Moodle as a tool in in-service English teacher education

Abstract

Technological advances, the Internet in particular, have broken the physical barriers of the classroom. There is a need to understand the role of language teacher in this new teaching and learning context and, more importantly, teachers need to feel secure with regard to new tools which are available (FREITAS, 2005; BRAGA, 2007; COLLINS, 2009; HALL & KNOX, 2009).This project aims to investigate the characteristics of the interaction between in-service teachers and the digital practices during an extension course in the semi-distance mode with focus on the virtual learning environment called Moodle. Furthermore, this research project aims to verify the applicability of these technological resources in the classroom context is brought up and discussed in the community of practice (WENGER, 1998) built in the online platform.The extension course, which is the context of this research, aims to provide the participant teachers experiences with the virtual learning environment Moodle and with the technological tools available there and challenge them to discover the potential of this environment as an instrument of pedagogical practice when teaching English.This is an ethnographic qualitative research (BOGDAN & BIKLEN, 1998; ERICKSON, 1986; STARFIELD, 2010) that will require the following instruments for data collection: records on Moodle (forums, wikis), autobiographies, dialogue-based questionnaires (VIEIRA, 2007) and interviews. In the reviewing records process, data and perspectives will be triangulated to construct categories and assertions.