NOVEMBER 16, 2009 - Day 1 of conference

 

 

Today was the first day of the conference.  I started by walking around, visiting with vendors and getting to know what they had to offer.  They offered a great breakfast, with the first meeting at 7 am.  This meeting discussed the roadmap for all the new people so we would know what to expect on our days here.

 

9:50 am - Just finished with the keynote speaker's presentation.  The first one with the CEO of iNAOL had some meaning and depth and I could understand why this whole program came about, but the second speaker was a bit difficult for me to retain.  Getting ready for the breakout sessions at 10:30.

 

10:30 am - Attending "Advocating Alternatives:  Choice and Change Through Technology"  Good overall class so far.  Focused on 2 schools:  Austin ISD & All Prep Academies and Colleges:  www.allprep.com  .  They are asked a series of questions such as "How did your program start, what makes it unique, and how do you keep it running."  The first two questions provided good answers, but the last one, so far, applies more to administrators rather than teachers.  All Prep focus on personalized education what allows student to be working on college courses when they get to high school.  Austin ISD started implementing their technology when they were working with their students with disabilities.  All Prep focuses on Odessyware for their whole curriculum.

  

1:45 pm - Attending "Content Development: Forethought, Not Afterthought".  This session is discussing the development of content for these online courses.  It is discussing the online courses that they have in Virginia, or "Virtual Virginia" as they call it. They offer AP & foreign languages course.  Also, I was very glad to see Spanish II, III, & IV.  SPANISH IV!!!  They use the Desire2Learn software to manage their courses & this helps them to get the most interaction out their students.  This group puts teams together to develop their courses & assign individuals to develop different sections of the website. This class is really talking about when someone is just teaching online courses ONLY.  For myself as a teacher who has to prepare for other classes, other classes where the students are physically in front of me, this would be somewhat difficult. Yet, the concept is what I am after, right now.  I would be able to use and do things the way they do it, as far as the development of the site.  Only mine wouldn't be a large as theirs because I don't have team like this group of people do.  Their website is www.virtualvirginia.org. 

  

3:00 pm - Attending the session "Using Live Sessions to Boost Student Attendance and Engagement."  The group presenting this is KAPLAN Virtual Education.  This group uses what is called "Elluminate" session.  This session focuses on how live sessions create overall student engagement.  This is talking about using the Smartboards, if you are going to use powerpoint, how can students get something out of it.  LIve sessions focuses on relationships, increase positive feelings about classes & teacher, it makes learning enjoyable, and it is individualized.  It shows how these live sessions can change different outlooks for the students.  This is one way that they can look at learning in a different way.  This would help the reluctant student to see that learning by using technology will help them to take away that fear from them.  I feel that using these sessions would work good for me because I would be able to assess them because I would be able to hear them speaking Spanish.  Plus, any other games, activities, discussion would give me an assessment opportunity.

 

4:15 pm - Attending the session:  Getting the Word Out:  Marketing your Virtual School Program."  This session is focusing on how well I would need to promote my online program.  This is going to very important to me because this is going to be what I need to do to have students take my online class.  They are speaking about contacts and how important they are to have because this is how I will make my online program successful.  I need to look for marketing opportunities at different school districts, look at websites to see what teachers are teaching Spanish and will they need what I am teaching?  How can I help them?  Should I create flyers to mail to these school districts? Well, as I am listening to this speaker, she has just said that she is speaking more to administrators because they are the ones that make the decisions before the teachers can have it, so it is their job to be the ones that promote the online program.  Well, either way, I know that I will be the one that will be having to do my own promotion.  

 

 

NOVEMBER 17, 2009 - Day 2 of conference

 

4:40 am - Our day started off with the wonderful tones of repeated notes of pure horror as the fire alarm went off in our hotel.  As teachers we should be used to moving very quickly due to the permanent process of drills we have instilled in us.  Yet, the most hilarious thing was that I work up looking for my students to get a head count, then looking out the door to see if this was real.  However, everyone else was doing the same thing.  Just looking out the door.  Finally, the day started, had a magical breakfast at Dennys, and now here we go.  Day 2 has begun. 

