Director's Blog for June 17, 2010

21st Century Summer Learners and Leaders:

NCVPS is proud to announce another record breaking summer. With over 10,000 enrollments, we have worked very hard since our last e-letter and vidcast to help school districts solve problems and fill gaps for North Carolina students. While our summer enrollment period is now closed, we are continuing to ramp up for fall and year long enrollment, and we have many exciting programs ahead for the Fall of 2010 including modular learning, our occupational course of study pilots, and our mobile learning integration in our courses.

However, this week's eletter and subsequent vidcast focuses on using this summer to become a blended learner and leader. 5 steps are provided for superintendents, central office staff, principals, and distance learning advisors to really hone blended learning skills to build capacity for blended learning in North Carolina School districts.

Step 1: Enroll in an Online Course, Module, and/or Feed

The reason NCVPS built our World Is Open Book Study : http://sites.google.com/site/ncvpsgolive/book-study-world-is-open is so you would not have to. Take some time to go through the modules themselves. Have your staff do so? Set the items as a summer agenda at your leadership cabinet meetings and discuss how an open world is impacting your school district.

Recent articles such as http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2010/06/16/03networking.h03.html, highlight the incredible ways social networking is being used in schools across the country. Is your school or district ready? Don't abdicate learning regarding an Open World, dive in this summer with NCVPS. Jump in one of our courses with a student. Write them a note as their principal and/or use a cool tool like http://voicethread.com/#home to send them a personalized message and encourage them in their blended learning.

Step 2: Build pre-modules

Our www.thevlc.org continues to have rich resources for all stakeholders in North Carolina School Districts. Hear from your peers who have committed their summer to focusing on how to implement NCVPS and support it in their districts. Sessions from Hope Johnston of Charlotte Mecklenburg http://www.thevlc.org/2010/06/lock-session-district-planning-with.html and/or Dick McFall of Durham Public Schools http://www.thevlc.org/2010/05/lock-session-for-may-18.html will get your started. Take it a step further and use some pre-module work for principals before they come to your summer retreats at the district level.

Principals should encourage teachers to complete pre-modules before they report to opening staff meetings. Shift the paradigm from a letter and/or an informative email, to having learners "lead by doing" prior to meetings, retreats, and our events. This allows them some reflection and experimentation time before you tackle the tough topics of e-learning and blended learning in person.This kind of training regularly saves companies 50%-70% in professional development resources. Do you have this kind of money this year? Look at what the data says about blended learning here: http://www.cluteinstitute-onlinejournals.com/PDFs/20086.pdf and/or on twitter here: #eresults.

Stretch further by setting up a peer tutoring site to connect face-to-face students with your virtual ones over the summer. Have you looked at NCVPS's cultural cafe? Do you have face to face to students who would benefit from the “blend” of ongoing language instruction between semester breaks?

Join the cafe movement here http://ncvpsculturecafe.blogspot.com/ and/or support world languages for free by using this site http://www.livemocha.com/ with your students and/or staff. It is a whole new way to practice learning Spanish with your teachers in addition to face-to-face meetings.

Step 3: Action Learning

Be intentional around in person dates and online dates as you move your learning online this summer and into the fall. Start with a google site, a weebly, a word press, and/or an www.edmodo.com. These are free tools for your staff to meet, organize, and collaborate to ensure that blended learning is a focus as budgets tighten, decisions on staffing, scheduling, and course delivery methods all come into play. Next, build a collective network around how you will solve these problems. Use Google Wave http://wave.google.com/about.html to meet and share. Use dim dim http://www.dimdim.com/ if you cannot afford web conferencing services.

The bottom line is "Act". Set up some time this summer to meet with your virtual students. Ask them how things are going? What can you do to assist them? How might you set up a similar structure for supporting virtual students in your school? If you are not sure how to schedule the school year around virtual touch points, then try a mobile strategy. Here’s one of the best mobile apps we are using at NCVPS To help support student learning: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gwhiz-mobile-learning-assessment/id320767271?mt=8 and or join our mobile apps repository today for free by sending me an email at bryan.setser@ncpublicschools.gov, and we'll get your central office point of contact using the apps today.

Step 4: Assessment

Many tools exist for assessment on the net regarding your work. Surveymonkey, Zoomergang, and/or Google Survey allow you to gather quick data on your blended learning effort. And, many of these tools are free. Try www.polleverywhere.com to gather data on your school staff's cell phones and/or use tools like http://en.linoit.com/ or http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/edtools.html.

Productivity tools are also ways that you can analyze and look at data in different, visual ways. For example, if you are having trouble communicating data to school boards, parent groups, and/or staff, try this great visual data tool for free: http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/ Simply upload a spreadsheet and you are ready to lead and learn in a blended fashion.

Step 5: Coaching and Support

Finally, build your blended learning champions and let them train, teach, model, and support. School improvement planning must integrate blended learning and leadership, not just the new features of the common core and/or a focus on reading score.High quality professional development already exists, the trick is how do your virtualize it today in an effort to learn, unlearn, and relearn practices that will benefit students. Watch this vidcast on how others in our profession are spending their summers learning and leading with a blended approach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpOWv43cdo

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Dr. Bryan Setser - Executive Director

www.ncvps.org - A World Class Blended Learning Organization