Online+Learning+Presentation+(Week+4)

**Course Project: Online Learning Community: Leading Technology Change**
For this week’s Learning Community contribution, summarize and share the results of your online learning presentation. After reading about your community members’ experiences, offer a suggestion, resource, strategy, or additional idea to at least one of your community members.

Nancy's The creation of this project has made me focus and decide just what I wanted to share with other teachers in order to make the information fit on the number of slides. I focused on why we need to add technology classes in the first place. I chose different aged teachers with different views on the use of technology along with an administrator who will be instituting an after- school program this next school year and is looking for any connections to technology.

The responses were just as I expected with the after school administrator feeling like she has a kindred soul and was excited to have access to the resources I referenced. The older teacher did admit to the presentation making him more aware of the importance of technology in education, but is afraid that technology will “do the work” for students and they are losing “hands on” skills. Finally, the thirty- something English teacher told me she learned many new facts about the use of technology in education and even went so far as to suggest that the school district hire a person who works part-time locating and checking websites, etc. for use in curriculum.

The feedback from all three of my colleagues was positive. They all agreed that online learning would be beneficial in certain situations. In order to implement it in my school, they agreed that we would have to start small, and grow from there. My vice principal suggested to start with a focus group, and conduct online learning with one class. That focus group would provide feedback, and we could make modifications where needed. Then we could move to the whole grade level and again collect feedback and make alternations where needed. Then apply it to another grade level, and expand slowly in this manner.

Although they provided some positive feedback, there were also some concerns. All three were concerned about the funding for course management systems. In my presentation, I suggested that we could write grants to help support this concept. However, grants are not always awarded to those who apply. We are now in the process of brainstorming other ways to fund this program if the grant writing process is not successful. Another concern of my colleagues is professional development. In order to help implement this online program in my school, I would be a resource to help others learn how to navigate and operate this system successfully. I could offer training courses before or after school and address any issues that arise at my earliest convenience. This would alleviate any funding issues and also allow me to become more familiar with the program.

I will continue to work with all the colleagues within my school to help implement this online program. I will ask for suggestions and advice on how to implement it successfully. I will work closely with them to make sure everything is a smooth transition. Additionally, I will seek advice from other schools and/or states that have seen successful results from using an online learning community. I will discuss implementation, funding, and benefits to help with ensure a more successful implementation.

Tiffini

Feedback to Tiffini from Sean: My Big Campus is a tool my school corporation uses. I believe it is free based on our email user. That is something you can check into. I might suggest that you begin this instead of with one class, but with at least two classes and with one subject. This would give those two teachers the opportunity to discuss issues. This would then give the grade team the opportunity to work out the "bugs" in the implementation. I also believe that the using one subject will allow teachers to focus their collaboration. This would be the collaboration you spoke about with the professional development. I would also recommend that you give a time frame for the implementation so ensure that the teachers give the online project a chance. I would suggest a four week period that could begin after the first week of school, or the first week of the grading period. 4 weeks gives the students the chance to work at their pace but also within a specific time frame. My new grade team talked about beginning this within the first week of the first grading period. We are going to use reading as our first subject. I have already created a reading contract that they plan to adopt in their class. Good luck,

Sean Bosley

Classroom Management Systems in Charles County Public Schools, Maryland

Edline is a Classroom Management System which has been slowly incorporated into the education of public school students in my district. Each school has taken a different approach to the incorporation of the resource in regards to requirements of its use. The first year, teachers in my school were required to set up a class website and post due dates for assignments on the calendar. The second year, teachers were required to update their grades weekly because the grade book was directly uploaded to the website. The third and upcoming school year, teachers are required to use the grade book associated with Edline instead of the previous grade book.

During my presentation, I focused on the potential for Classroom Management Systems to be used more as an online course. My colleagues agreed that it is the future of education and it should be an option for students in the district. We also agreed that many teachers are intimidated by this, and that it takes a certain population of teachers as well as students for online courses to be successful. I plan to lead by example by exploring the many resources available with Edline, using those resources with my students, and then reporting back to colleagues who are interested.