 

11:00 - Attending session:  Operating a High Quality Online Program:  A focus on Standards and Accreditation:  This session will look at online programs and how to maintain high quality operation of these programs.  There are standards that iNACOL uses are broken up in two ways:  Standards for Quality Online Courses & for Quality Online Teaching.  The first thing you must ask about online teaching is "Why are you doing this?"  But once again, they are addressing at as an "instituion" and not towards just teachers themselves.  You need to have large support standards.  Now, they keep going back and forth from an "institution" to "individuals"  NAAS Standards for Accreditation lists their Teaching and Learning Standards.  The presenter is flying pretty quick through his slides.  Yet, the overall presentation that he is giving is that every single online institution or class must abide by these standards.  

 

1:45 pm - Attending the session:  Blending/Hybrid Schools: Example of Success.  This is focusing on the the integrating of online & regular classroom classes.  In this session, the presenter is talking about the schools in Chicago that come in 1/2 day and they work on their lesson.  It looks at what different learning levels that the students learn and what to they to meet those learning levels.  They provide everything that they can for these children that have disabilites, special ed, and other learning disabilites, and give them an opportunity to learn.  The school gives them free laptops as long as they met the requirements.  They had to attend certain dates and meet certain hours to get a free computer.  They are basically talking about how they can meet to satisfy a student's academic and social needs.  The presenter has been talking about how she has set up this type of school and what is going into.  It seems like alot, but I am not hearing anything about how these two types of schools are doing their lessons to work in the classroom.  That is what I am looking for.  How can I set this up to work for me in the classroom.

 

 

TXDLA CONFERENCE:  March 22, 2010 - DAY 1 OF CONFERENCE

 

 

 

Missed the 2nd Conference in Austin, but now I have been able to attend this one in Houston.  I have somewhat anxious about getting all this finalized, simply because of what all of it will entail.  Had a good flight to Houston, except for my ears not clearing up yet.  Very nice hotel and to see it located inside the mall was pretty interesting.  Had a good breakfast and now we are in the keynote speaking part of the morning.  We shall see what happens when we go to the breakout sessions.

 

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Stephen Covey:  famous motivator and speaker, had people speaking to him asking questions.  He was presenting his successful strategies.  He conducted his presentation through videoconferencing, which was a great example of how we can use this in our classes.  He was very informative and very straightforward in what he was saying.  His presentation was about "Predicatable Times in Unpredictable Results".  He focused on the 4 hazards that raise havoc within organizations in these unpredicatble times:  FAILURE TO EXECUTE, CRISIS OF TRUST, LOSS OF FOCUS, AND PERSUASIVE FEAR.

 

Going the Distance with High School Students

Hands-On Session

Pamela Dooley - Northside Independent School District

The session was a good one, but only focused on the usage of the Moodle software. The instructor had good ideas for the classes with how to handle students. She talked about setting specific due dates for a class and sticking to it because it helps the kids to stay on task and be accountable for what they have to do. Also, sticking to these dates are key and to not deviate from them.  Also, checking your online reports will tell how long the students have been working on something and will not let them use the excuse that they turned it in already when in reality, they never worked on it at all.  It puts a time stamp on everything. Sometimes students appear to be working on a class and the parents are frustrated that they are not doing well. When reports are checked, the student may not have spent much time on the class while they were online. Also, told us that group projects are good because kids work harder due to the motivation from their peers.

 

2:00 - Breakout class - Blackboard Learn TM:  The Move from “Course” Management to “Learning” Management.  This session was about the Blackboard Learn TM release of 9.0 and 9.1.  This is used for more of a higher level class rather than a K-12 class.  It looks at student performance, student presentation tools, publishing outside of the course.  It is looking like it wants the course to be more of a “dynamic learning” management system.  They are trying to get away from the “boring” regular online class and go “high-tech”.  It is trying to go to the easy to manage and for the students, easy to go through as well, while maintaining the “hightech” level.  It will available to instructors at all times.

 

March 23, 2010 -Day 2 of Conference

 

7 am- Great, awesome, perfect breakfast.  This conference has been serving some great food.  Missed lunch here yesterday and when I was told what it was, I am not missing it today!!!! 

 

 

 

8:15 am - Keynote Speaker - Charlotte Stallings - What do you Bring to the Table??  Keynote speaker for this morning......tells about how she started in American Express and tries to sell his product.  Main question.....what relationship do you bring....why should I go with you??.  Thinking how using books would help answer the question of "How".  She was focusing on how can I help and what can I bring to help others reach their goal and what can I do to set myself apart from everyone else.  1.  Success is a choice:  Choose your 'tude. , "Could it be that things are the way they are because of the way you are."  2.  FOCUS!!!! - Focus Beats Brilliance.  Focus makes you remarkable.  I really liked her presentation.  She was a very energetic speaker.  Kept everyone's attention and it make me reevaluate a few things.  Good speaker and her brother works for Beyoncé.....lucky guy!!!!!

