 Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today we are running a third webinar of the Reflections on MEC. I am Anna Kersa and I am Educator, Advisor and MEC Coordinator here at Moodle HQ and with me I have Vida Holohan, Tahia Bagol and Christine Hollis from Innovation, Certified Service Provided. Our facilitators will share a little bit from their perspectives as MEC facilitators and will introduce later four of their candidates who are the guest stars of this event. Candidates are going to share their own experiences and tell us what impact MEC made in their lives. This session is more like a round table so you have the chance to pose your questions to our guests. Just before we get there let me give you a quick introduction of what is and what is not the Moodle Educator Certificate. The MEC is an International Certificate for Teaching with Moodle and it is offered exclusively by authorized Moodle Certified Service Providers. Be careful because the MEC is not a basic Moodle training and it's not even an advanced Moodle training. In fact it's not a training at all. It's a certification process focused on meeting learners' needs with Moodle and it requires that candidates have at least one year of real-life experience in teaching with Moodle. MEC certification consists of six courses. Be careful not training courses but six certification courses that lead to six badges and once someone has all these badges is eligible for the MEC certificate. Now you might wonder why six courses? The answer is very easy. We have six courses and six badges because the MEC is based on the European framework for the digital competence of educators. Perhaps you may know it as digital MEDU. This framework organizes educators' professional and pedagogic competencies as well as learners' competencies into six areas. These are the professional engagement area, the teaching and learning area, the digital resources, the assessment, the empowering learners and the facilitating learners' digital competence area. Overall this framework contains 22 competencies organized in these six areas and if we take a closer look we can see for example that in the teaching and learning area that we talk about collaborative learning, self-regulated learning, teaching and guidance. So the question when it comes to MEC is how do we apply all this in MUDN and that is what candidates need to answer. As mentioned before, MEC is offered exclusively by MUDN certified service providers. So when you join a provider to take the MEC you will be registered in the MEC site and you will be allocated to the MEC program as shown here. Note that all MEC courses have the same structure. So let's take a closer look at one of them. Let's see the teaching and learning course. On the top of this course there is the welcome section with the announcements forum under how this course works book that summarizes all the basic information about the course. In the second section we have the what do you already know and there is a self-assessment check-in here. This is a quiz based on the Selfie for Teachers. Selfie for Teachers is a well-known self-assessment tool for teachers especially around Europe. This quiz has been designed for teachers so they can evaluate their they can evaluate where are they standing at on specific competencies. The third section is the teaching and learning overview. Actually is the overview section and here we have mainly books and quizzes. The books explain the competence and contextualize them within MUDN. It's not about how MUDN works and how to set up MUDN activities or resources. It just explains which tool can be used to achieve this competence. The books are always combined with a quiz to help candidates confirm their understanding. The number of the books and their quiz depend on the number of the competencies existing in Terry. So in MEC courses we may have three, four or five pairs of books and quizzes. Here we have a book and a quiz for teaching, for guidance, for collaborative learning, and for self-illegorated learning. The next session is called Your Assessed Tasks and is a place where the actual assessment is happening. Here we have two assignments and candidates need to write and submit both of them. Each of the assignments must have between 500 to 800 words and candidates need to answer specific questions and offer solutions in real-life problems based on their own experiences. Candidates can include screenshots of courses they have created and offered. They can also include the link out of course giving the facilitators permission to access of course. Candidates can resubmit twice after the first grading and feedback and the first grade is said at B2 level. Now what is B2? Assignments are evaluated with a rubric like the one we see here. Vertically are the four competencies and horizontally you can see the levels that vary from A to B1, B2, C1 and C2. Now if you are familiar with the common European framework reference, common European framework of reference for languages, you will recognize this ABC scale of basic, independent and proficient user. At A1 we have users who can interact in a simple way and at C2 we have the users who can talk fluently and precisely and these are usually interpreters and translators. So the same levels are used in the digital medu and that's why we have adopted them and use them here in the MEC. So if you're standing at levels A1, A2 then it's too soon for you to think about the MEC. You still need some experience. You might even need some training. If you are at level B1 then perhaps