I’m Andrew Field, eLearning Manager for Cambridge International. I’ve made use of Moodle and Mahara for years, both as a teacher and then subsequently as an eLearning developer and practitioner.
I qualified as a history teacher in 1999, which itself is a long time in the past now. However, with the growth in the use of the internet as a tool for learning I was delighted to explore and prove the use of ICT to support effective teaching and learning. I’ve really been doing that ever since.
I developed a number of websites in the early 2000s, including the very popular www.SchoolHistory.co.uk where I produced eLearning games, online lessons, quizzes, together with a vast array of shared teaching resources and developments. This included a discussion forum for History teachers that became more popular than official government resources.
I developed lots of learning games and resources using Macromedia, then Adobe Flash. These included a whole range of quiz-based games such as Penalty Shootout, Walk the Plank, HoopShoot, Grade or No Grade, and the ever popular, Fling the Teacher. These were essentially all the same game - answer questions correctly, and then take a turn at the game. However, used effectively, these mini games had a great way of being an effective use of technology as a tool for learning. Getting learners to create their own questions, then even develop their own versions, was a great way of flipping the concept.
Due to the growth and development in technology, I became a Head of ICT and Computing in 2005. This saw me improving my initial self-hosted version of Moodle (started, I’m sure, in late 2003) into something much more powerful and usable. We placed our entire curriculum online and continued to explore new learning opportunities. I was involved in the emerging Building Schools for the Future work, looking for ways to ensure teachers and learners could make the very best use of technology for learning.
After 15 years teaching, I joined Cambridge International, part of the Cambridge Assessment group, in 2015. Here I inherited a great Moodle & Mahara based Online Learning Area which was initially focused on our Global Perspectives qualifications. I’ve been delighted to extend, enhance, and develop its use so now, in 2020, we’re making use of connected Moodle and Mahara tools to support every subject across the organisation. The fact that teachers and learners around the world don’t always know they are using the tools is an interesting concept. Whilst I’d love them to know how much Open Source they are using, I’m actually really pleased that the focus is on the learning rather than what technology is being used.
I love exploring the use of online tools to enhance the opportunities for teaching and learning. Whether this is online games that I developed early on in my career, creative & engaging tools to add value to existing teaching, or supporting the use of portfolio and online learning tools, I’m still eager for us to do so much more. The scale of use of the responses I’ve been involved in developing during the current pandemic has been amazing - it shows the enthusiasm and appetite even more than ever for valued added use of technology for learning.
I think I’ve written enough now. Well done if you’ve read this far.
