Director's Blog: Teacher Transparency Is Transformational

With the national debate around teacher effectiveness, it is curious why e-learning and blended learning are often left out of many of the conversations. I3 reviewers did not get it, and many state Race to the Top plans seem to be propping up the old system, not transforming it.

E-learning and Blended Learning teachers know well that their social media discussions, learning management system archives, and synchronous online webinars can be continuously monitored for coaching, learning, mentoring, and/or evaluation.

In short, there is no classroom door to close in our world. The proverbial one room school house has been moved for these teachers, and transparency helps them do their job as effectively as face to face teachers and even more so when the approach is blended.

On 9/23/10 this week, I’ll be involved in an Edweek webinar with Pam Birtolo, Chief Learning Officer for Florida Virtual School to discuss the “Evaluation of E-educators’ Evolving Skills”. This webinar should also provide context to the recent Edweek article: E-Evaluations: Watching your Every Move”.

Director's Blog: Blended Strategic Planning

For the past few years at NCVPS, we’ve held bi-annual leadership retreats in a blended format. We’ve used our Blackboard, Wimba, Moodle, and Google Sites to pull off the delivery of key processes and feedback loops, and this week’s blog serves as a guide for blended leaders and learners mapping out their next strategic planning session based on the lessons we’ve learned.

This past week, our leadership retreat agenda kicked off with a welcome and a Socratic Seminar on Tom Vanderark's, Ten Shifts That Will Change Everything. Feedback from the seminar was catalogued on a free Google discussion board, and the Socratic format set the tone for how these key shifts would influence our future planning at NCVPS for the 2010-2011 school year.

After a classic face to face break, our staff took an assessment on Moodle to guess each person’s favorite candy. The winner gained a Starbucks gift card, and we were off to Session 2 – a Lino walk through edits on our mission, vision, and values. Subsequently, we will explore edits and suggestions from this session this week during our regular Friday e-learning community work on Wimba. During these follow-up sessions, we will dive deeper on singular issues from the retreat in order to put the recommendations that resulted from our work in Raleigh this week into action.

Director's Blog: Class Schedules Don’t Matter – Class Services Do

As Hurricane Earl approaches the Outer Banks of North Carolina this weekend, I am reminded of how important blended class services are for students who need academic continuity in times of crisis. While many of the schools on the outer banks of North Carolina will close for some days ahead due to the impending storms, NCVPS students in the Outer Banks will still have a variety of ways to access their course materials in a multitude of service settings. Class schedules and numbers will not be a factor this weekend and into next week, because the virtual environment of NCVPS can be there to provide online courses, support, mobile monitoring, and school from anywhere the evacuation route takes them. Yet, when the storm surge subsides, a crisis of class schedules and lack of class services will still exist in many schools across the nation.

Why can’t we be like Singapore who actually practices taking a week off of face-to-face school to provide e-learning services? It is truly a shame we have to wait for a time of environmental crisis to provide class services the way they need to be. Thus, I think it is important to learn from these times, not just to deploy a model of academic continuity when hurricanes and healthcare catastrophes happen, but to actually use the lessons learned during these events to fuel a class services transformation to replace our existing structure of class schedules and grade cohort models of teaching and learning.

David Edwards' Blog: Supporting Online Students: A Mission Impossible?

In 1975, the USS Kirk took on a seemingly impossible mission to rescue those fleeing from the fall of Saigon. According to the NPR story, the ship’s captain decided to take on this rescue mission regardless of the costs. Thus, many are being recognized for the “above and beyond” service.

As I listened, I thought of the distance learning coordinators and the distance learning advisors in our districts and schools who are working diligently to make a difference in students’ lives. Many of these coordinators/advisors are doing this seeming impossible mission in addition to their “normal” jobs. Why? They do it because it is in the best interest of the students they serve. For that, I am truly grateful, because being student-centered is one of the core values of NCVPS/LEO and our school support division.

Working towards a true partnership between NCVPS/LEO and the district has to be a priority in order for the mission of “rescuing kids” to be a success. Though with a new funding formula in place, budget cuts, position constraints, it may feel like a mission impossible on many days.

So, how do we make this work?

NCVPS/LEO has committed to helping districts become leaders in online and blended learning support. We have launched our GOLIVE initiative to provide the districts with the Why, What and How of integrating online and blended learning into your curriculum. These resources include checklists, videos, podcasts, whitepapers, etc. for just about anything you need to know to be effective in support your online/blended learning students. Please visit the GOLIVE site and share the information with your education stakeholders. I have found that those that use this site have a better foundation for supporting online students and become empowered to lead the transformation in their district. So, we want to keep this from being a mission impossible for you!

In closing, I wanted to give you a few tips/reminders for supporting your online learners.

1. NCVPS/LEO has established a strong rapport with a central point of contact in each district. This Distance Learning Coordinator (DLC) will lead the cascade of information flow and logistics for the districts/schools. NCVPS/LEO has provided numerous resources to help the DLC to train and communicate with school-based Distance Learning Advisors (DLA) effectively.

2. DLCs need to own the process of setting a structure in place for DLAs and other online learning stakeholders to communicate and implement best practices from NCVPS/LEO. NCVPS/LEO has training available for the DLC in order to make their role effective and efficient. Contact your Virtual Learning Consultant to get access to the archived training materials.

3. Establishing a good relationship with teachers can help make student support much more effective. Teachers need good/current contact information for the school/district. DLCs can work with DLAs to make sure registration system information is correct and current.

Resources for DLCs/DLAs

- www.thevlc.org

- GOLIVE

- DLC Online Manual