Continue reading »]]> Well Paced

A course can consist of a series of emails, a series of blogposts published to a private blog for participants. A well-paced e-course will have a regular schedule, once a day, or for longer e-courses once a week. Posting or emailing at the same time each day ensures that participants soon get used to the schedule and can anticipate the next installment. The last e-course I took had a week in the middle that didn’t include any lessons and was deliberately scheduled for catch up work.

Media-Rich

Using audio can be a great way to introduce yourself as the host. It doesn’t have to be a long drawn out interview just a few minutes of introduction, hopes and aspirations for your participants. This introduction is also a good way to explain the pacing and expectations. It is easy to record and embed a video occasionally, keep them short thought, I recommend under 4 minutes. Photographic step by step instructions work, as do annotated screen shots. For all e-courses it is easy to take your participants on a web tour of resources using screencast software.

Participatory

Create a community online for your participants to share their experience and creations if you have that type of assignment. The experience each individual when combined with those of the group builds, relationships form, and meaning is made almost independent of the content of the e-course. There are many places online for you to do this. You can use flickr to share photographs and have discussions. Another option is posterous where you can create a share blog and have it public or private, but participants can easily upload media rich content photos, video, audio, documents etc via email and even via mobile uploads. Other courses have used wordpress, others a Facebook group. Creating a hashtag means participants can connect and have conversations on twitter.

Creative Meta Activities

As well as imparting content knowledge e-courses that work well include activities that hit multiple areas of focus or have the potential too. The best activities offer a choice to the participant so they can customize the experience to their own level and strength. Send them on a journey traveling further with each activity building on the previous one.

Rhythm

For each section or chapter of your e-course create a rhythm as the days or weeks pass. If participants start to recognize a rhythm or pattern within the structure of the course they become anticipatory and can more easily juggle the demands of the course with the rest of their life demands. This will reduce any potential drop out rate. A weekly schedule might have a 6 day rhythm that would include audio introduction post, explore post, interview post, activity post, participation question post, and a final summary post.

Catch Up Time

Allow time in the schedule for catch up by participants. Prepare for those who start to fall behind and make it easy for them to stay on course.

Active Participation by Instructor

Interaction with the participants by the instructor is essential for success. Guidance, encouragement, inclusion can all be encouraged with a well timed comment here and there. It is important for everyone to be aware that you are there with them. Even if it asynchronously, they will see you there on a regular basis and are much more likely to get involved and feel part of something greater than themselves. Often it is appropriate to interact in a synchronous environment such as a webinar or a tele seminar.

Aggregated content

If the participants are sharing created materials such as photos, videos, or comments it can be useful to aggregate this information in one place. This can be used by the administrator of the course or where appropriate shared with the group. The use of tags and rss can make this manageable and efficient. Resources can also be collected and shared in this way.

Summary Posts or Emails

It is useful to include in the schedule regular posts or emails that include a summary of the latest information and resources.

Guest or Expert Interviews

To add variety and introduce another level of expertise include interviews with persons of interest who have been along a similar path to your participants so they can add a color and guidance that can only come from personal experience. Guests and experts featured have the added advantage of gaining new fans of their work. Audio or video interviews don’t have to be a marathon, between 15-40 minutes works best. Successes acheived by previous participants is another area to explore.

Content is King

Develop generous content for your course and continue to supplement via blogposts and follow up emails. Without great content you don’t have an e-course. This is the main focus of your offering and is what people will remember. You have to move people from point A to point B as promised. Life changing e-courses get talked about, these type of courses have killer content. Does yours?

Continue reading »]]> Opportunities for keeping the spark alive

Opportunities for keeping the spark alive after professional development is over and the teachers return to their classrooms are often missed.

Here are a collection of ideas to reinforce and recapture that initial rush of enthusiasm

• Schedule practice time on a regular basis.
• Encourage participants to snag a partner to bounce ideas off of.
• Screencast the main ideas and create a library, share online.
• Create a feedback cycle for questions and progress using google forms, set up an email alert for when a form is submitted.
• Start your regular F2F meetings with a 5 minute recap/tech tip
• Record and share successes, search out those willing to record “what i’ve learned”
• Supplement takeaway materials with online materials. For Example Classroom2.0 have a great back library of technology resources on Itunes U details on how to subscribe…

How do you keep the spark alive? Please share any ideas you have…

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Edcamp Boston unconference was this Saturday. It was so successful many teachers left with the hope of doing the same type of unconference professional development model at their school. It can be a very hard sell to the powers that be because it can come out all wrong and counter intuitive and it sounds so unlikely to succeed…try it

• There were no keynote speakers.
• The map was hand drawn.
• The sessions were not organized in advance, so no one really knew what the day’s professional development would include beforehand.
• The 200 teachers who attend had to throw together sessions at the last minute with little or no planning.
• Impromptu learning sessions broke out in the corners of workspaces or on the floor under the session board. These were not announced.
• Everyone was acutely aware of being in one session and missing out on what was going on in another session.
• All the teachers attended on their own time
• Nobody got paid
• Resources and session materials were created mostly during the session by session participants and shared online openly with anyone.
• Most of course had the audacity to complain that, after a good eight hours of creating, collaborating and communicating, the time was too short and they all want to do it again soon…

What? It’s enough to make any regular conference organizer or administrator hang their head in their hands in disbelief. This quote from wikipedia doesn’t help either…but makes me laugh

Many unconference features match the characteristics of the traditional science fiction convention held since the 1930s, events which include many members of the geek community.

