NEW Micro Group Starting soon!!! Online Tools and Resource Evaluation

Submitted by Edward Latham on Wed, 12/30/2015 - 08:50
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Invitation to join LINCS Technology & Learning (T&L)

Online Tools and Resource Evaluation Micro Group

 

Based on discussions in the LINCS communities, the Technology & Learning Community group will host a collaborative micro group to professionally evaluate adult education materials and share published results. We are looking for volunteers from the LINCS communities and from educational partners to join this collaboration. The three goals are:

  1. Collaboratively create a common evaluation process and form for assessing online tools or resources for adult education teachers and tutors.

  2. Evaluate online tools and resources.

  3. Establish a means for the adult education teachers and tutors to easily access the published results of the micro-group: the assessment tool, a comprehensive list of online tools suitable for adult basic skills teaching and learning, and reviews of the tools

 

This micro group seeks a wide range of participants from all of Adult Education. The input and perspective from the many people in the field is needed in this work. Teachers, administrators, specialists and educational partners are all encouraged to join and participate. Participants do not need to have current access to learners in a class, but it is expected that participants would have time to explore a few resources and share observations, thoughts and evaluations of how resources might best be used with learners..  

 

Volunteer micro-group members will engage in the following activities within the next 20 to 25 weeks (starting January 11th)

  1. Creation of action-based online tool categories that teachers and tutors could search (EX: Collaboration tools, Drill and practice, Reminder tools, Goal setting tools, assessment tools …) and a list of existing resources easily available.

  2. Creation of an evaluation process and form for resources available

  3. Creation of a peer review team that evaluates a sample of online tools. At least two peers review each online tool.

  4. The group will publish 5 to 10 evaluations of online tools.

 

To sign up to participate in this Micro Group, be sure you are a member of the LINCS Technology and Learning group and more information will be posted there in the first week of January.

 

If you have questions, please email Ed Latham at ohgeer@gmail.com.

 

Comments

This next week (1/11/16) is the first week of action for the Online Tools and Resources Evaluation Microgroup ! 

Everyone that works in adult education and those partners that support the efforts of educating our adult learners are all encouraged to join this microgroup as we embark on creating, collecting, reviewing and reporting. Please share the links and information below with any you know might be interested in this exciting experience with some wonderful people from all over the country. 

NOTE: all participants must be registered on LINCS and they will need to join the Technology and Learning group to be able to join in the fun. Of course this is not a big deal for you because you are already here reading this

Once you are accepted into the micro group, you will notice there is a bulletin posted which roughly outlines the goals and timelines we are aiming for. 

On Monday, I will start a thread within the microgroup to get introductions going and we will be using most of next week to spread the word and gather interested parties to join us. Please share the links above and the information on your social media threads so that we might get as diverse a group of participants that all support adult education. 

In the meantime, if you have questions about the group, please feel free to reply to this thread. You are encouraged to share your questions here because others may benefit from those very same questions. Of course, if you wish to share your question more privately, my email is available in the link to the introduction piece above. 

This is going to be fun and exciting for all! Key elements that have me excited are:

  1. A national collaboration to create useful categories that help educators and learners EASILY find resources that are useful.
  2. A national collaboration to create an evaluation tool and an innovative system of processing evaluations.
  3. The chance to work with so many diverse and talented people from all over the country! This is easily the best part of any educational effort. We all have so much to share with each other, and we are all going to be so much richer in terms of connections to our people resources and experiences as a result of this project!
  4. Our finished products include a collection of resources that can provide a world of opportunities and a published report and collection of the resources our crew evaluates. Think of all the useful stuff out there beginning to be indexed and evaluated through the needs of adult education! Such powerful and exciting stuff!

I look forward to our introductions next week as we begin this journey together. One note for those that have emailed me after our webinar on formative assessment a few weeks back. Your emails indicated interest to join, but you will still need to follow the links in this message to request to join the group. The email alone will not be enough to get you into the fun. 

Just a reminder to everyone that the Online Tools and Resources Evaluation Microgroup is starting up this week. We have a good number of people who have already joined the microgroup, but it is always helpful to have more of you wonderful people involved. This week we are concentrating on introducing ourselves and getting a feel for who we have in our group. A secondary goal is to continue to solicit participation from those of you that still are feeling shy or uncertain. 

Remember, that all participants need to sign up to join the micro group and the link is posted here
https://community.lincs.ed.gov/group/online-tools-and-resources-evaluation-microgroup

If you have friends that are not currently LINCS members and may have interest in this exciting work, please share the content in this thread with them and let me know if there is some assistance I can provide to help them get established within the LINCS environment. 

Such exciting work with a great bunch of people. Come on over and join in with us and get yourself introduced. It is never too late to join and participants are not required to do slave labor in order to reap the many benefits from this micro group community. 

This last week, 14 people have joined the Online Tools and Resources Evaluation MicroGroup in the Technology and Learning group. Members are still getting through the introductions so it is not too late for you to join this wonderful group of people. 

You can easily find the group forum here at this link and you can find more information about what this group aims to accomplish here at this link. 

Please share this information with any colleagues you feel would have interest in joining us in this exciting and important project. Of course, if you have questions, you can always post them here or email me if you rather and I will do my best to clarify.