Building an online presence for what happens in class

Colleagues,

Recently the LINCS PD CoP (Jackie Taylor) hosted a webinar on how states are handling professional development to help teachers get up to speed wioth the College and Career Readiness standards. A colleague from West Virginia said they were looking for a good platform to deliver College and Career Readiness PD for their teachers, and a teacher suggested the free online platform Schoology. They decided to use it for statewide adult ed teacher PD and found it was a great tool. Now, apparently, many adult ed teachers in West Virginia use Schoology with their learners, I think as an online presence for what happens in class.

Do you have an online presence for what happens in your face to face classes? If so what do you use? Are your students reading more online -- there -- than they are in hard copy books and other reading materials?

Looking forward to hearing from lots of you here.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

Comments

Hi David and all,

I've heard from some teachers who have made their in-class content available online -- through a blog or class website--that students are more willing and able to read content or watch short videos on their smart phones while they are on a work break or on the bus, than they would be to take out a book or other paper based materials.  

One thing to note in these examples is that the online content might work best if it is broken down into small chunks so students can interact with individual pieces even if they only have 5 minutes at a time.  This has sometimes been called snackable content.  Mashable did an article on this called Are You Hungry for 'Snackable Content?' http://mashable.com/2013/04/29/snackable-content-buzzword/   The key is not to dumb down the content but to break it into short meaningful pieces.

best,

Nell

Thanks Nell. I am looking for some examples of adult basic education or ESOL/ESL teacher-made web sites (or Dropbox Schoology, Edmodo or Classdojo sites) that I could look at. I would expect to see snackable content such as videos, audio files, serious games, practice exercises (for example those based on spaced-ed strategies) and more. Anyone have a site I can look at? Please let me know.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

 

I have some things up on my site and with libguides that I've pieced together:   http://parkland.libguides.com/MAT094CAS and http://www.resourceroom.net/mec 

   I am hoping (operative word: hope) to work with our distance ed folks this semester and next with our online ed provider, Desire2Learn.  They've decided (I learned from the distance ed person giving the PD session) that they want to have some "open courses" -- like Udacity and the "MOOC" idea, but they don't want to call 'em MOOCs because of the association with huge people taking high-level computer courses from Ivy League schools... 

   I think this has a lot of potential because my students desperately need more than lots of fragments; they need small chunks, absolutely... but the chunks need to be connectable.   

See the link below for the College Readiness Data Catalog Tool  which is a flexible-use Excel workbook that provides a shell for organizing and tracking student data relevant for measuring college readiness. This data catalog tool was created by the REL Northeast and Islands as well as the accompanying user guide. It may help states, districts, and other entities create similar data catalogs to inventory their data systems, assess the availability of college readiness indicators, and identify gaps that may present challenges for indicator systems. The user guide also includes a template for a data catalog summary report and a sample summary report.

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/northeast/pdf/REL_2014042.pdf

 

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