PD Opportunity: Digital Learning Transition (DLT) Free Online Class


Hi, everyone!

I just wanted to take a moment to send along this awesome professional development opportunity that just came to me this week. And, better yet, it's free and doesn't involve travel! The Massive Open Online Course for Educators (MOOC-Ed) hosts PD opportunities that "are professional development experiences that will engage you in new technology-enabled learning opportunities that are becoming widely used for both adults and students". With the 1:1 environment becoming live at the high school this year and the middle school teachers many years in to it, this course sounds very applicable. It isn't about how to use technology, but more on how to be an effective leader in regards to making technology actually work in your classroom.

Here is the information that was sent out about it:

The Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance) wants you to know about an upcoming free, online course designed to help district and school leaders plan for the effective use of technology. This isn’t another course about how to “use” technology; this course helps education leaders develop plans and policies to implement digital learning in support of sound instructional practices and specific goals for student achievement.



We are pleased to announce the Digital Learning Transition (DLT) Massive Open Online Course for Educators (MOOC-Ed - http://www.all4ed.org/press_room/press_releases/09042013)
that was created by the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at NC State University’s College of Education and the Alliance’s Project 24 initiative. Offered for the first time in spring 2013, the DLT MOOC-Ed proved to be very helpful to more than 2,600 district and school leaders, or leadership teams. Since the demand was high and the level of engagement was so promising, we wrote a paper about our findings called, The Digital Learning Transition MOOC for Educators: Exploring a Scalable Approach to Professional Development, which was released today.



The paper explains how the MOOC-Ed is an iterative process that continuously reflects, changes, and improves based on user feedback and the results of the course.



Registration is open and FREE! Sign-up here to participate in the free, online course - https://courses.mooc-ed.org/dlt2/preview. As a busy district or school leader, you will find the facilitation to be structured enough to help guide you through the content, but respectful of your demanding schedule. The course officially begins September 30, but sign up NOW to receive important pre-course updates.



Digital Learning Transition: Massive Open Online Course for Educators Description
This free course is being offered again due to the high demand from educators across the country. The course seeks to help participants understand the potential of digital learning in K–12 schools; assess progress and set future goals for their schools or districts; and develop a plan to achieve those goals. School and district leaders, as well as any others involved in planning and implementing K–12 digital learning initiatives, are encouraged to register for the course.



Throughout this eight-week course, you will benefit from informative resources, insights from digital learning experts who have successfully implemented digital learning efforts, and crowdsourcing of ideas from a large and diverse group of peers. Because we want you to meet your own goals, the course is designed to allow for a great deal of personalization and flexibility.



We recommend, when possible, participating in teams from schools, districts, or other organizations When local colleagues work together, it allows them to relate the lessons from the DLT MOOC-Ed to their own context and makes the course that more valuable. If a team is not available, individuals are encouraged to participate on their own.

To register or to learn more about the course, please visit the MOOC-Ed sign-up (https://courses.mooc-ed.org/dlt2/preview) or contact me, Sara Hall, at this email address.

Sincerely,

Sara Hall
Alliance for Excellent Education
I'm all signed up, so let me know if you decide to join me. We can always work through stuff together!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Empowering Students with Choice Boards

Image
An example of a student choice menu that has students chose one item from each "course". I've been working with a teacher lately who has struggled with her students completing a summative paper in her class. This trimester, we're working together to find a way to increase buy in and hopefully have a higher percentage of students complete the project. While investigating options for her, the first thing that came to mind was using a choice board or learning menu to enable her students to select the method that would work best for them rather than prescribing a multimedia project. There are a wide range of ways that you can put choice boards in to action. Tic-Tac-Toe, Menus, Choice Board... there are lots of different words to use to search for them. But the premise for all of them is the same. Give your students a selection of options to chose from and let them go with it. Beyond hopefully boosting engagement, the teacher gets the added benefit of not have a ga
Read more

How fast are you? Ok, how fast is your internet??

With a week left in October, it'd be awesome if we got more teachers (and students) at our schools to click on the link in the message below to do a free one minute SchoolSpeedTest! It only takes a minute and we'd love to get more data. Thank you for your help! As we continue our October SpeedTest Month, we'd like to thank all of you that have participated in the School Speed Tests.  So far, we have had over 60% of Maine districts take part, with some schools performing over 150 tests so far!  However, we still have some districts and schools that have yet to take part.  The good news is that there is still plenty of time to do so!  All we're asking is that each school in your district perform 10-20 tests before the end of the month! As a reminder, participating schools will receive SchoolSpeedTest data that will help find network bottlenecks, support network planning, demonstrate the need for increased connectivity/hardware funding and support your district readin
Read more

Backwards Educational Technology Flowchart

Image
I think by now every who has followed this blog knows that I take in a TON of information each day in hopes of finding you information that I deem to be useful to pass along to make your day easier. I feel a bit like a clearing house in that regard. Many have told me that technology is awesome, but that it is so hard to determine what tool to use and when not to mention learn how to use it. Fortunately for you, that's pretty much my job (so use me!). In a recent summary of links from the Diigo education group, a member had posted a link to Katie M. Ritter's Backwards EdTech Flowchart. Once I read her post, which you can read by clicking here , I knew that I had to pass along her flowchart to you guys, too. The basic premise of her flowchart is simple: decide what you want to do and the flowchart will help guide you to the tool you could use (including links to all of them). It's a pretty well thought out flowchart and especially useful for those of you who are just starti
Read more