Kansas Agricultural Education Learning Center

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Welcome back and good luck as everyone starts on the adventure that is the 2008-09 Ag Ed School Year!!! As everyone is getting back in the swing of things, brainstorming ideas, and finding new ways to teach students and motivate students about agriculture, I do have one request... share with the rest of us!!!

Many times we hear about serving as a leader in the Ag Ed profession by volunteering to serve on a committee, help out with an activity, or mentor a young teacher.... the Kansas Ag Ed Family needs your service NOW. Please take a few moments and share some resources that you use in your classroon. It could be a powerpoint, a lab activity, class starter idea, a worksheet, a test, or a set of project plans Imagine for a second if every Kansas Ag Teacher would take a little time and just share 5 items that they use in their classroom.

Approximately 180 teachers x 5 shared lessons, activities, etc = 900 new resources added to the KS Ag Ed Learning Center (Moodle)

Why should you share? As the old saying goes, "no need to reinvent the wheel!" For every item you share, that saves another ag teacher time they tweak a lesson to impact more kids (instead of starting from scratch) thoughtful

, it might help out a young ag teacher who is just trying to keep their head above water (we have all been there) sad

and maybe most importantly... it frees up time that we can spend with our families or on our lives outside of school (yes, there actually is such a thing)!!! big grin

How do I share? The best way to share is to go into the "Moodle Course" that best fits the class resources you want to share. For example, something for freshman Ag class would go in "Freshman Agriscience" and a lab for Horticulture would go in the "Horticulture" moodle course. In every one of these courses you will find a forum called "PLEASE POST OTHER RESOURCES TO SHARE WITH YOUR FELLOW AG TEACHERS!!!" if you post it there one of our "Moodle Moderators" will come in later and move it to the unit or lesson that it best fits with. (See the picture attached to this post to see what the top of each course looks like and where the forum is located)! surprise

(One little inconvenience is that you can only post 1 resource at a time... if you have multiple files to attach you must do it as a reply to your first post). Sorry.

I know that everyone is busy, but the time is now. Share what you got... start with a couple of items.... make the time to do it... steal away a little time here or there to help out a fellow teacher. If we all look back to our early years, probably the only reason that many of us are still here is because another Ag Teacher helped us out early on... now this is a 21st century way we can repay the favor.

Just imagine the resource we can have for Kansas Ag Ed if we just step up and SHARE. cool

Here is the best part about it... it won't cost you a dime, only a little time!

Have a great start to the school year everyone!!!

Happy Moodling
-Jason

The new Moodle website, sponsored by the Kansas Association of Agricultural Educators, is officially open and ready for business. For almost 3 years now, Ag Teachers from across the state of Kansas have been using the Holton school district's Moodle server to communicate as a profession and interact online. At the annual summer conference in early August, the KAAE Executive Committee agreed to take Kansas Ag Ed to the next level in terms of professional sharing and collaboration. big grin

Please add http://moodle.ksaged.org/ to the bookmarks in your Web browser and add it to your list of trusted sites for your spam filter. For those who were accessing the previous site, you can use your same user name and password like you always have. For those who are new to this site, please contact Mary Kane - mrkane@ksu.edu, Vernon Schweer - vschweer@ksde.org, or myself, jlarison@holtonks.net if you need user names, passwords, or general help with the site. In addition, KAAE District VP's can assist with questions or training as needed. Receiving posts/e-mails from Moodle is one nice feature, but when you log into the site and explore you will be amazed at the impact it can have on your classroom. surprise

In addition to the main "KAAE Online Professional Growth Community", there are some new features to note:

There is now a page set up for every KAAE District
Pages are established for 11 core Kansas Ag Ed Courses to allow for resource sharing between teachers
Person to person messaging is available
A more user-friendly main page will great you when you log in
More features will be explained in future posts

For years the Ag Ed family has been know for having a very high level of professional collaboration, this site will take us to a new level! cool