this week I received more materials than I could get adapted to appropriate lessons, activities and get uploaded to Moodle.

So here it is so far:
five topics covered in Southwest Indians (no discussions, assignments or quizes yet).
One complete lesson in Yavapai Language (no games, flash cards, or quizes yet).
One Complete lesson in Apache Language (no games, flash cards, or quizes yet).

Check it out and see what you think: http://yavapai-apachenation.moodlehub.com/ Login as a Guest and use the Enrollment Key YANonline.

Checking in...

Checking in... letting you know I am not ignoring/relaxing on the course. Other things are in the way it seems. Busy month at work.

February is Exodus month. That is the time when Yavapai and Apache people celebrate the return of their ancestors to Verde Valley after 25 years of incarceration at San Carlos. Its a busy time... planning all of the events. This last week was the culmination of all that planning. Monday was a fashion show, neat event! Tuesday and Wednesday were storytelling days. Thursday was movie night and on Friday we played a Jeopardy game devised with topics in Traditions, language and culture. All of this finishes off with a 6am blessing on Saturday at Boynton Canyon, a location sacred to the People. Then a lunch (open to all) and a full days entertainment. I am either attending, part of, or documenting each event.

Today... well, I am vegging. There is no energy left for much!

Next week we will be on the road. We will travel to Tucson to examine museum materials and collect documents and images. Later in the week there I will be at a GIS training session for cultural mapping.

I did put up two additional sections of Indians of the Southwest. We also began developing content for Apache language. I need to digitize lessons, as the original files have been lost. We have recorded sound for four of those lessons. Once I have the word lists for the five beginning lessons, I will make Study Mate games of them.

Yavapai language is on hold for two week due the personal problems of the instructor. Then we will begin that one also. Once we have the initial course offerings, we will announce the project to the newspaper and further.

Meanwhile, I had better go pack.

New Beginnings in Moodle

Here we go on the second week. Want to do as much as I can over this three-day weekend, as there are activities at work over the next two weekends. This coming Saturday is the Royalty Pageant, where they choose the royalty who will reign over the coming year. The following Saturday is Exodus/Return Commemoration, where the tribe celebrates their return to the Verde Valley from their internment at San Carlos 1875-1900+/-.

Last semester, creating my “test” shell to show the culture managers what is possible, I really muddled through Moodle. Even though I have worked in three CMS (course management systems) environments (Vista, Desire2Learn, and mostly Blackboard) I struggled with Moodle. The main reason was that Moodle is available for institutions… downloadable for their servers. I just wanted to “use” it. More about that in a moment.

Moodle is an “open source” application, meaning that users have access to the source code. Also that is free. This is important because it is aligned with the academic community’s values of freedom, peer review, and knowledge sharing. It was designed by Martin Dougiamus whose background is in social constructionism. Many DMS systems are tool-centered, not learning centered. Lastly, Moodle is community oriented. There are over 300,000 people registered on Moodle.org and over 30,000 Moodle sites in 195 countries. The global community has translated Moodle into over 70 languages.

Well, as I said, at first I muddled around with Moodle. This time I hope to engage the Moodle community. As a matter of fact, I have a past student using it and expect to tap her knowledge. I also now have two Moodle texts: Using Moodle by Jason Cole and Helen Foster. It is published by O’Reilly, but is also available as a PDF download. The second is Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching.

Back to me… and my Yavapai-Apache Moodle. The first thing I learned was that point about needing a server, etc. Way to bigtime for me. After a day of frustration I discovered Moodlehub.com or Key to School. It is a Moodle hosting site (also free) where you can set up your course. They then become the server for you.
Setup was relatively easy, although I made some mistakes in naming, etc. I set up four basic courses as shown below.


Then set about using some old course material to populate the “Indians of the Southwest” segment. I have a lot to learn yet about setting up the language courses.


There were various settings to make regarding access and passwords. This is the main area I have to work out. I don’t know how people enroll and how I control that. For now I have a Guest Login
Here is what I think you do to visit:
Go to http://yavapai-apachenation.moodlehub.com/
The course is Indians of the Southwest – YAN-HC-101 – Click on it
You will come to a page to enroll in the course -- The enrollment key is: YANonline

At this point you see the actual setup of the Southwest Indians course. It goes by the week and you can show or hide each week. In the weeks activities you place all of your work.

Want to explore additional possibilities? Click the links on the sidebar >>>
http://moodle.org/
http://www.keytoschool.com/

and oh yes, supposed to cite wordle.com for the background of the header.

Taking it a Step Farther

As I said yesterday in the "live" class, I loved this course. And I adore our colleagues the instructors. So... not wanting to let go of the opportunities the course presents, I return.

Looking for new areas of enlightenment and new ways to provide educational opportunities, I have been exploring Moodle. It is a Blackboard-like environment wherein course may be offered. I thought to make it my project last semester, but it was a little more daunting than I thought.

Let me backtrack. Occasionally I think of course I might like to teach independently of the college. People often want Photoshop for earlier versions, for instance. I have anthropology courses I don't have the opportunity to teach here, etc. Moodle is a way of offer educational material for profit or for free. Might try that in the future.

But for now, as I work at Yavapai-Apache Culture Center, I wish to develop courses for tribal members. It is a continual surprise to me how sparce is the knowledge of their history, traditions, arts and crafts, and most importantly, their language. It is critical for the tribal communities to maintain these elevents of their culture to maintain sovereignty. Should they lose sovereignty, they lose the power to govern themselves, to provide critical services, and far more (yes, casinos too).

I propose to create a Moodle University for the Nation. At the moment I have planned courses in Southwest Indians, Yavapai and Apache History, Yavapai Language, and Apache Language. Who knows what the future may hold.

So I begin with the shell of the "YAN University" that I created last semester. Each week I will add another week's worth of material: lectures, animations, movies, etc. The material I begin with comes from a defunct Yavapai course I no longer have the opportunity to teach.

This opening course is a prototype to inform the Culture Managers, language instructors, and YAN community about my project. Within the next few weeks I will have a guest enrollment (username and password) where you can visit. I have yet to figure out how students actually enroll. All things in good time, I guess.

In the meantime... have fun with this course.

and so it continues...

Yes, it is exciting, Todd. I am thrilled to be back in this course and absorbing all that Ruth, Todd, and Thatcher offer us. Since I have been here before, my responses to the requirements are here already... in the archive. I will be sharing my project I am working on and info about that instead.