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Snowmageddon and Virtual School Preparation

January 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments

storm

Is your school/district ready for extended school closure due to weather or other factors? We are preparing for a blizzard here in Virginia as folks in Washington, DC, will experience the full force of winter storm Jonas.

I have written here and spoken often on the Ed Tech Co-Op podcast about the value of developing blended to virtual learning programs in one’s school. There are many reasons for doing both, with one big one being ready to continue learning in case of a big storm like we are about to experience here in Virginia.

In the best conditions, one’s school would form a committee to research, plan and implement a blended virtual learning program. We did this at Hong Kong International School after we had to quickly respond to extended school closure due to an outbreak of SARS. We learned much in reactive mode as we constructed our virtual school to serve our families. One big lesson was that we practiced fire drills, and we needed to practice virtual school.

The virtual school committee began the annual procedure of running a week of virtual school in which teachers, students, and families connected to our online tools for learning. Our experience responding to the SARS closure expanded our blended learning when school reopened. It was a natural step to practice for the possibility that our school could close again. For more insight into our experiences, here is an article describing the response to the crisis.

With many schools having other priorities than planning for virtual school, one can still provide ideas and resources for the short-term closing of one’s school. It might provide a framework to build from in case your school might be closed for several days. Here is an example of a short listing of tools I put together to share with the teachers at my school.

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With the advancing snowstorm and the possibility of another Snowmageddon, here are some ideas to support student learning if we miss more school days. We have several online tools and resources that students can connect to for skill work, inquiry, creation, collaboration, and direct instruction. 

Skill Development:

–DreamBox (students can access at our LR website > Students > Math)

-Web Resources Math and Technology pages for math, typing, and coding skills

-myON

-Tumblebooks and other eBooks accessed at the Library Web page

-The Using Information Web Resources page also has several online reading sites for younger students and information sources for our older students

–Quizlet is a vast collection of flashcards, quizzes, and other searchable resources to share with your students. You can also create your own.

Inquiry:

Access the databases on our Library Web page. Notice the direct link to the databases, but there is also a listing by grade level further down the page. See the attached database and tool password listing. Finding or creating your WebQuest is a terrific way to support inquiry, collaboration, and learning product creation.

Creation and Collaboration:

–Wixie (grades 1-5)

-Google Apps (grades 3-6)

-The Web Resources Creating page has several fun and creative activities for our youngest students.

Direct Instruction:

–Khan Academy and other tutorial sites

-See the PD & ICL Web page for a complete listing of potential instructional resources, including TED Talks, iTunes U, and the idea of sharing educational podcasts for your students to listen to.

-Teacher-created screencast videos and podcasts> I can provide more information if you would like to create a screencast or podcast. Here are a couple of resources to give screencasting a go. Your school computer comes with Snag It, which you might have used for grabbing screenshots. It also can capture video as you open docs and websites, etc., on your screen as you voice record information for your students. If you use a Mac, you can use the built-in QuickTime Player. There are helpful tutorials on YouTube for both tools.

-Blackboard has a built-in podcast recorder (Voice Podcaster) found in the Tools section of your classroom course. Use Wixie as an instructional tool to support blended to-virtual learning. You can create videos that include voice-over explanations of images, diagrams, drawings, etc., that you build into your presentation and then share with your students via the Web. Check out the Wixie resource page for more information, including tutorials.

Sharing Your Virtual School Package:

So how can you share these resources with your students? Several of you are using Google Classroom to post resources. Blackboard is another helpful platform. Another choice is to create a simple site like our Web Resources using Google Sites or a free provider like Weebly. You also can create a Google Doc to share directly with your students if you are in our upper elementary. Consider creating a Google Doc in your personal account for the younger students and making it public. You can then email your parents the link for easy access. Our school Google Doc accounts cannot be shared publicly. The same goes for creating a Google Site using your school account.

Let me know how I can help if you want to use any of these resources and tools. For more information on blended to virtual learning, check out our blended learning page at Web Resources for Learning.

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Teaching Online: Introduction

March 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

stout

I just started an online course all about how to teach online. It is my second course at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. So here is my first post to the discussion board, responding to the textbook and other readings. I plan to share here what I am learning.

Lessons from the Virtual Classroom

Reflection pages 2-20

Blended to virtual learning in teacher education programs…”students of education are seeking to gain these skills. Traditional schools of education are currently not meeting this demand. Given these facts, what has been the impact of this phenomenon on education?” (page 6) There are many recent news stories about our schools of education not preparing our future teachers to be ready to teach. One might conclude that there are limited offerings of more cutting-edge methods courses where the goal is to skill pre-service teachers to teach in a blended virtual learning environment.