you're a good candidate to start with MEC as this would mean that you are a regular user but perhaps you haven't considered those competencies in detail. If you are at level B2 then we have certainly a pass for the MEC as you would be an expert and if you are standing at level C1 it means that you're already a leader and if you are at C2 then you are an innovator, a top trainer. Let's not list before I leave the floor to our guests. I would like to inform you that MEC is already offered in seven different languages. It is fully translated in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic and there are more translations to come such as Catalan and German and it is very easy to take the MEC in any of these languages. All you need to do is to change the system language from the drop-down menu on top of the page. In the MEC site this change will result to the change of language both for the system and the content and that's all from me. Let's move on now to our MEC facilitators and the guests. Gaide, Tahira and Christine, the floor is yours. Thank you very much Anna. Thank you for the introduction and we are delighted to be here today and share our MEC experiences. So first of all just to set the context a few words about innovation. We are a premium model partner with offices in Ireland, in France and in Poland and we consider ourselves a one-stop shop for all things e-learning and our services range from a consultant consultancy, a custom development, hosting, support and maintenance and content development and the last but not the least would be training. So we do offer training for site administrators and course creators as well as we offer MEC certificate together with Moodle headquarters. So basically we have a team of four facilitators and two in Ireland and two in France and that means that we can facilitate MEC in two languages. So that brings it you know perhaps closer to home for a lot of users and I guess it makes us stand out a little bit. So I have been involved with the MEC right from the very beginning and I saw how it evolved and how it changed and how now it provides a possibility for any Moodle educator around the world to explore various ways, tools and methods that can be used and also I think explore the all existing possibilities and also I think the MEC pushes us all out of comfort zone a little bit because it challenges and makes us think why we do things the way we do things. So I think that the webinar title Reflections on MEC is very fitting so while now we are reflecting on MEC and our experiences in MEC course when we are doing MEC I think we are reflecting on our teaching practice because when you know why you do things the way you do them the how to becomes only just configuration and setup so it's not really that complicated and we can we all know how to configure tools within Moodle and we can find online help but this gives us a possibility of sharing the knowledge between the Moodle community and seeing what tools can be used in which contexts. So I'm delighted to be here today and I have to say that my knowledge of Moodle and all the various tools keeps expanding and that I learn from and together with the students of MEC and now I will let my colleagues Tyre and Christine to introduce themselves. I'm delighted as well to be here today. I'm Christine Frolic, this is a very complicated when you pronounce it in English and I work at Innovation France as a digital learning project manager as Vaida said actually we do a little bit of everything and particularly we follow clients for in their Moodle project we do training and we follow also candidates in their MEC certification. So I'm also make MEC facilitator since September 2021 it's quite recent and actually I don't want to repeat what Vaida said but it's quite the same as a trainer and a teacher that I used to be MEC has been a good experience for me because I've discovered lots of functionalities I didn't think of before and mainly because I had to think properly about what I do or what I did or what I would have done with Moodle. As a facilitator it gave me the opportunity to discover how people, how trainer, how teacher work with Moodle, how they think what is their pedagogy and this is very important in this way. I think it's Tyre then. Yeah hello everyone so I'm Tyre Bagood I'm in charge of the training in the customer support for our Moodleers and as an instructor I also create courses with Moodle and Moodle workplace. I'm working at Innovation Bordeaux in France since October 2020 and till then I had to pass the MEC and also become a facilitator and it was a bit challenging for me not only regarding the program that covers such wide competencies but also because the French translation wasn't yet available. So with other French partners, Moodle partners I precipitated to the translation of this program and it's such more comfortable to facilitate it now that it's in my own language. So thank you Moodle for doing this and that's it for me. So now our guests if it would be great if you could introduce yourselves. Yeah hi my name is Martin Kelly I work for the Irish Wheelchair Association which is a voluntary organization in Ireland and throughout Ireland. We work with people with disabilities and we also train people that in the care sector and we use Moodle for that reason. From my own background I was a regional and national trainer for 10 years and then with the Irish Wheelchair Association and after that I became team lead of that team where we had about eight staff members including one of your guests Starco