Online Learning Network Newsletter
September 2015
President's Corner
A new school year is starting for many teachers and students around the world. I hope each of you is enjoying a great start to the school year. On behalf of ISTE's Online Learning Network, I'd like to thank you for being involved with our network. We are continually amazed by the incredibly innovative work our members like you are doing each day to improve education for students. Our goal is to provide you with support, tools, and ideas as you work in your blended and virtual schools and classrooms, while providing opportunities for you to share the great things you are doing each day.
The Online Learning Network team has a lot of plans for the 2015-2016 school year. We will be facilitating webinars, book studies, MOOCs, and other opportunities to allow you to engage with ISTE all year long. If you ever have questions, ideas, or want to get more involved, please reach out to me. With your help, it will be a great year for ISTE's OLN!
Michele Eaton
@lyonmi
michele.eaton@wayne.k12.in.us
Upcoming Events
Book Study: Grounded Designs for Online and Hybrid Learning: Trends and Technologies
Monday, Aug 24, 2015, 08:00 AM
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MOOC: Personalized and Student-Centered Learning
Personalized learning is a student-centered approach where learning is tailored to each individual’s needs, preferences, strengths, interests, and aspirations. As a result, you are afforded more adaptable and flexible pathways for learning that extend beyond the boundaries of a traditional classroom or office. In this MOOC, you with collaborate with other educators and professionals as we explore what personalized or student-centered learning is, and what it is not. Additionally, you will be given the opportunity to design learning experiences to accomplish the shift towards personalization.
Monday, Sep 28, 2015, 08:00 AM
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ISTE 2015 Recap and Reflection
Communities Networking Fair
We had a blast meeting many of our colleagues at the Communities Networking Fair on Sunday. Thank you to you all for joining our PLN! A big shout out goes to Scott Merrick and Michele Eaton for furnishing the frame, backdrop, and props for our amazingly fun Online Learning Network photo booth. Also, thank you to Michele, Doug Renfro, Michael Gorman, and Nathan White for welcoming new members!
OLN Presents: 2015 ISTE Online and Blended Learning Extravaganza
Our ignite style session featured some amazingly talented educators sharing 5 minute presentations on their areas of expertise. Those in attendance received a variety of great information to take back with them ranging from learning about “The Compassionate Online Classroom” to "Partnering with Virtual Schools: Transforming Teacher Prep". A special thanks to our presenters Jared O'Leary, Candace Girard, Michele Gill, Isabela Santiago, Susan Poyo, Jennifer Culver, Susan Oxnevad, and Bill Gumula for making OLN Presents: 2015 ISTE Online and Blended Learning Extravaganza a resounding success! We were extremely encouraged by the positive feedback that we received and look forward to raising the bar even higher next year!
Professional Development Roadmap... We Need Your Help
This year the Online Learning Network is planning some very exciting professional development opportunities on a variety of topics. Our PD events include webinars, Twitter chats, MOOCs, and conference events and presentations. We want to hear from you! Click here and fill out this short form to let us know your topics of interest.
Member Spotlight
Jennifer Garcia
Jennifer is this year's ISTE Online Learning Network Award recipient. She has been a primary and secondary school teacher since 1994. Her current positions are Learning Resources Coordinator and KS3 ICT teacher, at the Academia Britanica Cuscatleca in El Salvador. She runs the Learning Resource Centre, teaches 6th-8th grade ICT and develops staff training initiatives. She offers digital media support for staff and students and develops cross curricular projects with departments. In addition, she has lead and participated in various online, collaborative initiatives and presents at online conferences and ISTE most years. She is a Google Certified Teacher, Google Educator and Google Education Trainer.
Jennifer was awarded our Online Learning Network Award based on her work with her ABC Scratch Learning Games Project. This project was created in an attempt to incorporate the element of social relevance into student programming projects, so as to foster a greater level of ownership and pride in student work, whilst providing a service for other members of our school community and students in other areas of the world. She planned the project, resourced it and taught it to 3 out of 5 of her 7th grade classes. The descriptions below outline the project each step of the way and refer to the various roles she played throughout.
During this project, the 7th grade students plan their primary research collaboratively by creating a questionnaire using Google Docs. They meet with, observe and interview their end users, in this case first grade and second grade students and their teachers. In addition they submit their best questions and answers to a dual purpose Google Form. The information collected is collated and a questionnaire devised to share with teachers around the world. The responses to this external teacher questionnaire are share with all 7th grade students. The second batch of information collected, that being the best answers the students received, is shared with the 7th grade in an attempt to crowd-source valuable information for project development.
As the project progresses, the students design a project plan which is both flexible and dynamic, thereby easily modified in Google Docs. They work in pairs as they develop educational games for their assigned grade and groups of students. During lessons, they receive training and are provided experimentation time, as well as time to share and collaborate, while developing their projects. They learn to debug, reflect, feedback, and provide constructive criticism to their peers. Later in the school year, they invite their end users (the younger students and teachers) up to Secondary to test out the games.
From the onset, students take control of their own learning and pursue their chosen avenues of investigation, through both primary and secondary research, online and in person. They meet with their interviewees, perform observations. They determine focus areas, draw up plans, and determine for themselves the form their project will take. They also monitor their progress.
This project takes place during one lesson a week over the course of eleven weeks. Students work through a development cycle of analyzing: defining the problem, designing: planning the solution, developing a logical sequence of steps, choosing the interface: selecting/creating the sprites and stages, determining user input, scripting the programs, testing and debugging.
The entire project is made available to students through online lessons. The use of Google Document templates for both project planning and questionnaires and Google Classroom truly facilitates both online learning and organisational aspects of the project, in particular sharing, monitoring and editing. Use of the Scratch 2.0 website allows students to work online from home as well as at school, create various versions of their projects as they develop and debug, and gain insight through the comments of others on their projects. The final projects, once published are accessible to the world through the Scratch Website Studio created for the project.