Online+Learning+Presentation

**Course Project: Online Learning Community: Leading Technology Change**
For this week’s Learning Community contribution, summarize and share the results of your online learning presentation. After reading about your community members’ experiences, offer a suggestion, resource, strategy, or additional idea to at least one of your community members. Assignment length: 2 paragraphs
 * Note:** Your group’s wiki creator should first create a new section entitled **Online Learning Presentation**.

Alisa Wood's Online Learning Presentation

In the presentation that I created to share with my colleagues I defined an online learning environment, and then I took the opportunity to log into our classroom at Walden University to share my learning environment with them. From there I spoke about how the online learning environment could be implemented at our high school. I introduced my colleagues to Moodle ([|http://moodle.org]). I explained to them that this was a free tool and that it would work on both PC and Mac platform. Plus it has varying level of restrictions. Finally I presented the advantages and disadvantages of an online learning environment.

At the end of the presentation my colleagues and administrator were really impressed. They were excited about trying to implement this in our school. I then brought up the point that I have been using Edmodo ([|http://www.edmodo,com]) in my classroom. One of my colleagues chirped up and said that our history teacher was also using it in their classroom. My administrator was impressed that she would like for it to be shared with the rest of the teachers in our building. From our discussion it led into how I am also using "Google" documents in my classroom. This conversation then led us to checking our "Google" education apps. As a small group we discovered Gmail for education. We discussed how it would be nice if all of our student body and teachers had an e-mail account to communicate. My colleagues were impressed that they would like for me to spend more time sharing the technology tools I have gathered through this program with the rest of the faculty. One of them even suggested putting a presentation together for a conference next year. Overall, I feel that this presentation was high received from my colleagues that I truly believe we are going to somehow try to implement across all the curricula in our school.

Katie to Alisa, Well, it sounds like your presentation went really well, nice work! I really like how you spoke of the advantages and disadvantages to an online learning environment. So often if you only focus on the positives most people start to wonder, "Then what is the catch?" This way you were honest about both sides of the issue. It might be a neat idea as you share more and more tools that you are using in your own classroom to have your colleagues sit in a computer lab with you as you visit the various websites and they can explore them with you. People usually have better attention spans when they get to interact during presentations; just a thought. In order to put together a presentation for next year showcasing all the tools you have learned throughout the program it might be necessary to start now and ask fellow classmates and colleagues to give you examples and even testimonials of how online learning systems have helped them and their students. Will you need to present this presentation to some higher administrators like at your district office now, or will you wait until maybe you have created your big presentation for the conference next year?

Jonathon Yinger's Online Learning Presentation:

Our school has already been very invested in classroom management systems. We tried Moodle last year and the year previous. However, we found it to be far too cumbersome for the teachers to maintain. We have since switched to a paid model hosted by eCollege via Pearson. This too has been very frustrating as it seems every update to every class takes several minutes and if you teach multiple of the same course we have no way to populate the changes across all of the duplicate sections. Thus, I focused my presentation on free alternatives to eCollege that focus on a hybrid model of live teaching with an online component. This is because I am personally not a fan of an all online model for AP Chemistry and similar science courses; I believe a real-live lab experience should not and can not be replaced.

I decided to show a method, or at least attempt to show a method, that highlights the use of Google's free site hosting for a class website, Facebook as a way to meet and collaborate (or Edmodo), YouTube for sharing videos of lectures, and Dropbox to submit work and share work.

I have found that this combination of sites may not be a complete solution but most of them are already familiar to the staff and students and so do not engender the same level of resistance as eCollege has. Here is a link to the PowerPoint.

Brittany to Jonathon I really enjoyed reading your post. I chose Moodle as my LMS for this assignment. Since I do not yet have a classroom in which I am trying to implement something new I just took the opportunity to learn more about the topic. I was happy to read your review of Moodle. Of course on Moodle's website there are no negatives, only what the product can do for teachers and students. It is refreshing to see another take on the use of this software. I agree that a science class cannot be replaced by an online learning environment. There are great supplementary resources available but nothing beats hands-on experiments for these subjects. I like your idea of using a variety of technology resources that most teachers are already familiar with. You hit on the most marketed points of a LMS, the other features may not even be missed.

Jonathon to Brittany,

Thank you for the response. Honestly, I would avoid Moodle if you can when you get your own room. It was excruciatingly difficult to use simply because everything required so many screens to get through to do anything. So far EdModo has been much easier. Best of luck!