who were regional trainers and we used Moodle to bring in e-learning and blended learning throughout the organization which naturally came in exceptionally important during COVID-19 during the lockdowns. So yeah that's me thanks very much. Martin already introduced the organization and myself so yes I work in Irish Wheelchair Association as a regional trainer so yes how I use Moodle. I use Moodle on daily basis prior to completing MEC course I didn't have much knowledge only as a student so it was a little bit overwhelming and maybe challenging with finding time to complete it but I have to say did benefit quite a lot from it because as Martin already mentioned most of our courses sit on Moodle now so how I would use it is apart from tracking you know students progress and all we would transfer all our face-to-face courses they sit on Moodle now so it's not just about building it it's how do we teach and how people learn in Moodle so I would just have to say one thing that it offers so much so there's a huge potential there in completing MEC course but I would recommend to everyone not to feel overwhelmed by that maybe use a scaffolding approach to it so what I would do is depending on my learners and depending on the course content I would introduce certain tools and certain resources you know that would suit that particular group so there's no need to panic and pack it up with everything so you can just start with chat forum you know assessment before you move into you know I would at the moment use feedback chat forum assessment where you might have different group of learners with a different course where you might want to introduce database assignments etc so I have benefited quite a lot from it because I don't want to talk too much here but I just want to say something else I have went on and completed the blended learning course after MEC and I found it really beneficial there where part of the program was to build the course and see how you can teach even at higher level and I found a lot of people are still playing with modal sandbox where I was quite able to not only build the course but understand every resource and every tool that's that's available there so that would be me and I'm happy to answer any questions afterwards if anybody has anything to ask thank you I am Freda Gojini and multimedia advisor office software and multimedia trainer in ACPM, ACPM is an association created 60 years ago now in the south of France we are located in the Alpecote d'Azur region as we cover all the sources of French we offer training in the fields of mercant marine electricity catering digital as well as program as for migrants and the people coming for difficult neighborhoods we use a model both to offer training course and blended learning with most of technical fair recontents but also to try to develop multimodality and running autonomy of trainings with difficult access we use assessment, difficult courses and all aspects of Moodle to introduce modality in our association Hi thanks for having me my name is Keith Byrne and I am the Watford or Wexford or WWETB IT instructor and Moodle administrator so I use Moodle from both sides of the coin so in terms of I would use it to set up blank courses for other instructors to use but I also use it myself to create content because my learners I look after a multimedia room my learners come in it's flexible learning part time and they come in and they self study or independent learning using a mixture of online resources some stuff that we get from providers and some stuff that I actually create myself so I use Moodle quite a lot and I suppose I did the MEC just towards the end of my masters I was doing a masters in teaching and learning which I completed last year and I was building course content on Moodle for the masters and it was an extension of that and I use it quite a lot of Moodle features and I think it's interesting what the other people said about learning what you use the features for and why you use them and the reasons why you use them because it's a bit like a Rubik's cube as such there are many different ways and solutions of using some of these tools and just because you can doesn't mean that you should okay there has to be a reason behind why you use them and you work out as well what works for your learners and just because there's a nice new feature has been released in the latest version of Moodle doesn't mean that it'll actually work straight off the bus so understanding what the pedagogical methods underpinning the resource that you're using is very important so that's me and I'm happy to answer any questions if anybody's stuck on anything. Thank you very much so I think just from the very beginning let's start with the positives and maybe you could tell us what you have benefited most what was something that you know you thought okay I wouldn't have known this without the MEC. In terms of what I found most beneficial as I said I would be quite familiar with most of the tools within Moodle but what I found most beneficial for me in terms of because I do a lot of administration I would help other instructors to understand how to build content online and especially the likes of the tracking student progress so being able to implement stuff like checklist course progression doing sections and knowing the difference between the different layouts that Moodle have most people use the default to never change us and to be able to explain to somebody look there's a social format there's a topics format so as they know what the difference is between