Learning, Teaching & Technology

Last year when Alice, Mike and I filled out the paperwork for credit for the K12online Conference we found that the criteria for credit for an online course had not been updated to reflect web2.0 tools for communication and collaboration. As the K-12 Instructional Technology Integrators we were offered the challenge of remedying that situation and we need to be among the voices that participate in that. As Jeff mentions in this session, in the last two (now three) years there have been tremendous changes in what we can do for professional learning online.

Having used some of the course develepent tools Jeff describes (blackboard, moodles) I have seen many courses that would certainly be fit with Marc Prensky’s line of “old things done in new ways”. This k12online conference is certainly a very different experience than lecture notes and assigments posted to a shared access point. Listening to Jeff I can describe the attributes of an experience like this conference, but it is harder to sit down and write criteria for what a courses would need to have to qualify for graduate credit through our school system.

Starting at NECC07 I began to expand my “personal learning network” to include some communities of learners who are asking some of the same questions I am in my work. Certainly one criteria for an online course should be the access to a community of learners with communication tools that might include written and video interaction with a selected network of colearners. Having the k12online conference posted for anytime learning balances the other collaboration tools l use to look at the most recent sites, thoughts and connections of those in my network. Just tonight I have used my twitter network, listened to and joined a chat at an edtechtalk webcast, and looked at some shared delicious accounts. Certainly there are I times I need to disconnect and pay attention to my family network and time off the computer, but connecting regularly to my online network has changed my practice dramatically in the last fifteen months.

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