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FREE WEBINAR:  A Toolkit to Rethink Planning and Designing a Next Generation Learning School Model

Thursday, June 13, 2013, 3:00-4:00 PM ET 

Speaker: Dave Edwards, Quality Assurance Director, iNACOL

Are you a forward-thinking educator interested in starting an innovative K-12 next generation learning program or moving your current program to the next level? If you are, you have probably been looking for that resource to help you start the planning and designing process. Well, look no further. In this iNACOL Special Edition Webinar, participants will be introduced to RETHINK: Planning and Designing for K-12 Next Generation Learning, a toolkit created
by Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) and iNACOL to guide district, charter, and school leaders as they conceptualize, design, and develop a next generation model school. This toolkit can help you and your team understand next generation learning and the need for change; gain a working knowledge of the planning and change management processes; plan and design a framework for next generation learning; and understand how to ensure quality and continuous improvement for your design. This flexible and dynamic resource offers links to existing communities who are currently planning for and/or implementing next generation learning. It also offers an overview of critical topics, each of which includes an introduction, a set of guiding questions, and resources and tools centered on the topic that you and your team will need to tackle while planning and designing your program. So, what are you waiting for? Join in the webinar to learn more and give your students the powerful learning opportunities they’ve been waiting for!

Register

"Academia and the MOOC" is an course I will be facilitating for NJEDge.Net using the Canvas Network.

"Academia and the MOOC" is itself a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) although we will be capping enrollment at a maximum of 2000 participants. (So, it is more of a Big Open Online Course.)

MOOCs are a huge topic in academia right now, but many schools are still wondering if they should be offering them or how they will deal with this alternative to their own offerings.

Can a course where the participants and the course materials are distributed across the web and the courses are "open" and offered at no cost to a very large number of participants who do not receive institutional credit be a worthwhile venture for a college?

The purpose of this particular MOOC is to gather a large group of people from academia who have an interest in this movement and give them information about MOOCs to get them thinking and discussing their impact on education.

This course will begin with some background in the history and development of MOOCs. Then, we will examine MOOCs from the perspectives of five academic roles (teacher, designer, support, administration and student) and we will critique some case studies of successful (and "failed") courses that have been offered. Throughout the course, we will consider how MOOCs might impact those roles and an institution in the near future.

I am referring to this offering as a "course" because it's a term we all understand, but I really believe this is not a course. If you associate courses with textbooks, assignments, grades, assessment, credits and all that comes with those things, then it is not a course because none of those elements exist in this experience. It might be better to think of the "C" in this MOOC as a Conversation, Community or Colloquium. Discussion, as with most online courses, will be at the heart of the experience.

I have written before about unconferences, barcamps and other participant-driven professional learning events (usually free) where the attendees set the schedule and lead the sessions. These kind of events often don't have formal "presentations" but people come prepared with materials and will post what their session will be and others go to ones that interest them.

I attended a local one day free traditional conference (WETech) last week that focused on best practices of K-12 teachers using technology. In one session I heard about an upcoming STEAM unconference this summer in NJ.  S.T.E.A.M. stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math. It's a variant of the most common STEM. 

This event is being billed as Edcamp S.T.E.A.M., an unconference for K-12 educators exploring the intersection of those areas. The event is on July 31, 2013 at Linwood Middle School in North Brunswick, New Jersey. But what really interests me is the addition of the Arts to STEM.

Why add the arts? To quote their website:

Meaningful patterns. Artists create them; Scientists discover them. The arts help us to communicate and share ideas; we use the arts to explain and reflect our culture. How can it be possible to push forward with science, technology, engineering and math without the inclusion of the arts to make sense of it all. Consider all the data that is generated  from myriad sources. Art helps to make sense of that data in what is known as data visualization. Jer Thorp is an expert at taking data and turning it into something more useful. He aims to use “art as an axis to bring those two things [Science and design] together.“

STEAM also emphasizes the creativity and play of experimentation and research which is so important to bringing more young people into the STEM fields. And it encourages the arts, which are often the first area to cut when school budgets are defeated. We should be gathering steam for arts education.

In a post from The Washington Post on the Top 10 skills children learn from the arts, the first skill listed is creativity.

If you're in the NJ area, you should consider attending and participating, but for a wider audience the takeaway for me is the bigger idea of using the arts to encourage STEM efforts.

I will be doing a plenary presentation at Rutgers University's OIRT’s 2012 Technology in Learning Showcase on December 12, 2012 sponsored by the Office of Instructional and Research Technology.     

My topic, "2013: The Beginning of the End of the University," will look at some of the issues and trends in technology that have emerged this year that some are saying will lead to the end of the traditional university and/or the traditional degree. Is 2013 the beginning of the end of the university, or the starting place for University 2.0?

Information at oirt.rutgers.edu/showcase/