them because that's a very big thing it's a bit like you know you take a device out of the box and you keep it on the default and you never change the settings and if you don't explore the settings you really don't understand the full amount of what the device can do and that's that's the way I see Moodle you know if they understand every little bit of us then they'll know what to use and why and when and that's the most important thing that I found beneficial out of the MEC. Yeah I'd like to actually if you don't mind I'd like to just jump in and say that you put that very clearly I think what the course does overall is that it gives you an in-depth knowledge of the capabilities of Moodle and something that I wouldn't have had beforehand because in a very similar way we had a very basic we made very basic changes to the kind of I suppose the the background and the the look of it but that's all we did but when I did the MEC I found out there was an awful lot more available to me in terms of assessment options like people say in progress of students and also just the way that you actually plan out your learning and I think even though it's online and even though it's it's it's it's it has many capabilities like in technique technical terms it also brings it back to the way people learn as well and in digestible chunks and and something that people can take off I found that found the the broader kind of capabilities of Moodle were there but I just didn't realize that they were there when I don't when I did the MEC yeah it all became a little bit fairer for me for me Mido the MEC forced me to take a step aside and take another posture get out the geek and the IT technician posture and it's comfortable and move from the administration of the platform and have to have a reflection on what to do and what I do and very wonder about the meaning and what the sense of all the the quotient and about the form and not the technical yeah definitely I think it makes sense because while doing MST you have time assigned to reflecting back on what you are actually doing so you think okay I'm doing it in the same way for the last you know five years but is it actually the correct and the best way to do it so you could explore additional features that you can you know implement and and then gathering feedback and understanding how your learners react to it I think it's a little bit like taking this holistic approach to teaching online isn't it you have to plan then you gather feedback then you see how it works and I think maybe no real no any Moodle course is perfect it's a it's a journey we're all on a journey of learning how to implement and what to implement in what contexts okay process yeah it's about the process exactly and okay and what was most challenging could you tell us what what's what's was kind of unexpected and when you thought I didn't think about that were there any challenges that you faced it it took more time than I initially thought that the course and and maybe I should have had a little bit more thought about that before I took it on because if I took it on an exceptionally busy time I remember it well but but yeah I think too if I had advised it to anybody or if I knew known beforehand is that just how much time that it takes up and how thorough it is because it does go through the details and it's there are some parts where you kind of think may not be that important but you do find out later on that they are so yeah I think if I was it if I was advising anybody to do it I would which I would because I think it was amazingly worthwhile course to do and I would say just to build that into your your time build that into your calendar to give yourself time to actually sit down and concentrate on the topics on the on the the badges each badge separately because you do need that little bit extra space to clear your head and just think of that but um yeah that's the advice I think I probably give to somebody I wish I'd known it but that was my own fault not yours no that's that's understandable I think you you you have to assign time for that like you say you know it's uh when I when I was doing a course somebody said you get out of it what you put into it so you have to actually put in the time put in the effort to explore all those resources that are available for you and then reflect on your own teaching practice and like like you mentioned even something that you might think might not be relevant I'm never going to come across it next week you will come across it and you think oh I actually know what's being talked about here you know so yeah that's great and Keith what was challenging for you um I suppose in in terms of the course material a res race what Martin was saying there it does take a bit of time to go through it especially if you're not that familiar with it it's not something that should be taken lightly um you you do have to have a good understanding of the basics as was said it's not a basics moodle course um you know that there is quite a lot in depth in us now in terms of my own context in terms of what I I find most challenging is uh pushing it out to the wider community it's a slow burn within my organization here um we certainly because we're further ed we're quite restricted um and there is an awful lot of kind of you know unsure on the technologies um there's a couple of people who might not be au fait with technology you have a couple of people who just no matter what you say to them won't learn the technology if you ask them to um and then you get other people who are all