From the desk of Georgia Cameron, Technology Integration Specialist:

This week, Brook Hill officially began implementing Moodle, with a pilot program for our 6^th grade students.

Moodle? What’s a Moodle?  No, it’s not some strange new breed of dog, it’s Brook Hill’s newly launched online learning platform! By definition, Moodle is an online digital learning environment that will allow teachers to use technology to support and enrich the classroom experience as well as extend student learning outside the classroom.

But really, what does this mean? It means that Brook Hill is committed to effectively preparing your student for using technology. Let’s face it—21^st century learning is here to stay.  Our students need to learn how to use technology for their education and must be properly prepared to use technology beyond graduation and college. Integrating Moodle plays a huge part in effectively preparing our students for using educational technology and electronic course content as well as providing essential technology skills for the future.

So why Moodle? Moodle has been around for over 10 years and is used everywhere from small private schools like Brook Hill to major universities.  Moodle provides our teachers the flexibility to customize lessons, assignments and activities, while providing a secure, controlled environment for our students to complete their work. Other benefits of using Moodle:

• Anytime, anywhere access to assignments and class resources.
• Increased communications between teachers, students and their peers.
• Electronic submission of homework assignments & projects.
• Interactive solutions for completing homework assignments online directly in Moodle.
• And oh, yeah—it’s fun!!

Over the coming weeks, you’ll see updates on our Moodle pilot, along with plans for future implementations of Moodle.  We are very excited about what this means for our students and can’t wait to see what they do with it!