eLearning eVolution

Talk about a great resource! If you don’t know about CIDER (Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research), be sure to check out their upcoming webinars.

And here’s the best part: there’s also a library of more than 40 recorded sessions on just about any topic you could think of, including:

- Online teaching in international contexts
- Use of whiteboards in synchronous online drop-in tutorials
- Using 3D virtual networks
- Problem-based learning in distance education
- Supporting collaboration and community development online
- Engagement through simulation

Take a look. I’m sure you’ll find something that interests you.

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

I was just perusing the CR 2.0 wiki. This site is devoted to building resources for the classroom and professional-development use of Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies.

Their event series is called CR 2.0 Live Conversations and the sessions are amazing! Plus there are recordings of past sessions. Topics include: educational blogging, Ning, reinventing project-based learning, living with learning disabilities, and much more!

This is another resource you’ll want to check out!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

To continue on from my previous post about celebrating enabling learning technology, it’s important to remember that the technology should be transparent, allowing users to focus on communicating, collaborating, educating, and more. It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself.

That said, I’d like to introduce you to Alison Hancox, an award-winning distance education teacher at the Argyll Centre in Canada. She recently presented at one of our webinars, showing us how she and her students create learning spaces and e-portfolios using Elluminate Live!

I was blown away by how Alison’s students embraced the technology to build social presence, collaborate virtually, and build visual literacy skills. Check out the interactive session recording. I think you’ll be impressed and inspired!

Keep on Elluminating!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

If you didn’t attend the second annual Elluminati Community Conference on October 22 (just prior to EDUCAUSE), you missed some thought-provoking presentations from speakers like Stephen Laster of Harvard, Susan Patrick of NACOL, Blaine Morrow of CCC Confer, Ben Rogers of Duke, Raven McElman of Florida Virtual School, and many more. The session recordings are available now. Take a look.

If you were there, what did you learn? Did you have an aha moment you want to share? We’d love to hear from you!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

Online learning is growing rapidly across the US at all levels of education. Why? One reason is that this generation is shopping for the learning experiences they want. And more and more often, they are turning to the virtual classroom for opportunities to develop 21st Century skills.

According to NACOL’s Susan Patrick, online learning expands options for all learners, is effective, and improves teaching. What’s more, statistics show that there is no significant difference in achievement between online and face-to-face learning. In fact, in some cases, online learners are out performing those in the traditional classroom

Today, Susan moderated a panel of virtual school administrators and teachers, including:

- Julie Young, Florida Virtual School
- Kristie Clements, Georgia Virtual School
- Roger Hanley, Insights Schools
- Dana Koch, Virtual High School Global Consortium

I think you’ll want to hear what they have to say. Here are the links for the webinar, part one (the panel discussion) and part two (some great examples of how Elluminate Live! and Elluminate vRoom are helping virtual schools change the education equation).

And if you have administrators, parents, students, and others who are just not sure what online learning is all about, here’s a great resource from the NACOL site, “A National Primer on K-12 Online Learning.”

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

With the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us, it’s clear that schools throughout the country need to be better prepared for that next disaster, whatever it may be.

In fact, Education Week just published an article about a report by the Southern Education Foundation. The report says the federal government’s response to challenges faced by storm-tossed K12 and higher ed institutions along the Gulf Coast was a “massive failure.” Fortunately, the report also says that it’s not too late to change our course.

So where do we start? Of course, we should be able to look to our federal, state, and local governments for assistance. However, I think it’s important that academia and business work together to develop solutions as well. Case in point: The Hurricane Education Leadership Program (HELP) Team, a consortium of businesses, associations, and nonprofits organized by Intel.

HELP is urging educators to get disaster recovery plans ready NOW! And one key area of any plan should be learning continuity. Recently, we held a webinar about disaster planning, organized by HELP, with guest speaker HELP Team Project Manager Melinda Dinin of Intel. She shared what HELP and its partners, like Elluminate, are doing to develop a 21st Century learning model that can be easily replicated by other states and countries.

Click here to access the recorded session. You’ll also want to check out this related eSchool News article.

We must all, as Melinda Dinin says, start thinking about what we need do today to prepare for the inevitable and to address issues of how we will provide continued learnining. People cannot affort to wait. And, of course, she’s right.

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

Hi,

This post is a place for attendees (and viewers) of the August 7, 2007 vRoom Webinar to interact. The link points to the recording of the webinar.

Best regards,

The Elluminate team