for it and just don't have the time to do it see you get a lot of kind of um a slow build up in in terms of trying to to promote it within the organization um you know uh and that would be my biggest challenge with it is not the course itself it's trying to promote it to my colleagues and saying look this is an excellent course you will learn how to do all of these things that you can bring in either face-to-face learning or online or blended whereas most people just see as the the IT is being online blended but you can actually bring in these things into a class face-to-face class as well um so that that would be my biggest challenge is trying to to push it out amongst my colleagues for me uh the more challenging was to feed my reflection with my experience and not to stay academic and uh and uh it's um it was very hard uh on the beginning uh not to put only uh something very theoretical uh and uh to to take the risk to bring all my uh my feed my experience my curses and uh always put it and uh both uh make and uh me uh to uh complete all this to progress and uh the challenge uh all along the the journey was uh was this for me yeah i have to 100 percent agree with both martin and kit uh it's the organization sometimes can be challenging to you know to promote that amongst your colleagues and you're quite restricted like that what kit was saying about technology so we for example would have this in our strategy for every trainer to have completed m.e.c. in the next two years and yet there's still reluctancy there i'm the only one on the team at the moment where that's you're trying to kind of convince people how but i think they got a bit of a feedback that it is uh challenging with your time you know you really have to spend time on this and yet people will use the excuse of you know i'm not that it kind of uh savvy it and even i would find for example a digital resources or licensing parts in the m.e.c uh it was not something i would have thought about that much before so i would have found that a bit challenging because you really have to spend time and and you know try to understand all that so yeah 100 percent i agree and it's it's sometimes it's not really us or yourselves it's the organization that's uh reluctant to change i think in some ways perhaps m.e.c gives you the tools to champion that knowledge you know to share that knowledge because it is a lot of it is focused on collaboration and and sharing the knowledge within your organization sharing the knowledge with the moodle community and so as you are doing now so i think definitely you are you know on the right track and it's a slow process but it's going to happen yeah okay and just just wondering if um if your teaching has changed in any ways do you have any practical examples perhaps yeah i love i have to say i know this might sound very simple but i love the fact that there's no printing and accumulation of emails uh there's no assessments in the classroom so you can actually have the assessments on the model uh self-corrected with multiple choice you know questions and then those that are open-ended questions you have to correct them i was actually doing some corrections this morning and i just love the fact that everything sits in one place provides a automatic feedback to people uh much easier and i know this is something so simple it's not all about you know teaching but even that aspect of of moodle it's really benefited me big time i think i just yeah again because i would have worked with darko up till about six months ago i the part of doing the m e c um well the part of the the good thing about doing the m e c is that it opens up your possibilities um and that would change your your your the way you train and the way you teach completely and it is like what darko was saying unfortunately i don't work on the team anymore but unfortunately if more people in the team had done the m e c which i really would encourage people to do um it would expand their uh horizons i suppose on the teaching teaching front because it gives you so many options so it is almost like if you if when you do the m e c you almost want to go back and rewrite all your training programs um and that could be a good thing and a bad thing okay because it can take you a lot of time to rewrite the training programs but uh in the positive side of that is that in so many different ways when you when you have that knowledge of after doing the m e c it saves money for the organization it saves time it saves you know uh like darko said some of the people want to become you know paperless now and it has all those benefits so but like like like we said if you don't do the m e c you don't see that because you know what you i mean i often when you see other people's moodles i'm sorry from rabbit none now but often when you see other people's versions of moodle you get a bit jealous of of what they look like and you want to go back and you want to try and copy there which is great because it's it's it is a community you know uh that you learn from each other but if people don't do the m e c they don't have the knowledge of how to do that so um that is that is something that is really important i think and it does i absolutely would say hand on heart that it what it definitely does change your outlook on teaching when you do the m e c for sure yeah yeah i'll reiterate that as well um it definitely does change the way you kind of um approach or uh course design approach your your teaching of your classes and it really does make you think it it's definitely more student focused