This is my status update after 5 weeks of EVO17 sessions on Moodle for Teachers.
I have to say it publicly.
Is it too unreasonable to ask students to copy and paste their work to a message box instead of forcing the teacher and the rest of the class to upload, download, upload and download the files? Isn’t technology supposed to save time not stretch it?
Haven’t students heard of “web browsers”? According to Wikipedia “web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI/URL) that may be a web page, image, video or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. Although browsers are primarily intended to use the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by web servers in private networks or files in file systems. The major web browsers are Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer/Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Safari”(Wikipedia).
It takes time to upload and download a file. It’s so much easier to open it in a browser window (tab). You can copy and paste the content of the word doc in a message box of a blog post or even in a google dos.
Would you add a file to a Facebook message instead of just copying and pasting what you have to say? I have seen students share a word doc with a link or a sentence. No matter how many times I mention this, I still get attachments to posts on the Moodle.
If I have over 7000 students, imagine the time students and I have to spend opening attachments.
My message:
I you don’t mind uploading files, please consider others. You can upload your files to google drive, make the doc public with only those who have the link allowed to view and give us a break. We can view docs on the cloude.
Let’s allow technology to make our lives easier.