instructional design

Training the Hybrid Educator

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Next Wednesday, November 2, 2pm [EST] Education Week is hosting a free webinar called: Training the Hybrid Educator. Katie Ash is moderating the webinar. I heard her speak last Spring and she’s fabulous, smart and I’m sure will provide great questions for the guest speakers. Register here.

Other details.

Hybrid learning, which blends face-to-face teaching techniques with online instructional aspects, is a rapidly growing sector of K-12 education. Although each hybrid, or blended, program varies on the spectrum of face-to-face vs. online elements, it is always important to properly train hybrid educators to meet student needs effectively. This chat will address what kinds of professional development are available to hybrid educators, as well as the key factors they need to know to be successful in the classroom. Our guests will share their experiences as hybrid and virtual instructors and talk about the role that hybrid education is playing in K-12 today.

Guests:
Erik Toman, middle school teacher, Chicago Virtual Charter School
Tracy Sheehan, manager of instructional development, Virtual High School Global Consortium
Katie Ash, staff writer, Education Week and Education Week Digital Directions, will moderate this chat.

MassCUE 2011: Follow-Up

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I  would like to extend a big thank you for all who attended our presentation at MassCUE2011.   Meg and I hope you came away with some tips you are now able to implement in your classroom or are at least giving some serious thought to what self-directed learning skills are all about and how important they can be in your life.

We had a fabulously, posh space for our presentation. Gillette Stadium is home to the Patriots [who happened to be on another field practicing-no photos allowed]. The view out onto the field was spectacular.  This would put a whole new light into watching a live game.

 

Be sure to join us for our free webinars where we will continue the conversation surrounding self-directed learning skills and how you can hone them and share them with your students, fellow colleagues and administrators.

 

MassCUE 2011 Motivating students to become self-directed learners

New Digs: Before and After

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While Spring cleaning is usually left to the earlier months of the year, I decided to take on a clean-up project of my own and re-design my own website. I wanted something more dynamite and decided upon the WordPress theme; Canvas.  Hers’ what my website looked like before.

MWDesign Website- Before

I built the website in a “test site” and when I was happy with it, I moved it all over to my live site. I am liking the sliding images; representing samples of work I have done, along with the open, clean feel of the new site and the new “light bulb” logo design.

The footers hold video samples and within the site I designed widgets to hold samples of other work I have done.

MWDesign Website- After

Inside, I have loads of samples showing my instructional design work. Have a peek around.

MWDesign Website- After

Self-directed Learning Skills

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How do teachers, parents, paraprofessionals and other working with children help those students develop self-directed learning [SDL] skills? How can we help students plan for and reach their potential?  I built and co-facilitate this course [within Moodle] to teach the skills necessary for developing 21st century habits of mind.

Participants learn to:

  • Negotiate student learning contracts
  • Teach independent thinking skills
  • Motivate and empower students
  • Become fabulous coaches
  • Build an ePortfolio

There is so much more to learn by participating in this course.  Come hear me and Meg Robbins give a one-hour presentation: Motivating students to becoming self-directed learners. MassCUE 2011.

Open Conversations

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listening2When working with faculty [or others] who already have an online course/classroom, one of the first questions might be to ask, “How can I help you?”

Starting the conversation this way leads no where. The client I am working with can just say, “I think everything is OK” or “I just don’t know what to do.”

Instead I try to open the conversation with something like: “This is a [insert adjective and noun] here on this page and in this area.  How did you come about deciding to add this to your course?

Bam…now, I have paid attention to the professor/client and a rapport can be built.  They can talk about their online classroom/situation and we can both discuss what’s working and what  might need some tweaking.

When working with professors/clients/whomever, I always listen first and then ask open-ended questions  to generate empathy, trust, and most of all, learning…for both sides.