i think a lot of people when they haven't done the m e c see it as kind of an it thing and you know that's an it job and it doesn't really benefit me and it doesn't really benefit my students and you're kind of going well first of all it shouldn't be about you at all it should be about what your students are looking for we're supposed to be student centered that's one of our philosophies so therefore what does your student expect what does your student want and giving your student choices and that's what the m e c does and it very much ties in with um udl principles um i've done a lot of stuff on on universal design for learning and also on instructional design principles so certainly after doing the m e c i looked down both sides and i've done certification both in udl and in instructional design and they really tie in with the whole m e c um and it really does give you a completely new way of thinking about what resources you're going to use how you're going to tie it all together and the learning experience that your student gets when they're in the classroom or they're online using these resources and that would be the biggest change for me the first two essential reasons the consideration of inclusion and accessibility uh with trainees and the the importance of more spaces for the expression of trainees space for communities for uh forum service and uh more more spaces for communities in uh in udl only not only a space for uh journeys parkour as we say in uh france but uh a space where uh people can also exchange yes that's that's very important so nearly kind of creating a community around uh around it around the subject matter isn't it and i'm being able to ask the questions and learn from each other it like you say it is student focus and it doesn't have to be so one sided teacher just training students students can learn a lot from each other and creating that possibility for them to work on projects to have discussions and definitely it's it's it's very very beneficial and engaging okay um has your roles changed after completing msc or do you see that maybe you were given more responsibilities within your organizations is there any any comments on that um i i suppose my role has uh kind of got a lot more busier because um i completed my msc i think just before covid really hiss and and when covid kind of hiss then everybody was looking to get online and you know put content up um and i suppose uh one of the things is to try and get through to people that you know it's not an online repository moodle it's not there's you know 10 pages and notes and you know that that's online learning um you know so my role has changed in in terms that way um and i've done kind of a series of videos for staff on the likes of how to use marking rubrics or how to use a workshop for for self assessment and peer assessment stuff like that so uh to allow students and teachers to see the benefits of everything that moodle can offer because most people just see it as as i said a big online filing cabinet and i'm sure that the other lads who have done the msc will say the same thing that you know most people when they haven't really explored the functionalities of moodle for establishing you know uh social learning as you said with forums and q and a forums this sort of stuff that all they see is oh yeah you can upload a document share with the website for that sure why would we need moodle um and it's to actually explain to them no this is what moodle can do for you um i know with regards to our own organization uh a lot of our own organization use microsoft teams uh which has some really good features but it can't do all the assessment stuff that moodle can do and to explain the difference between the vle which is moodle and something like microsoft teams you can't compare the two products together they're two different products they've two different ways of functioning and uh they've different ways of doing things um and certainly the vle is the way to go in my view um because you can track your students uh have everything in the grade book i i just find it so easy to use um and it's just getting enough people on board um to do the likes of the mec it's definitely worthwhile doing to get all these skills thank you thank you very much um okay um just wondering i guess a kind of uh to summarize it and you have given some tips for for other learners but is there is there any advice that you that you could give is there anything else that you would like to single out yeah well i just wanted to say something the last point with keel i do i do have to say the role does did change for me as well as much as it's good so i can see truck the progress of students and made certain things easier it also gave me more work so i'm on moodle every day now because as i said earlier i'm the only one on the team with this so i still have colleagues ringing me you know how can you please show me this show me that you know so it's like in that sense it's kind of changed to i'm busier with it but in another hand it definitely you know i've definitely benefited from being able to you know to have everything in one place uh i would definitely recommend the course to any kind of trainer teacher anybody that's in learning environment i would highly recommend the mbc course yeah my role has actually changed and i work in schools and when i see other people's um moodles just you wonder why the structure is the way it is and if they had done the mc it may the structure might be better if you know what i mean the the design of their training