Sarah Response to Sarah from Jackie Sarah, I like how your school is implementing Edline. Is this a gradual implementation? I agree, that implementing any new technology can be intimidating, but with the proper training, attitude, and leader teacher it can be done successfully. We too have Edline at my school. We do not use it to the extent that you do, we only use it for webpages. At our school, we have a trainer who's job is to help and guide any teacher who needs help with Edline, maybe you could be that person in your school. This may help with anxiety teachers are dealing with. Good luck! Jackie

Response to Sarah from Tiffini: My district uses Edline as well. I took all the necessary training to create my own class website, and then the following year they must have upgraded because everything in different! I love the concept, though. However, one downfall at my school is that most students do not have computers at home to access the information I put on the website. I love that students and parents can check grades, assignments, homework, of look for attachemnts in case they forgot it something in school. It definitely has many benefits. I also liked how your school did the gradual implementation, having to fulfill certain requirements over the years. I wish my district mandated that because I have such a crazy schedule I hardly use the website. Nice Post. Tiffini  Online Learning Reflection Online learning offers students the opportunity to receive a high-quality, technology- rich educational experience to acquire knowledge, and 21st Century Skills (Young, Birtolo, & McElman, 2009). Course Management Systems (CMS) is an education system on the internet that models conventional real-world education by implementing a set of equal virtual concepts for tests, homework, classes, classrooms, and the like, and even museums along with other external academic resources. This past week, I created a Power Point presentation about CMS and presented it to my principal and two colleagues. Since I am teaching summer school, it was easy to meet them after school one day. The colleagues I presented to are a fifth grade teacher and a third grade teacher. Also, this is my principals first year as an administrator. All three of them were very willing to stay and see what CMS was all about. Most of the feedback I received during and after my presentation was positive. They thought it was a wonderful concept. We discussed how we could implement it in our school. The third grade teacher thought it would be better to implement with the older students to start. She thought that it would be wise to start with our highest grade, fifth, and work our way down. All were in agreement. We decided in our meeting that the fifth grade teacher who was there would pilot it and I would help her monitor and keep data on its implementation. We would survey the kids before, during, and after its implementation to see if we would like to continue with it, make changes, or discontinue it. Furthermore, my principal wants me to present my Power Point to our parents at a PTA meeting to inform them of this new learning experience we will be implementing with the fifth grade class. A question we discussed during the presentation was the price. My principal told me this year she would cover it with our Partnership Zone money, but that next year we may need to look for other avenues to pay for it. We discussed grants, donations from corporations, etc… Another question that was brought up if we implement it fully into our program was training teachers. As we do have a young technology savvy group of teachers, we do have our fair share of teachers who are not fully onboard with technology. It was then decided that since I am the technology teacher at my school, I would be the trainer to teach and assist teachers. In conclusion, I will make sure that I work hard to positively implement this online experience. I will train the teachers, monitor, and keep data on its success. I will help make changes that may be needed to continue its implementation in my school. Finally, I will research other successful programs and keep my administrators informed. With the support of my administrators, colleagues, parents, and students; I know this online learning experience will be positive and successful.

Young, J., Birtolo, P., & McElman, R. (2009). Virtual success: Transforming education through online learning. Learning & Leading With Technology, 36(5), 12–17. Jackie

Jackie, I am glad to hear that you have an organized action plan for implementation of Course Management Systems and there is a willingness among your colleagues to try it out. During my research of CMS, I found a blog where an educator has been trying out the features of several CMS platforms and evaluating them. This was very helpful for me. It sounds as though Ectolearning is very similar to Blackboard and is free for educators. I created an account and have been checking out the different features. I think I am going to try it out for the upcoming school year. I suggest this to you specifically because you mention the cost being an issue. Budgets are a large issue in my district, so I shy away from any of the platforms which have a cost. Good luck with your plan! Sarah Sarah, thank you for mentioning Ectolearning! I will definitely research it!! Money is an issue for next year. Thanks! jackie ___ Online Learning Presentation Reflection I was amazed that there was so little resistance towards the idea of online learning within our elementary school. One of the biggest issues discussed was training the teachers. This is a task that will take time. There are two other colleagues who would be willing to assist me with this, once they have been trained themselves. Since we are so close to the beginning of the new year, we discussed introducing the idea to one group of students. Since I will be teaching fourth grade this year, we are discussing implementing it with the fourth grade AAP (Academic Advanced Placement) class. My administration believes we need to start small and gradually implement this program in order for it to be successful. As far as we know, no other school has such a program. Currently our AAP classes are small and we often have to place other students in the class to make it "full" due to recent budget cuts. Therefore the teacher is stuck teaching two classes within the same time frame and this becomes stressful and not always successful. Using a course developed from the AAP curriculum, advanced students could work on their assignments while the teacher conducted lessons with the regular classroom students. This is how we hope to implement this program during the upcoming school year.

Our school has a small amount of money set aside for technology. This money could be used to help support this first implementation. Our media specialist is willing to assist in this as well. After we complete one year of this program, we can evaluate its success to see if we can move further and include more classes and grade levels. Its success would determine if the district would then assist with the funding. It may take more than a year to get enough data to carry it further than our school but getting started is key.