While not all of us would like to be described as geeks, many shared their excitement via Twitter..which qualifies.

Some of my favorites include…

@famousmistered: I’m putting it in a Google doc, then I’ll put it on the posterous. And tweet it. Overheard at #edcampbos

@virtual_teach: I feel spoiled from #edcampbos …

@sguditus: #EdCampBOS has had my head spinning with new ideas for teacher PD…very exciting!

@kjHigginbottom: Timeliness of #EdCampBos on Sat? I’m interviewing candidates for my district’s IT Director position tomorrow – I’ve got new questions now!

@spanishtech: Still sifting through great ideas from EdCamp Boston 2011.  QR code workshop fascinating and still demanding my ruminations! #edcampbos

@nkdawson: Great flipping classroom session. Now in iPad session! #edcampbos

I could have sat there and retweeted all day.

To sell the idea to your schools

(thanks to @kjarrett)  this video explains the concept sensibly….

Ed Camp from True Life Media on Vimeo.

Good teacher PR

Many were struck by how this is not the story of teachers you see on the news.

It should be. See this post from Harold Shaw Where were the newspapers for a great story

Share

Many of the days sessions and activities were recorded via emailing links to the posterous site for the event.

Takeaways

My takeaways are many:

• I loved that it was all process, the day unfolded organically yet efficiently and there were so many interesting trails to follow.
• I loved that instead of giving answers, people were seeking out others, who had done what they wanted to try in their classroom, for advice.
• I left with more questions than answers, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
• The flipping your classroom session included some teachers who were trying flipping their curriculum and they advised…
  • Great tools include a youtube channel & a free blog
  • Start slowly with short screencasts of curriculum material
  • It was reported that students will probably resist at first as it goes against what they are used to and what they expect
  • It helps if parents are sold on the idea ahead of time.
  • @mrmusselman shared his curriculum materials on youtube and I have some links in delicious for flipcurriculum
  • If you are a school technology integrator or librarian this flip model is easy to introduce. Flip your integration. Flip your library program (as much as you can). Model and share examples of teachers elsewhere flipping.
  • In the next session on ipads I saw @bcdtech taking notes with her livescribe pen and was reminded what a great tool this was to create screencasts. Her recording of the session was uploaded with others from the day and shared on the posterous site. You can check them out here.

• In the spirit of the Does it suck session with @dancallahan
  • It sucks that I’m probably not going to be able to behave at a regular conference anymore.
  • It rocks that some of my bigger questions include:
• Can this model work for professional development in schools?
• Can students learn using this model if we gave the chance to try?
  • @ipodsibilities thoughts on that are here.
• The physical space of the microsoft NERD center made a big difference. There was something about the light and the openness that was conducive to …openness and I’m thinking there are many spaces like this empty over the weekend. What if…… a school could take advantage of that and figure out a way to run a regular Saturday unconference school session in a different space than school.  BYOD.

If you missed edcamp Boston there are two unconferences coming up in the summer that you should definitely try to get to.

Edcamp CT August 18th 2011

Edubloggercon East July 25th 2011

I would encourage you to bring along someone from your school, admin or a student or two. It helps to have someone else who understands what you just went through and shares your passion to share.

This blogpost is officially full. Exactly the feeling I had at the end of the day Saturday. I was full. Of ideas.

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Welcome MassCUE members. I am excited to present Wednesday (3:15 Blue 14). Our session at MassCUE10 this year describes how the ideas of a grassroots technology group in a high school spread to include the whole school and how using this simple idea in your own school can help improve the use of technology schoolwide. The presentation we developed is here . More information, further thoughts and ideas on the topic are included below.

Supplemental Material

Why this session?

If your having hallway conversations with teachers about technology. Use this idea to amplify these conversations.

Learn how to foster ubiquitous teacher tech use.

“A leader doesn’t create new followers a great leader creates other leaders” -Tom Peters

Do you seem to busy to help? Build in time and invite everybody in.

How to create a demand for teacher to teacher professional development and be your school’s secret change agents.

If you’re struggling with the naysayers. Create a movement for change, so you can live this quote

“It’s not your job to change minds, it’s your job to find minds that want to change.”

Get your permission slip

If you would like help or advice on making this work in your school send me an email.

The Books we mentioned:

Drive

The Art of Possibility (book) (video )

The Tipping Point

The Idea Virus

Photo Credit : http://www.flickr.com/photos/48600090482@N01/

Continue reading »]]> If you have a google form on your website or blog and occasionally someone might submit some information. It would be useful to get an email alert to let you know there has been activity.