might have been better but um yeah that's all i wanted to say yeah according to for me uh i would say uh have fun uh first and uh take a break and uh do not transform the trip into a race to the badger uh only but uh take a step aside and take the time to to which all of your practice with all the contents with all the assessments there is very very uh things and have contacts or more of our contacts are not the good one with your facilitator uh it's a very good engine to progress all along the journey that's great anybody else would like to add anything it's just as facilitator uh i saw that if you begin by the the course that you feel the most comfortable with um you will come in the program and it will be easier to do the other courses that covers all the competencies that you are not that familiar yeah so uh it's a bit challenging for everyone so take it easy and begin by the the first step your first step that's a really good point so instead of getting overwhelmed and say oh this is not familiar to me start with something which is familiar and build it like like building blocks nearly isn't it yeah yeah that's a very good point i if you're looking for kind of advice for those kind of undertaking it one of the best things you can do is actually play with a blank course play around what's available so creativity is a big part of it and it's probably the most fun that i enjoy out of doing the job uh in in terms of the instructional design side is actually the creative element there are many different solutions to many different issues that you encounter in the classroom in terms of bridging the learning gap so having a kind of a blank course to play around with even after the mec is finished to play around with something i want to experiment this might work as a as a game or this might work as a as an interactive book or something like that play around with it before you release it and then release see how it lands and see then do i need to tweak it so that would be my biggest advice actually play around with what's there don't just read it and go oh well i know that that's theory actually get to grips with it go in and play with the the different options great advice indeed yeah that's a great point because you are in a safe environment then so you can i i always say to my kind of students to create test users and test it see what experience is like from a user point of view when you are setting up and reading it you know how it should work but does it really work the way it does and i guess involving your colleagues and piloting nearly and some elements or some activities and seeing how it works in real life what is the experience and in what's really what benefits it brings yeah hello okay i'm Cecil can i speak yes yeah okay um yeah i have been teaching math at university level for 20 years and i'm using Moodle since three years now um well um it is a really simple develop developing um Moodle files and it's it's a really easy to integrate the the package uh within latech and uh well to it helps me to why i use Moodle it's it helps really um to um uh to make the students uh train themselves during the the courses to make them participate actively and uh and for the teacher to have feedback on what they really understand and well it can be also a tool for testing them at the end and in the middle in in between also well Moodle is really a e-learning material efficient for cognitive psychology it changes the approach of teaching it opens for new ways of thinking expand the horizon of ideas and helps creativity um and it is a facilitator for having discussions within the courses and so it is a communication facilitator and a positive training that helps shy students to participate and that is i think uh the most principle yeah yeah for points so the benefits for teachers uh are a new pedagogical pedagogical approach they make they it helps to make a course progression and uh and helps feedback and test um and for the students i think it helps them participate actively and concentrate on the courses and progress during the courses and it's a funny e-learning device and uh well a technology good e-learning technology i think for your feedback um unfortunately we often find that a lot of educators or trainers and people who use Moodle uh they have uh experience the experience you describe because they just often upload a couple files give a quiz and that's the end of story without monitoring users without supporting learning without um managing a class without building a community of inquiry within an e-learning course without being able to do that actually and this is where MEC fits so MEC goes beyond the Moodle training uh the the Moodle how to and it touches uh questions on how can i support uh learners with uh disabilities how can i uh collaborate better with my colleagues and stuff like that so yeah eventually we want all educators to have experience like the one you describe but unfortunately this is not the case and MEC is just a step towards this direction i hope uh it helps that way at least that was our orientation when we uh build the MEC as a certification process and i think uh the only ones that can really answer this if we uh reach a goal uh our our guests today Keith Darkoes and Mark uh and um i love someone and Martin Martin uh uh today is if we actually helped uh if we actually empowered educators uh to the monster for what quality education with Moodle yeah but certainly from from my point of view this has empowered me um as i said i was fairly okay with the technology anyway before doing