As we move into the new school year I will continue to work with my administration and colleagues to try and improve technology integration. I will strive to help them see the importance of presenting information through digital sources and developing more students centered activities. The way of the future is through technology and it is important that we as leaders demonstrate the positive effects this has on our students. As a member of our school's technology team, I plan to use my knowledge and skills to help the school improve how we educate our students.

Judy Spears

Kenny to Judy,

It is wise that you aim for reasonable implementation of online learning initiatives and see how it goes. You seem to have a reasonable plan and I am confident that it will go farther due to that. Having a huge group got forward, with most being partially against it, would not be near as successful as you who are interested first showing successes in the form of hard data. We should all take your example into consideration in implementing our initiatives.

Kenny

Just like everyone else, I was pleased with the reaction from my 3 colleagues who I showed this presentation to. I chose 3 different people to show the presentation to that would give me an unbiased opinion of online learning. First, I went with my building principal, then a teacher who received her master's with Walden University and very familiar with online learning, and finally another teacher who was finishing her master's with a local university using a traditional method. I wanted the presentation to show that we were lacking music education because it was cut from our new schedule to incorporate Spanish. All three agreed that this was a problem and that having access to a system to provide the class electronically was great because it would be a great compromise. Another aspect of this presentation that all agreed with was that this would be an excellent tool to use and take advantage of technology that our students have access to and we do not. The two teachers who viewed the presentation have very little technology in their classroom. The teacher who went to Walden has a computer connected to a small TV and the other teacher has one computer in her classroom that she is able to use herself. They both commented that having access to this online learning community would provide them with a forum to incorporate technology that they had not been able to before.

The downside to the presentation was parents' reactions. All three were concerned that parents would not like the idea of leaving their music education just to an online system. They were afraid that parents would not want to be the ones to enforce their child completing a class online and not in the school building. What we discussed was possibly making the class option, therefore still a compromise and then offering a reward for the students who successfully completed the class like a field trip. I was really happy to see the reactions from the teachers and administration because it makes me feel like we are becoming more open to new technology in the future and trying to take advantage of what we do have access to.

-Jillian

My online presentation was interesting. I realized that many of the ideas that I have used in the past could be used in an online course. I researched moogle and realized that My Big Campus was already in place for my school corporation. MBC allows students to collaborate and teachers can assign projects and quizzes. I will admit that I am still somewhat nervous because online courses give the students more control over their education than teachers are used to. However, I realize that many students are ready to take charge of their learning. If we are going to meet out students with 21st century expectation, we need to provide them with the skills and opportunities to meet those expectations. Online courses give that opportunity.

My grade team was nervous, and still are. However, they already use the Internet to drive math instruction. An online course is the next step. Our team uses technology when we create documents and assignments so now it is simply using what has already been created and using it with an online tool. This is a change in how things have been done, and change is never easy, but I feel they are willing to give this idea a chance. I am excited to see how it works with my team.

Sean Bosley Response to Sean from Jackie Sean, how wonderful for you that your district has Moogle and My Big Campus in place. You are on the right track realizing that students are ready to take charge of their learning. If you provide them the guidance, tools, and the knowledge they will run with it. Nervousness is normal especially when we are doing something we ourselves are not sure about. However, working closely with your team and supporting each other will make online learning easier. Good luck, Jackie

I thought this was a great assignment that allowed me to be a leader, be a creator, and to be able to share something really cool with my colleagues and principal. My principal enjoyed this project and the PowerPoint that I created to share about online learning. She was very excited to hear my thoghts about how we could use Moodle in our school. Lucky for me, our principal is very technology savvy and is always wanting to see us use technology in our classroom. She also always makes sure that we have the latest technology tools. She always says, "If we can get it, we will have it!"

Sharing with my 2nd grade team was a little different than with my principal. They are very skeptical at first and not wanting the youngest teacher on the team to tell them what to do. (I have that problem a lot... anyone else?) It's very frustrating when teachers don't want to listen just because I'm younger... 9 times out of 10, I probably know more than them about the latest technology tools and teaching practices. Anywho, after my presentation and going through the various links, they were more suseptible to learning more about Moodle and online learning. Some had the concern that parents wouldn't like this approach because they worried there wouldn't be as much paper assignments coming home. Overall, this was an interesting project and I learned a lot about online learning, myself, my principal, and my colleagues.

Lindzey O'Brien

Lindzey,

It is great that your principal is technologically savvy. You should have no problem going forward a bit with at a hybrid class that offers online benefits in a traditional classroom. As for your colleagues, one of my colleagues is quick to remember all the initiatives we already have and how many have fallen by the wayside. They may be like him, and just want to know that an online initiative is not going to be a waste of time, energy, and money.

