Sunday Walk on the Mall

We approached the Capital Building from the east. Stack of security fencing waiting to be assembled. Lines of porta potties. People everywhere. We walked toward the Washington Monument. The jumbotrons were still being assembled. Just passed the monument, we joined the crowd watching the Lincoln Memorial Concert on jumbotrons. The crowd thickened as the concert progressed. Everytime Obama appeared on the screen, the crowd cheered. It was incredible. People snaked through, saying excuse me. We queried our neighbors about who was singing. The energy was incredible. This was an amazing experience.
We started walking back before the concert was over and strolled passed the jumbotrons on the mall, watching the concert. We stopped and sang "This Land is Your Land" with Pete Seeger. We watched President-Elect Obama address the crowd at the end of the concert and listened to Beyonce' sing America the Beautiful. I felt so fortuanate to be there.

Sunday Jan 18 2009

Ken and Terry picked us up at the Newark airport yesterday and we drove to Susan and John's house on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. The techno-fun was that I used my IPhone to navigate us to our destination. Tired after the long flights from Alaska, we stayed up a little while drinking wine, catching up, and planning our adventures for the next few days. Too many options, so we just planned out Sunday.

John knocked on our door at 8:15 on Sunday morning. We did our various morning routines then set out on foot for Susan and John's church, St Mark's Episcopal Church, for the Sunday sermon at 10. Paul Abernathy, the priest, gave a sermon about what the inauguration of Barack Obama means to him and then invited the congregation to come up and speak about what the election of Barack Obama means to each of them. I can write a little or a lot about the sermon and what folks said. I'm choosing a little. As we walked home for lunch, and at lunch, we shared in turn what the inauguration of Barack Obama means to each of us. I think that's another post.

John and Susan live about 8 blocks west of the Capital Building. After lunch, we set out to walk to it, and then down the mall to the Washington Monument. The set up for the inauguration was in progress: security fencing and all the porta potties from a wide radius.

There is lots more to write about - it's been a thrilling and marvelous and exhausting day and I have to go to sleep now.

Action Research Workshop

I will be attending a workshop on Action Research this weekend as part of the mini networks here at AEIN. My interests tend to be about the technology component. How can the bar be low enough so everyone can successfully navigate whatever technology we're using? There are two aspects: the human and the machine. The machine aspect -does the individual have the right tools for the task-interests me less. I am interested in the attitudes, knowledge and skills for success navigating the waters of facilitating in the online world.

I see this as applicable to both the mini networks and my work with distance education.

Even more specifically, what are the resources, tools, pedagogies, etc. that I can use to teach people how to use these tools when we are working at a distance -via phone, elive, etc.

This is my first cut

Taking a Stand

I confess, I am not naturally one to take a stand publicly... hence some discomfort arises for me as I write this blog. Today, I go out on a limb a little bit.

My stand today is the curmudgeonly one... I wonder what happened to the initiatives we adapted the College of Education over the last few years. I wonder what's going to happen with the writing rubric we developed a couple years ago. How are we using the Learning-Centric Education Model that we adapted last year?

Several faculty members did a great deal of work developing the writing rubric. It would be a great little research project to assess how it's being implemented and its effectiveness. Heck, we could use the Learner-Centric Education Model to look at the state of our writing initiative. It would be good to see the Learner-Centric Education Model in action. How are we addressing the issues of metacognition, dialogue, scaffolding for differentiation, and data-informed decision making as we look at our writing initiative? Maybe a great deal is going on and I just missed it somehow. Looks like I have some questions to ask.

Distance Ed Presentations

Today we held 2 meetings of faculty who have worked on their distance ed classes over the summer. Great stuff all around. I see advances in comfort with technology. I see experimenting. I see people actually incorporating the suggestions that Teresa and I made.

There is interest in the following tech sessions:
-Jeopardy in Elive
-audacity
-application sharing tips and tricks
-images and sound in powerpoint
-learning objects

People derive great value from the sharing. I wonder how to foster ongoing sessions. I could ask individuals to present on a topic... so it isn't me always presenting. I could have meetings around a given theme... maybe seeded with some presenters.

Sheila had a great shell she build for Early Childhood Special Ed that is for advising them. Students enrolled in her program are automatically enrolled in her shell. I asked about creating a generic account that she could give to prospective students to log in and check out the shell.

Cleo shared an example of students developing a shared understanding of division of decimals together in Elive. In this instance, students were able to collaborate together and learn better than they could of in a face-to-face class. This was an epiphany for her.

Sunny created Powerpoint templates to use in her class that take advantage of the whiteboard to increase interactivity. She took all this away from the Interactivity in Elluminate session at our May workshop.

Susan developed a great newsletter to succinctly advertiser her course. It included her learning objectives, class dates, etc. It's much more alluring that the NCATE boilerplate syllabus. I think it was Deb that created a learning unit for her syllabus- it was 10 pages long, and easy to navigate to the topic of interest.

Several instructors reported that students would like a more standard Blackboard shell across their courses. They have to learn the idiosyncrasies of each instructor's organization. This is an issue worth bringing to the Leadership Team.

I see that we are focusing well on design and delivery. This is the easy point of entry. We still need work, I think on the enduring understandings and learning objectives. For that matter, we still need work on on design and delivery, but it's come a long way.

Thoughts for Tuesday

It's my second day back at the office. I liked sliding back into work slowly by working at home last week. Getting caught up what's been going on, sharing my pictures of Italy, thinking about new projects.

Talked with Pat about Learning Town Network and how they send out regular emails to encourage discussion on topics ranging from "to scroll or not to scroll" to issues around inducting new people to an organization - the new term is "onboarding". I was lured in to check out what's going on. There's got to be value-added and a lure to get folks to want to visit a network. And even though I get 2-3 emails per week from Learning Town, they don't bug me.

As we look at the AEIN Network, I can see the advantage to the continuing invitations extended by Elliot at Learning Town.

Pat is working on a presentation for AERA on Network Learning. A concept she told me about today from the NCSL folks in Britain is the idea of "brokering" for a group rather than facilitating. When one brokers, one helps find resources. I like it.

Student Services Online

I've been reading the chapter on call centers in distance education in Terry Anderson's recently updated The Theory and Practice of Online Learning. As we've developed our online offerings in the College of Education, I'm not sure how much we've developed systems for tracking and supporting online students. I think each of our programs has its own contact point. We have information on the web, but I am not sure how complete it is on the web and how easy it is to access.

Lastly, I wonder if we are logging the contacts made by students to see the distribution of questions. We could start developing knowledge about the systems and figuring out ways to improve services and perhaps reduce staff time for these important tasks.

What can I do? I can ask questions. Maybe share the chapter from the book.