the MEC i was fairly familiar with an awful lot of us um but in terms of where it's kind of left me it certainly given me confidence going forward because the way i see it is your future proofing um you know this is going to be the way learning is going to be done into the future so it's a way of uh future proofing not only your skills but also your content um for your learners going forward um because content goes out today quite quickly um and if all you're doing is uploading a couple of documents you'll find that people are kind of getting quite bored with them quite quickly um whereas if you're learning more in depth how to do more social learning forum postings blogging um if you're learning how to do interactivity using like h5p plugins which are all really easy to use um you'll find that they'll last longer because it'll be longer in use because people get more benefit from it uh from a pedagogical point of view thank you anyone else daco yeah uh i agree as well with with kit definitely empowered me and i would try to empower other people and now as i said people are looking but because it's in our strategy so i can see this is the way forward so all other trainers will have to eventually complete this over the next couple of years hopefully you know just because it would broaden their kind of uh you know just open mind about how how we actually teach how can we you know support learners how can we make things and what you find very interesting there what kit said is things do go out of date so you know interestingly mentions their h5p you know when i came across that first i was like oh my god what's this i'm not that familiar with it but when you actually elide and learn yeah how easy is to use and even then at the start if i'm honest i was a bit afraid how do i you know the way you always analyze you always think of your learners how will my learners take this oh my god they won't be able for it but as i said earlier scaffolding bit by bit step by step you know and if all the trainers within my team are on the same page we would easily be able to introduce something like that and as kit said that that's that's a last forever like you know it's kind of easier to to for people to remember as well you know rather than just uploading files so yeah i would empower definitely others to to complete the course as well yeah thank you um martin you know i i would just be repeating what the other two guys said really i have nothing new to bring the table but i agree everything they they said there um yeah i mean it it's interesting what what kit was saying because a lot of our stuff does go out of date quite quickly because we deal with policy and update and different kind of policies that come in and change quite frequently um and also the point about future proofing really it is you know everybody i think everybody realizes that it is the future it's it's not only the future it's the present really for for uh you know people that are on this track but um it is definitely going to become more and more part of learning regardless of what part of the education system that you're in so yep i agree everything the same yeah thank you zahary yes i agree with all this uh i think training is a piece of a global strategy with a growing interactivity communities and the place of citizens in the society of today's society and digital and i think that the model is not only a piece of content but is a place where people meet to build projects and become and transform society and their vision in terms of thank you so much for sharing your stories and inspiring others to go through the emcee as we wrap up i want to ask a question to our audience are you ready for the emcee what do you think you may easily find an accurate answer you know in this question simply by taking the pre-placement quiz uh in the are you ready for the emcee section of the scores uh depending your score in this quiz you will find guidelines on how to proceed so you will know if you are ready to take the emcee right away or if you need to come back at the later stage after getting some training uh from the academy or from your extended network of certified service providers uh or perhaps if you need to gain some more uh experience in teaching with Moodle so uh if you have enjoyed this session and Moodle academy you may consider getting involved further and help us grow by contributing to teach development uh being in the academy you can be an active member you can suggest topic ideas what would you like us to see uh covering the future you can join the get involved course and make your own suggestions ask the subject of interest vote for the subjects that have been already suggested and you can also contribute to the webinars if you have particular skills if you are an expert on a subject and you have something interesting to say just let us know know that the webinar presents uh presenters will gain a presenters badge uh from the academy and uh you can also contribute to courses and by sharing your experience and contributing to the development of courses and this will uh let you gain a course with the badge and of course please help us spread the word about Moodle academy and emcee tell your friends and your colleagues about the courses offered and the fact that they need badges don't forget to take the are you ready for the emcee quiz and if you are ready contact one of our certified service providers to support you through the certification process thank you very much and uh it was a pleasure having you here today see you in the next webinar