What percentage of your students have computers with Internet access? What percentage have that, and also a good quiet place to concentrate on their work? This is just one concern that one of my colleagues had. If this is an issue, online and computer integrated homework assignments can only be optional, or it is not fair. All it really takes is one student to have this issue. That is why so many districts are wanting to acquire iPads or even laptops for each student. I got some grant money last year and I purchased two laptops specifically for students to be able to take home, just as a test run. They did not get ready until mid May, so this coming year will be the first time they actually go home with students. But something like this is needed if students are to use technology tools from home. It does not however solve the issue of no Internet access at home. It probably won't be long before Internet access is as widespread as phone use.

Kenny

Nicole's response to Lindzey

Lindzey, I understand where you are coming from in terms of not having others listen to you about your knowledge in technology. However, since your principal is tech savvy, you will be able to have more luck in the long range because hopefully you will be able to integrate online learning into your classroom learning and this will surely provide a lot of fruit. If you document what you are doing and how it is helping your students, you can bring it to the principal and hopefully encourage a movement in your school towards online learning. In addition, many people are simply skeptical because it is new and unfamiliar to them. With my team and administrator we had a lot of discussion about providing some kind of training for the staff on how to integrate online learning into the classroom. This will help teachers to feel more comfortable and to see the many amazing online resources that are available.

Sharing with my colleagues this week helped me to really understand that I have learned a lot in this program that most educators have not quite learned yet. I like knowing what I know now, but it marks a transition in my career of being a newbie with not so much to share, to being one who has the knowledge of some recent research supported initiatives that could really benefit our students. This puts a burden on me of adopting and advocating for technology tools and online learning, because it does not seem like many of my colleagues are quite there yet. To be honest, I have not been there very long either.

As for my presentation, all of them saw the potential of online learning to serve some gaps in our offerings for various students. A couple were especially excited about the top students being challenged with AP courses or even college courses. Two really thought the ALC and adult basic education (ABE) programs could implement online offerings to some degree to help serve students who have work and child commitments. One really likes that online learning allows students the option to forge ahead at their own pace. Another thought it was interesting that one of the ladies in my presentation felt that she was closer to her online students than in a traditional class. As for the concerns, there were many. I think most of the concerns are based upon not knowing the particulars of implementation and if it will be successful. One of my colleagues started out with online learning being just another initiative that time and money could be thrown at and then it fall by the wayside. He was just concerned with all the other initiative we have already and what we could do to help assure that this initiative does not become a waste of time, energy, and money. All expressed the need for students to learn better face-to-face interaction skills even now. They thought that increased online learning had the potential to increase this problem. Another pointed out the potential conflict of interest that online “companies” are professing the benefits of online learning. One pointed out the obvious, that not all students have a computer and Internet access at home. And equally important, not all students have a quiet place for them to work at home. All these issues are surely something to consider and any of them have the potential to make online learning a definite “no” for now. However, I will commit to continuing to spread the word of the extreme options for success available to our students via incorporation of technology tools and online learning. All were very excited about starting off a bit slowly and creating hybrid courses which offer the benefits of online learning in a traditional classroom setting.

Kenny B.

Online Learning Reflection

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",cursive; font-size: 120%;">My interaction and presentation with my colleagues was very positive. All of my colleagues were on board with online learning. Since I teach in an elementary school we will not only be looking at using online learning as an option for students and parents when they are not at school, but also encouraging teachers to use online learning in the classrooms, which can be difficult with younger students.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">My colleagues had many questions such as financial costs, training for staff, and additional capabilities of online programs such as Moodle. We discussed many options for trainings and how to create a committee of staff to be in charge of organizing. We spent some time looking at Moodle again (we I briefly did during the presentation) and we also looked at some other websites that provide strong resources online for elementary age students. As we looked at a lot of the resources, my colleagues became more interested and excited, as if they didn't really realize the online possibilities and all of the resources that are free online. We decided to move forward with the task of creating something on Moodle, in addition to providing more training for staff to learn how to integrate not just technology, but online (internet) learning into the classroom. We decided to begin by creating a new committee to begin meeting and working on the Moodle site. This team will also explore and research different options and areas and create a resource list for each grade. Administration will contact the county employees in technology training to set up some school-wide trainings for teachers. In addition, those two colleagues, the administrator, and I have planned to meet one more time before school begins in order to plan out a brief information session to give to staff during pre-service week.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">I am very inspired and excited about the new possibilities that could create a wonderful learning opportunity for our students and parents. Creating online classes will most likely take longer to institute, but it could greatly help our ESOL students and parents, as well as any other stuggling students. I look forward to this task in my school.