Director's Blog

[Below is today's blog posting from our executive director, Dr. Bryan Setser.]

21st Century Learners and Leaders:

As North Carolina organizes around the Race to the Top Funding, I wanted to post a two page concept paper on my blog this week instead of the normal e-learning narrative. As you read the concept paper, please give me some feedback on the approach. The concept paper is entitled: North Carolina's Blended e-Teacher and can be found here http://www.thevlc.org/ . As for news and notes this week to help you in your work, please read below:

1.) Dr. Setser taught a class this first summer session at N.C. State called E-leadership Theory and Practice. Class projects involved creating free online e-learning communities to showcase to school districts that such an effort can be done for free. These communities are wrapped in the promising practices from Rick Dufour on professional learning communities, and I think you'll find them useful. Click on the links below to browse, join, and contribute:

http://nc1to1.ning.com/ - 1:1 in your district or school?
http://educatingeducators21.ning.com/ - Web 2.0 in your district or school?
http://sites.google.com/site/risinghighschoolfreshman/ - freshman academies?
https://sites.google.com/a/tecfacnoob.com/ep4ep/ - principles for principals?

2.) Kenan Fellows Presentation http://www.ncsu.edu/kenanfellows/ on Twitter: Follow updates this Wednesday, June 24th, via NCVPS at www.twitter.com/ncvps from 10:30-12:00p.m. NCVPS will be working with the Kenan Fellows on emerging e-teaching and learning strategies on the web as well as utilizing those strategies inside of e-learning communities.

It you are tweeting from your own account during the event, add the hashtag #ncvkenan to the end of your tweet. A hashtag helps identify a threaded conversation in Twitter. A hashtag is one word that is preceded by the pound sign #. Hashtags are searchable in Twitter. Here's a sample tweet ending with a hashtag: We are looking at web 2.0 teaching and learning examples in a live Wimba classroom. #ncvkenan

3. NCVPS provides free Cultural Cafes over the summer to World Language students. See upcoming events below:

6/25/09LatinErin Guzman7 pm ESThttp://ncvpsclassroom.wimba.com/launcher.cgi?room=_ncvps_s__2941_1_205177


6/30/09 SpanishHosted by: Yanet Cast and Omaira Chacon (guest speaker from Venezuela)5 pm to 6 pmTopic: Venezuelahttp://ncvpsclassroom.wimba.com/launcher.cgi?room=_ncvps_s__2941_1_786059

Have a great week!

Bryan