There was a meeting of the NECSD Compact Central Committee on January 6 at 6:30PM at Balmville School. There was an audience of at least 40. Board Member Levinstein and Superintendent of Schools Pizzo were among the attendees.

The main presentation at the meeting was from three teachers from NFA and one from Gardnertown. They presented information about their use of Moodle. Moodle is a web site development system that is specifically tailored to developing a site for a class. It is open source software, and has similar features to commercial systems like Blackboard. The Newburgh School District has a Moodle site through Ulster County BOCES; the URL is http://necsd.ucboces.org. An ID is required to use the system.

Melanie Larkin said that Moodle is streamlining submissions for the NFA yearbook.

Rick Santacroce said that every NFA student has a login and Moodle is being used by a small number of teachers now. NFA doesn't have parent access, but some other schools may have figured out a way to allow this.

Jamie Taylor, an art teacher at Gardnertown, uses Moodle to present info to parents and to show samples of student work. She also uses the site http://artsonia.com/ to showcase student work. A parent commented that they had purchased one of the items available through Artsonia (they make mugs and t-shirts that incorporate art works) for a child, and the child grew very enthusiastic about making more art.

Gina Dellatte, an English teacher at NFA North explained how she uses Moodle extensively. Students both receive and submit assignments online. Her Moodle site incorporates videos from outside sources--for example to provide an additional lesson in how to approach the "critical lens" essay section of the NYS Regents exam. Dellatte said that access to computers had not been a significant issue for high school students. Some students use smart phones, and students have sufficient time to access computers in a lab, library, or study hall. She said there is a need for more training.

There was a question about including Moodle training in the "in service" training offerings available to teachers. Superintendent of Schools Pizzo said he will follow up on that, but also said that available funds are very limited (he pointed to recent cutbacks in grants to NYC) and there is already concern about lost class time due to ongoing PD for Common Core and the new teacher annual performance review process.