LIVE Feed from the LINCS Live! Session

I'll be posting live comments from today's LINCS Live! session. Please stay tuned for comments from the session. You can participate in this discussion thread as well! 

Comments

Hi Susan, I'm going to give a live play-by-play. Right now, Chrys Limardo, the COP Manager, is walking through the major components of LINCS: a Learning Portal hosting online self-paced and virtually facilitated courses, the COP, the PD Center, the LINCS Leaner Center, and the Resource Collection.

Our moderators today are:

  • Susan Finn Miller: English Language Acquisition, Teaching and Learning
  • David Rosen: Program Management, Integrating Technology
  • Brooke Istas: Math and Numeracy, Correctional and Reentry Education

Chrys Limardo, the COP Manager, will be facilitating the session. 

In the room there are flip charts with the following stats. Participants are putting sticky notes next to the items that they have used. Online participants can indicate their participation here as well!

  • Website: 28,000 views to the website each month
  • Resources: 650 resources in the collection
  • Online Courses: 20+ online courses
  • Learner Resources: 50+ student resources
  • COP: 11 groups, 12,000 members, 500+ discussion threads. 

Participants in the room have used all aspects, but the most activity was around the website, the resource collection, online courses, and the COP.

Chrys asked those about why they post on LINCS? One participant in the room shared that they needed advice and remembered there was discussion on that topic in the COP.

  • One user shared that she loves to lurk in the discussions, but she's often hesitant to start things because time does not always allow her to participate fully in a discussion in the way she would like. 
  • Another user shared that at her table they all felt that COPs should be based in expertise, informative, and relevant. Should be collaborative and broad. 
  • Good to know if things are evidence-based or just opinions
  • One user loves LINCS and the resources, especially for new instructor trainings. Loves that it is research based. Wants things based in WIOA and CCRS. New retention models. Wants to have resources that are more diverse and current. 
  • One user shared that she shares LINCS with business development partners such as employers, workforce trainers, etc. 
  • Collaborative - using this to help develop partnerships (especially the economic development office, adult ed office, etc.) so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel
  • My biggest challenge / frustration at this point is how we treat adult educators.  We don't respect them as professional.
  • We hire predominantly part-time teachers, we get a lot of retired folks who are digitally illiterate or almost illiterate, and for the most part unwilling or unable to integrate technology, which is absolutely required for 21st century jobs, even at the "unskilled labor" level'.
  • Another challenge is getting employers to the planning table.  What recommendations can LINCS make to secure employer presence to inform workplace integration?
  • In correctional education, one of my biggest frustrations is teaching technology without the internet. 

One COABE attendee shared from the session "One constant challenge I see is that most of us in the field, full-tme or part-time, are struggling to carve out or make time to participate in all the great PD opportunities that are available to us. I don't have any good solutions for that."

Thanks, Branka! 

Part of that is we don't value or incentivize participation.  Many of our workshop have online pre and post-work (reflection and implementation) required, and the most common question is "how do I get paid for that?"  And it comes from the program end, too.  We're working on a digital badge system for tech integration coaches, which entails a lot of professional development, and I've already heard from directors: Is this required?  Who's paying for it?

Thanks for the perspective, Glenda!  I'm curious if your instructors are required to have any certifications, or record of PD for contract renewal?  If so, are completion certificates, with hours, a good incentive for staff to participate?

 

Great suggestions, Susan!  Thanks.  We do have a polling feature.  What's one polling question that would be helpful for us to ask to help you, and others, get to know each other better?


 

Hi, Susan -

Great suggestion!  Do you mean to have video stream for our webinars, and panel discussions in the community?  Have you ever used Periscope?  It's another great live video stream resource.  We'll consider it in the future.

Mike Cruse

Hi, Susan -

Right now, only moderators can initiate polls, which then appear in the thread of the community for which they're intended.  If you have specific questions, try reaching out to the moderator of that community you'd want to poll, and they may be able to initiate a poll on that question/topic.

Mike Cruse

Chrys encouraged folks to continue posting in the COP, noting that our discussions today have received a lot of views showing that there are alot of people out there looking at posts. 

David shared that he knows of a program that identified the areas of greatest interest and assigned one teacher to monitor one section of LINCS and report out. 

Chrys thanked all the moderators and participants, both in-person and online. Please continue to use the suggestion box as a place to keep your feedback coming! 

.... I'd scheduled this hour as "out of the lab" already to work on an online math project and... ended up getting so engaged in it that I forgot about this :(   Apologies :( :(   This is a great community and I wish I were at the conference -- maybe next year (hoping our state steps up and makes a budget)!