Moodle-oodle-oooo

The U is switching from the online system Blackboard to something called Moodle. I’ve taken a very part-time job training faculty in the College of Biomed Sciences on the new system. It’s every bit as complicated as it sounds. My main job is to un-complicate Moodle, and make it manageable enough to deter mass resignations for the Summer 2011 semester.

Training faculty involves group sessions, one-on-one consultations, weekly “Tips” emails and creating various YouTube videos for the Do-It-Yourselfers.

It’s spring break, and I should be somewhere sunny and warm with my toes in the sand with a cold, fruity umbrella drink in my hand. But, unemployment has rendered my finances too low for extravagant spring-breaking. Instead, my spring break consists of a couple Coors Lights, walking in cold, windy weather to campus, and lots of inside-time devoted to Moodle.

This week, I’m focused on creating a video series for Moodle. Because it’s spring break, I have the luxury of 4 enthusiastic youngins as my Cast & Crew. Ellie is the oldest (and most mature) at 11, Sam & Daynen are two 10 year old wildmen, and rounding out the crew is the ever-imaginative Sol, age 9.

Let me paint ya a lil picture about our first 30 minutes together. CHAOS, pure chaos! Sol was literally bouncing in his seat, shouting ideas about a Star Wars theme in which the Death Star stars as Blackboard and gets blown up; Daynen & Sam were wriggling on the couch propelling ideas into the air faster than bullets during WWII. Their ideas had all the violence of WWII as well. Ellie quietly sat on the couch donning a tiara and star-shaped wand. She was immediately dubbed the Moodle Fairy!

Since this is a low-low-budget production, we have to make do with whatever free materials are available to us. We’re also limited on time. Given those parameters, here are a few ideas the kids came up with:

~Claymation characters created with stop motion technology. Sam was partial to an entire Claymation village, complete with trees.

~We rent Harry Potter costumes and act out Moodle “scenes,” to be filmed with the Flip camera we borrowed from the Tech Dept. Unfortunately, this would have also entailed a Harry Potter marathon because none of us could remember what spells were what. No one was in favor of making up our own spells; the kiddos stood firm at authenticity.

~Sol had a great idea of using Scooby Doo characters, or making costumes for ourselves, and we could “Solve the Mystery of Moodle.” We all loved this idea, but it fell through when we couldn’t locate any Scooby Doo items. Ebay was a little out of reach in $$ and timeframe.

~Daynen & Sam thought we should do a “newsroom” plot in which Mr. Blackboard and Mr. Moodle get into an argument over which one is better. This transitioned into a fist-fight with Mr. Moodle winning in the 5th round.

~Ellie had the idea of doing a spoof on the humorous Old Spice commercials. After watching a couple of them on YouTube, Sam said “Great, all we need a black guy to perform for us.” Out of the mouths of babes…in Rankin Hall, the School of Social Work.

Brainstorming took an exorbitant amount of time, and I naively thought expelling energy on ideas might make the boys calmer and more manageable when filming finally began. Apparently a filming camera inspires children to act like monkeys. Calm went right out the window. During one take, Sam & Daynen forget all about the Moodle screen they’re supposed to show us, and instead they spin in their office chairs, and discover the levers to lower and heighten the seats. It became a sort of ballet of chairs going up and down, round and round.

After several takes, we finally accomplish one of the scenes to perfection! However….at the very end, I overexcitedly shout “Perfect!!!” and am now having trouble extracting this audio section. Shit.

Day 2 goes much the same, only Daynen and Sam weren’t available, so they’ve been replaced by Sweets and Reese, the dogs. As our takes neared double digits, we finally realized it’s best to let the dogs lie where they feel comfortable, and we’ll bring the computer and mouse to them. This worked well until Sweets decided he wanted a new spot. Reese wouldn’t sit still long enough to wear a mortarboard for “graduation from Moodle Academy.” Both dogs were far more interested in the bones we used to entice them into place, it became a game of who’s going to steal who’s bone, and run away to hide it. It was obvious the dogs should be separated. Things ran much more smoothly then.

I was warned my crew had “strong” personalities. No problem, I said. I can deal with anything. I may have bit off more than I can chew, though. Sol emphatically decided he did not want to be an actor on camera, and he’s our only choice for what we’ve dubbed UM’s new superhero, “Moodle Man.” There was absolutely no persuading him. During a second brainstorming session, Sol became adamant that his idea of a newscast Claymation interview is what we absolutely have to do. Ellie was shot down when she offered “That’s a great possibility, but how about a few more ideas???”

The day ended when we miraculously got both dogs to do exactly what we wanted! Now we have two perfect scenes…for the same section of the video.

It was an FFT spring break...which stands for Fan-F*c#!&%-Tastic (I learned that from one of my profs, I'm in the BEST program!!) The kids were tons of fun, and I woke up this morning disappointed that they had to go back to school. They almost made me regret changing my major from Elementary Ed to Social Work....almost. :)