For example, I have a google form HERE that I want to publicize and have people use periodically while at conferences. I want to gather ideas on how people share what they learn with their colleagues back at school. Occasionally  the form might get a submission, and I want google to email me if this happens. So I asked on twitter.

I got a response from @ashuping

How to add email alert to a google form

With the google spreadsheet open, in the top right you will see this share button

Choose Set notification rule

Check the option A user submits a form and then choose whether you want a daily digest email or an email right away.

This screenr shows how

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i-am-marvin

Save time by eliminating the need for photocopying,

• Publish your class materials using googledocs,  scribd or issuu
• Bonus: Super easy is to share short docs or post its by simply capturing a photo and publishing it, similar to these classroom rules from Keri Smith’s blog

Save time by taking your quizzes online and away from the photocopier,

• Give and grade a quiz using googleforms (for a how to do this screencast, watch here from Jesse Spevack)
• Bonus: This also saves valuable class time by avoiding the paper shuffling, handing out and collecting assessment

Save time by not collecting homework in class,

provide an electronic dropbox like dropio

take homework online using wiffiti or voicethread to post questions and gather comments

Save time by taking reviews online instead of, or in addition to in class review

• upload your powerpoint class materials to slideshare

Save time by delivering instructions or outline project criteria

• creating a screencast using Jing or screenr
• create an online timeline for your course or unit using timetoast

Save time by communicating student projects with parents

• post video’s and  classnotes

Save time by gathering information/feedback/taking a class vote to make decisions

• create a poll using polleverywhere or vorbeo
• Use an online collaboration space like dabbleboard where students can brainstorm ideas together
• To collect student photos from their multiple cameras try troovi this site gives one url where all students can upload, no login required.

Save time directing students to their reading resources

• Direct students to the exact part of a website you want them to read using Kwout
• Create your own library/online reading list using google bookshelf

Share with students

All of these sites will offer the option of sharing on your class online place…this could be a blog, a startpage, or a wiki. The link and embed code looks complicated, but all you have to know how to do is copy and paste.

Use these links to explore some online places you can use to centralize all this content:

Use a class blog:

example from @zbpipe

example from @mariaK

more examples here

Use a classroom start page:

example from zurich international school

example from @jasonwelker

To find out how to set one up these instructions will help you:

For netvibes

Check out this wiki for class blog instructions

Remember this will save you time, year after year, as many of the resources can be used over.

Why Blog?

Hopefully this post will be useful if you are a teacher looking for ways to save time using technology. But it also serves me. This is a framework for professional development sessions and helps me organize all the resources in one place. The topic spans more than one day of professional development session so go easy on yourself, this is a lot to absorb in one reading. I intend to continually update the post with ideas and additions, it is easy to update a blogpost. I set it up once and use it many times. One of the many reasons to blog, it is a good memory, a personal repository and it will save me time!

Please share this post with your colleagues this year and please share any resources you think would be useful for this workshop in the comments below.

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Do you find it easier to share resources and ideas with like-minded people in your pln (personal learning network) than with colleagues in the next classroom who may not be as active online?

During a visit to the magnet school “The Science Leadership Adademy” in Philadelphia in April 2010 Bill Gates said that schools need to get better at spreading best practices. How will you share what you have learned at BLC10 with colleagues in your school?

I will be presenting on this topic at Masscue in October and would love to have your input if you would be willing to briefly share your strategies using the google form below. I will consolidate any responses and share them right back with you. Thanks in advance…

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Picture credit thaiqn on Flickr

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Capturing ideas has been on my mind lately. I use evernote when working, but I often get the best ideas away from my computer either while on a walk or on a bike ride. I usually have my phone with me, I often message pictures to evernote, but I would love it if I could leave myself quick voice messages.

This email, dropped into my mailbox today. I have one question. Could it be any simpler?

So, I have created a drop and have the link to that in Evernote. No more lost and forgotten ideas.

Check out the message dropio left at http://drop.io/maynewsletter

Uses for the classroom

1. Calls from field trips

2. Use as a homework reminder

3. Use as a parent message

4. Record student responses to a special event or discussion and then embed calls on your class blog or webpage

5. Provide a daily class update

6. Have students call in with their project idea assignments

7. Check out this demo drop showing how a teacher can use drop.io as part of their work  flow at http://drop.io/mrdavidson

Below I embedded the voice message from that demo drop to show one of the many ways you can distribute drop content.

Continue reading »]]> I will be joining educators worldwide at the k12 online conference 2009 over the next three weeks. No travel required, attendance flexible, learning inevitable. Join us, the schedule is posted here, however if you get there late, don’t worry, the presentations will be waiting for you.

The keynote below was published this morning and provided a great way to start the week.

Resources from the keynote are on the conference wiki.

Link to keynote.

Spread the word with teachers at your school by sharing the online flyer