I bring this up because we should not take it as a given that our young teachers are very skilled in using technology and online information resources just because they are “digital natives.” My reading and experience as a K-12 educator are that our digital natives going on to college are not profoundly skilled in using a variety of online research, communication, and creation tools. From my high school and college-age sons, it has only been in the last two years that their classmates have moved beyond Facebook to other social learning tools. Unless they attended schools with solid library research and instructional technology programs, they might know a lot about using their smartphone to connect to their friends but lack information and tech skills.

Speaking of Facebook, at least for my sons, it is their number one communication and collaboration learning tool. Their school district uses Blackboard, but it is mainly used in their cases as a place to post homework assignments.

Personalized learning is a hot topic in the blogosphere and on Twitter. It carries over to our student learners as they leverage the Web for learning. Savvy and self-directed students build their “personal learning systems” whether their teachers or schools provide them with rich online learning platforms or not.

“A good way for instructors to begin is by using technology to enhance an on‐campus class. As they gain experience in teaching online, moving from an enhanced approach to one in which a class is wholly delivered online becomes easier.” (page 7) Good advice to start slowly with blended to move on to some entirely virtual options eventually.

Yes, understanding one’s Learning Management System (LMS) is very important, as well as finding and posting various learning resources through multiple modalities. This supports the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principle number one.

I get the varying viewpoints of teachers and administrators of e-learning. The ownership of intellectual property is a big one.

“Many of those we have spoken with around the country continue to believe that the key to faculty training lies in familiarizing them with the technology they will be using to deliver courses.” (page 15) I would add that the shift in pedagogy supported by technology is how I would frame it. It is good to see that a chapter will be dedicated to this topic, as the authors point out that it isn’t just about technology.

Whether the big schools and the prominent name professors will dominate the MOOC scene connects to one of my friends who just attended a conference for liberal arts colleges and their place in the world of MOOCs. Looking at MOOCs, two of my friends are in higher ed, one at a small liberal arts college and the other at a state university. My friends believe we are far from a finalized version of MOOCs or whatever they might eventually become.

Resources:

Three Advantages of Online Learning

Checklist for Online Instructors

What It Means to Be a Critically Reflective Teacher

Clearing Up Some Myths about MOOCS

 

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Blending Parent Education

January 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Blended Parent Edu

Does your school offer on-campus education presentations for parents? You might have your admin and teachers periodically sharing information on your programs. Our Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) team has given a few information-sharing sessions with parents at the Washington International School. You can access them in the Parent section of our Library Website.

Sometimes these presentations can be rushed as there is so much information to share with parents. There can be limited time for parents to process the information to be comfortable asking questions. Attendance at these presentations can also be problematic. While it can be helpful to post the presentations online as we do, they still need all the verbal explanations of each slide.

As we are blending and flipping PD, staff meetings, etc., doing the same with these parent information sessions makes sense. Schools can do a video recording of the presentation sessions to post to the Web afterward. Another approach is to thoroughly blend the learning by creating screencasts and videoing the presentations ahead of time for parents to view before the day of the presentation. They then can attend the presentations or decide that they have all the information needed on the topic.

The value of blending by giving parents visuals and audio ahead of time is just the same as with their children. They have time to consume the information at their own pace to build their understanding while formulating questions. The questions can be posted to the school’s LMS forum to keep the discussion virtual. 

Another approach is to blend the learning by requesting that parents view the presentation video to bring their questions and ideas to the on-campus presentation. This shifts the focus of the meeting time to a discussion and learning opportunity as the presentation has already been made.

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Third Graders and Workflow (Learningflow)

January 17, 2013 / / 3 Comments

What is your workflow system? Which tools do you use in your personal and professional world to manage information in performing tasks? In education, we talk more about a student’s personal learning system, but it still comes down to work/learning and the process of being efficient and successful. Students use hardware, such as iPads, computers, and phones loaded with software/apps that help them find information, process and curate it, and communicate their findings and understanding.

The Third Graders at my school are on track to develop their own personal learning systems. The image above is a screenshot of one way the students are researching specific animals. The left side of the image is of a browser open to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The right side is of the Inspiration mind mapping software.

Many of the Third Graders use this split screen technique to read from websites to process their findings and record the information into the notes attached to each category symbol in Inspiration. Other students like a full view of the website and their mind map. They read from the website, minimize the window, and then maximize the mind map from the system tray to record their notes.

The Third Graders began developing their personal learning system last year while working on the ColonialQuest WebQuest. They used websites and books to record their notes in paper notebooks. This year, they use paper to record notes from books they read in the classroom. They will draw from the paper and digital notes to write their papers.

As they progress through Lower School into Middle School, the students will start using our Haiku learning management system, more Web 2.0 tools for creativity and collaboration, Noodle Tools for research, Google Apps for content creation and sharing, MindMeister for creativity, planning, and collaborating and many apps on the iPads that they will use to support their learning needs and styles best.

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