 

10:30 am - attending "Not Again!  Alternatives to the Same, Old, Powerpoint" with Randy Rogers from Birdville ISD.  Starts off by talking how the old way Powerpoint is.....common powerpoint mistakes, how people have to bullet every single thing that they have to say.  "What is right about Powerpoint" - 1). Creativity, 2). Save Paper, 3). Consice, 4). Visual, 5). Multimedia/Multi-modal, 6). Familiar, 7). Paper-Replacement (non-transformative)

 

NETS-S:  Taking Power Point to a higher level.

Slideshare.net - site where you can upload and store your powerpoint.  It's kind of like a YouTube, or any other social networking site.

authorSTREAM - you can post things like a movie. 

GoogleDocs - documents online, powerpoints online, you can share anything you want by entering a URL or hitting share button.  Withthat, kids could participate in other  things with other kids. 

iSpring - turns your powerpoint into movies!!!  Pretty cool!!!!

Sliderocket - flashbased slideshow creator....it's just like a powerpoint, regular, but it is flashbased.  Working through it was pretty cool. 

voiceThread - load images and then click & drag in the order that you want. and it will be a power point.

Go!Animate - you can put in your information and it will animate it and make it more attention grabbing!!!

 

 

Very interesting presenation.  I can totally see myself using the Sliderocket.  I thought it was really cool. 

Sketchcast - draws and records your process why you are going along with your powerpoint.

 

2:15 - 4:00 - Hands on presentation - "Let's get together" - focuses on the 10 of the most popular online and videoconferencing softwares available. 

 

 

 

PEOPLE CENTRIC -more people, less information

 

SKYPE

ZORAP

DIMDIM

Safari Montage LIVE

elluminate VCS

Telepresence

Integrated Rooms

 

CONTENTCENTRIC -see lots of information, less people

 

 

 

elluminate

Webex

Adobe Captivate

GotoSeminar/GotoMeeting

 

The presenter did an actual presentation with Elluminate and how it works.  It was pretty cool.  All she did was type in what she wanted to say and then you could hear the person responding back with their answer.  It shows how the voice can be the personal connection between the student and the teacher or the student to student.

 

www.zorap.com/dl13 - another video conferencing software that was used as an example.

 

3:15 - 4:00 pm - "We Do Student-developed Video Projects - You can too!!!!" - presented by Region14 ESC and hosted by Tommy Beardon, who is the Distance Learning Consultant..  They lead the nation in these projects.  Started the class off with an absolutely awesome display of student developed video projects.  They were so funny, so hilarious.  These projects were so catching in the beginning and completly drew me in.  I so wish I could do this with my students but be able to do it in Spanish.  These kids put everything into it. They were talking about all the cool ways how these projects can be.  It is a big group project because there is a large group of teachers that act on this and help the students film these projects.  Yet, the students are the ones that are the "stars". 

 

 

The way to go to do these programs for the projects is http://admin.esc14.net/webs/cts/video/

For Connect2Texas:  http://www.connect2texas.net/

KC3:  http://kc3cilc.org/

 

4:15 - 4:45 p.m. - TxDLA Regional Group Meeting - Everyone from the West Texas group met in the Post Oak room and had discussions with other online teachers from our area and we had to give feedback on making the West Texas group better as far as online teaching. It was a good meeting time.  Don't know if we really got anything accomplished.

 

6:30 - 9:30 p.m. - "2010: A Space Odyssey" Dinner and Entertainment - Didn't attend this event, decided to eat somewhere else and work in my room.

 

 

 

Wednesday - 3rd Day of Conference

 

 

7:30 - 8:30 a.m. - Breakfast in the Galleria Ballroom

 

It was a great breakfast.  This conference really knew how to feed everyone.  The meals were great.  I found out that there were ribeyes at the dinner last night.  Now I am kicking myself for not coming here.  Oh well.

 

 

This conference has been a very good experience and I'm glad that I came.  I just wish I had found more breakout sessions that applied to me.  There was nothing this morning that pertained to me at all.  It was disappointing and frustrating.  But either way, it was a good conference.