Crawl before you mőődle

Put your course online, they said. You can use Mőődle (pronounced locally, for some arcane reason, with a heavy rural Swedish accent). It's easy, they said. Sarah will help you. We'll pay you to do it.

OK, I said.

But then you start to think: thoughts like the following, here presented in random order:

• I am a huge fan of co-operative learning and the course is largely driven by collaborative small group tasks;
• It is very important to me to create a warm, supportive and lively learning environment, using food, music, plants and other tangible devices; important features include class meetings where we sit in a circle and share reactions to recent material, concerns about tasks and assignments, and so forth;
  
• I use a lot of handouts; a lot;
• The course culminates in a Trade Fair, a highly interactive environment where student teams present their projects;
• I like to use games for purposes such as review;
• Laughter is a vital part of the learning process.

So this blog will attempt to capture the process whereby I become comfortable with on-line instruction, with the Moodle and successfully create a usable course while maintaining my pedagogical dignity.