Forum K - 12 Schools Forum: Secondary Schools

By: Mark Burgess

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I am studying Learning Design at Macquarie, with James Dalziel , I have never run a LAMS sequence or used one in the classroom. My area of interest is in using LAMs to document lesson plans (learning designs) but always having the option to run the lesson offline (say in the case of a school with few computers in classroms) which i know is built into LAMS version 2.

I have a few questions for any more experienced LAMS users, as I try and prepare some sequences for some science lessons on Wave properties (Stage 5 Science NSW curriculum)

1. Does LAMS in anyway replicate the formal and informal conversations which occur between students and teachers throughout a lesson? Picture a presentation or practical demonstration in the classroom, this would ususally be accompanied by many questions from students. I know in LAMS there is the chat tool, but can this run alongside other tools, throughtout a sequence?

2. How does LAMS deal with students completing worksheets - your typical comprehension style task. Can students have a website open as well as an online worksheet in Word for example?

Posted by Mark Burgess

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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G'day Mark,

Regarding question one, you can have a chat activity one after it has been completed for your kids to continue talking while they do some other activities.

If you set up a chat activity to be "not-locked when finished", they the students can come back to it and keep chatting away. When the student go back to the activity (by using the progress bar in learner) by default the chat application will popup in another browser window... so they can keep chatting while doing some other activities. (and you can do this with LAMS 1.0.2, you don't need LAMS 2.0)

I'm not so sure what you mean by "How does LAMS deal with students completing worksheets"... you can have a work/excel file open while doing LAMS in another browser window... is this what you are asking?

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Robyn Philip

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hi Mark,

Re your worksheets - you can attach them to the share resources tool and students can download them and work with them alongside the LAMS activities as they continue.

If you want to talk about this some more send me an email - rphilip@melcoe.mq.edu.au - I can probably give you some assistance before one of your classes if you like.

Robyn

Posted by Robyn Philip

By: Bronwen Dalziel

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Hi Mark,

About your question 1. The first thing that sprang to my mind was - why make LAMS replicate that formal/informal interaction? I think LAMS sequences for a Science practical demonstration can be really helpful with the initial hypothesis formation, and give clear precise details on how the demonstration is run, but really, pointing to something and explaining how it works is probably better done face to face.

What LAMS can do, is free up those students who 'get it' straight away, to continue on with their work, while those students less sure, can continue to get attention from the teacher. I believe that the best lesson design is made by using a combination of the teaching methods available, whether they are digital or not.

Sorry to carry on, I'm sure you are well aware of all of the above. I have had the same struggles while trying to create sequences around a photosynthesis prac. I do think Ernie's idea of having a chat window open is a good one to keep conversation flowing as different problems arise.

I'm also happy to chat to you about your sequences as you create them. I'm sure you can give me some good advice about the realities of a science classroom.

Thanks,
Bronwen (bronwen@lamsinternational.com)

Posted by Bronwen Dalziel

By: Mark Burgess

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thanks all, hopefully the level of discussion I’ve generated will help my assessment mark!!! (just kidding).

With the LAMS sequences I am trying to replicate what happens in the classroom such that the sequence can run either online or offline or a combination. Being able to run the lesson entirely online (obviously except for the hands on practical) would be useful when a class may be made up of some students who are being taught in the classroom and some who are completing the course in distance mode or online. I recently visited a school that is using Moodle (and maybe linking to LAMS in the future) to run online and face to face classes for the same subject – essentially they are the one class.

However the main reason for trying to facilitate the “conversation” which occurs in the classroom is that in the usual classroom a demonstration or PowerPoint presentation will generate questions from students. Those questions often give insight into how the students are trying to construct their understanding, or may even provide some helpful context which a teacher may not have thought of leading to discussion which helps to engage other students. I was just wondering how a LAMS sequence could make that happen, within the LAMS environment. I’m not trying to replace any face to face interaction in the classroom, but to augment it.

I’m going to try the chat window suggestion, and once I think I have a sequence which will work, I’ll upload it onto the lams community.

Posted by Mark Burgess

By: Greg Jones

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I am a teacher librarian in a large high school (1100 students). We have just completed a major refurbishment where the learning areas have been designed to encourage students to work in groups, sharing one PC between 3 students. LAMS looks like it will be really useful in this context. I am still experimenting with LAMS before promoting it with staff and I was wondering what approaches are being used for managing student accounts. :- Do you load individual students into the system
How do you cope with groups sharing a PC?

Hoping you can ease the learning curve.
Greg Jones

PS I think that the manual could be a bit clearer in explaining Roles and Rights. I used the template to load in about 200 year eight students. I thought I had the right settings but when I tried to create a class couldn't find any students. Further investigation showed that I have to change their rights to learner - a lengthy process.

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Bronwen Dalziel

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Hi Greg,

I think that using the template to load students is in fact the best option. Something must have gone wrong when you set them to be learners. I've tested the template and it seemed to be working ok for me (although I only added 4 users, not 200!).

On the template under "roles" you can set the students to be learner... and teachers to be author|staff|learner etc. When you upload the excel file into your organisation, it should then automatically assign the correct roles (rights) to the users.

You can use the same template to create your class, once the students have been loaded into your organisation. You modify the template to have only those students you wish to include and import again. It will then add those pupils to the class.

I don't use admin very often, so if anyone else is reading this and wishes to disagree, please go ahead!

Getting the template to work for you will be by far the easiest way to do things, so don't get put off by your bad experience.

In regards to sharing: That's a good question. I would recommend that you still assign each student their own identity - and they can take it in turns for who logs in for that particular lesson. That means that teachers can still use LAMS for homework or research activities for the times when the pupils are not in the group learning areas.

I hope that was helpful,
Bronwen

Posted by Bronwen Dalziel

By: Greg Jones

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1. Template. Thanks - I didn't realise that you could use it for creating classes
2. Grouping. Having one student to log on for the group makes sense. I assume the same student would have to log on for all sessions related to a particular sequence.

Looking forward to Ver 2

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Bronwen Dalziel

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Yes, the same student would have to log on for all sessions, if it was the same sequence... otherwise they would need to begin from scratch.

The bonus of them all having their own id means that they can still access it from home if they want to look at any of the resources that they have gathered over lesson - for example, if groups of students have added websites or documents to the share resources page, then the individual can use these for an assignment.

Posted by Bronwen Dalziel

By: Greg Jones

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How embarrassment. Should have used the spell checker.
Greg Jones

Posted by Greg Jones

By: Jun-Dir Liew

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> PS I think that the manual could be a bit clearer in explaining Roles and Rights. I used the template to load in about 200 year eight students. I thought I had the right settings but when I tried to create a class couldn't find any students. Further investigation showed that I have to change their rights to learner - a lengthy process.

Do you mean changed the roles to learner? - there are only 3 levels of 'rights', and each one has the permission to participate as a learner. I can see how the mistake can be made, if you forget to specify 'learner' as one of the roles when you import the spreadsheet, then you have to edit each user one by one to add the learner role.

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew