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.