 Welcome to the first episode of Tech Chat. Today we're going to talk about Moodle. This is a great online site to store documents, to share documents, to create assignments, and best of all to create assessments. Today we're going to visit Mr. Fier's fourth-grade classroom at Thomas and Ryan Intermediate to see how he's using it with his students. The main use of Moodle is we are trying to come up with, for me it was coming up with a way to have kids be able to take tests and for parents to be able to see how their students are doing on those tests. For the assessments we use in Moodle I've created short answer. We have essay questions, multiple choice matching. We try to vary it so that it's not just an ABCD pick each time and we've I think we've accomplished a good thing of being able to look at a variety of testing mechanisms. The reason I choose Moodle over paper pencil I think it engages all students. I've never had a student say I really don't like taking a Moodle test. Sometimes kids get a little bit of anxiety when it's paper pencil. I think when it's technology they're a little bit more focused and it's more personal thing to them because they can see it. There's no paper going home, their parents can see it, and for me it's just more enjoyable. I've spent every weekend grading papers. I spend my weekend obviously with family but now I can create different lessons and use technology and not worry so much about the grading aspect when those simple things are done for you. Students feel very good about using Moodle. I have the kids come in, they're excited about it, they ask when are we going to take our next Moodle test and who's going to be involved. The one thing that I like about it is that when the kids use it they're learning at their pace and they're working at their pace and when they're done they're able to see the results of it. I would put Moodle down as a five for me. I think it's invaluable to what I do in the room and it's freed me up to focus my time on coming up with different activities that challenge the students not worrying about how many things I need to be grading. It just gives me freedom and I enjoy that. I think the technology that the kids get to use will help them down the road especially as they get older and the technology evolves.