Online Quaker classes

December 22, 2009

I’ve just signed up for Bea­con Hill’s Friends House­’s Quak­er Stud­ies class on “Moo­dle, Tech­nique / Tech­nol­o­gy” that begins First Month 12.

An edu­ca­tor F/friend of mine has gushed on about Moo­dle, the open
source edu­ca­tion sys­tem and I have to admit it’s always looked intrigu­ing. I’ve taught a
num­ber of real-world Quak­erism classes
and I’ve won­dered whether online cours­es could help con­nect Friends and
seek­ers iso­lat­ed by dis­tance or the­ol­o­gy. I’ve been want­i­ng to try out
one of Bea­con Hill’s online class­es for awhile. 

From the description:

Is online teach­ing new to you?

Don’t know where to start?

We’ll
begin with the sim­plest inter­ac­tive course:
a “wel­come to the class” sec­tion with a read­ing and one forum. We’ll
talk about tech­nol­o­gy: how set­tings change
the forum inter­face; but we’ll also dis­cuss teach­ing tech­nique: how
to present intro­duc­to­ry mate­r­i­al to students
who may have a wide range of expe­ri­ence and expectations. 

Over the 10
weeks, we’ll cov­er: intro­duc­ing the moo­dle envi­ron­ment; chats; forums;
choic­es and sur­veys; lessons; assign­ments; data­bas­es; wikis; quizzes.

You will have your own les­son space to explore all these tools and will
be expect­ed to look at each oth­er’s work and react to it. By March we
should all be ready to design and offer cre­ative Moo­dle cours­es of our
own.

Class­es only cost $25. You can find out more about the Bea­con Hill’s Moo­dle online class and all their Quak­er Stud­ies class­es. If any­one would be inter­est­ed in some sort of QuakerQuaker-sponsored class­es, let me know. We’ve got a lot of well-qualified Quak­er teach­ers in the net­work and a lot of iso­lat­ed Friends want­i­ng to learn more.

Betsy Cazden’s new site

January 5, 2007

I’m pleased to announce that my lat­est free­lance project has just launched: Betsy​Caz​den​.com. There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary about the tech­nol­o­gy behind the site or its design, but the Quak­er geek in me is so hap­py to see it. Long-term read­ers will remem­ber my excit­ed post Fel­low­ship Mod­el of Lib­er­al Quak­ers, writ­ten after read­ing Bet­sy’s Bea­con Hill Friends pam­phlet Fel­low­ships, Con­fer­ences, and Asso­ci­a­tions. Bet­sy is one of the small num­ber of Quak­er his­to­ri­ans will­ing to take on con­tem­po­rary his­to­ry and her obser­va­tions can be quite insight­ful. I hope she’ll find an even wider audi­ence with this site and the blog that she plans to add soon.