Response to Jonathon Thanks for offering some really great ideas. I am new to LMS' but our district is on our board and I appreciate the feedback. Of course the free software is the worst of the lot but it sounds like it may be worth it to purchase something user friendly for the district. You seem to have a great mix of new technology while maintaing the necessary structure of a traditional classroom for a successful high level class. I don't think we can abandon all means of traditional learning, like labs, but LMS' do seem to be at least great supplemental material.

Jonathon back to Brittany,

Thank you. Good luck and if you can find something good that is free. Go for it.

Katie Whitemarsh Online Learning Presentation

For my presentation I set up informing my fellow 5th grade teacher, principal and vice-principal about learning management systems by explaining the features of RCampus. Our district usually does quite a bit of piloting for curriculums and programs because we have such a diverse group of students however, we do not have an online learning program that deals with curriculum like standards, assessments, courses, assignments or rubrics. The system we use now is basically a place to take attendance and store student data. In the middle and high school more of the online gradebook resources are used, however I am at the elementary level and we do not use the online system for anything, but taking attendance. I am thinking that I may show my presentation to a few more colleagues of mine to get their take and see if they have any other suggestions or information to add. It would be interesting to see just how many people know about online learning technology that is out there. My audience liked the presentation a lot and thought that they way I had organized it was very professional and showed that I was very knowledgeable in the subject. They wanted to ask more questions after the presentation that I happily answered. The big question that I was told I would need to explain and be very knowledgeable on was the cost to buy the software program and implement it. I explained that the program was free, but that it might cost for the manpower to make sure all the staff knew what to do with the program. As with any new tool, trainings are often needed to help get all members up to date so that the system runs smoothly. My audience appreciated that I not only mentioned how this will make the teachers lives’ easier, but it will also help the students to meet those 21st Century needs. The idea of collaborating online with other schools in other countries was very exciting for my vice-principal that is from Mexico originally. My principal also suggested that I set up a meeting with the technology director and directors of teaching and learning at our district office to show my presentation to as well. My fellow teacher suggested that maybe our school could do a pilot of the program to see how we like it.

Alisa to Katie

I assumed that all schools used the online grade book across all curriculums. Before now I never really thought about how that would really work at the elementary level. At least you do use it for attendance each and every day. Although it sounds like your school does implement a lot of technology. I think it is fantastic that your school pilots a several different software programs.

It sounds like your colleagues were receptive to your presentation and are willing to consider the idea of piloting an online learning environment. From the sounds of it you were well prepared to answer their questions. I like how you presented it about being an aid to help teachers but also benefit students. Good luck with trying to implement the online learning environment at your school.

For this assignment I researched Moodle. I found a tutorial that was very helpful. I focused my presentation on three features that I thought would be most time-saving for teachers while developing 21st century skills for students: lesson planning, chat, and surveys. I presented the information to a high school earth science teacher, a 4th grade teacher, and an intermediate level principal.
 * Brittany's LMS Experience **

I focused on the chat feature for my presentation to these educators because this was the area that I found the most resistance. After explaining the administrative options, such as the option to save the transcript, and the safety of limiting access to students only, they were willing to try the software with students. The experience allowed me to talk about 21st century skills, which is a topic I am now very passionate about. Learning management systems help develop these skills starting at the elementary level, and I feel that this is going to be the future of education.

Jonathon to Brittany,

Funny that you mention the "Chat feature" as being the hardest to get fellow teachers on-board for, I would totally agree with you on that. Most of our teachers are very uncomfortable with doing this. Personally, I have been using Facebook to be available after hours to answer questions for my AP Chemistry students as it is much faster than email and everyone can see the response (which cuts down on multiple-repeats of the same question). Furthermore, it updates you when someone's posted something new so you don't have to scroll through an endless list of posts. What Chat system were you looking into? The one with Moodle, AIM, or some other system?

Happy Saturday!

Jonathan Young's presentation My presentation was delivered last week at a staff meeting to all high school teachers. I met with my principal beforehand and told him about the assignment. We both agreed that this idea is paralleled by some of our district wide initiative in aligning common core standards in math and science in grades k-12. In order to make the transition possible as quickly as possible many students will need extra help. Sometimes this only needs to be extra time with the instructor and this is not possible for all students in a traditional or even modern classroom. The combination of a 21st century classroom along with a LMS provides many opportunities for students to be successful. There were some teachers that had never seen a prezi presentation before and I had planned on this being an opportunity to introduce and even motivate some teachers to improve their own technology skills. Many students in our school have developed better mastery than their teachers with new software and hardware for the classrooms. Although they laugh it off now they must realize the students in the younger grades are learning about the same technology and will demand a digital friendly classroom upon their arrival. These teachers need to get on board and implement more technology in their classrooms. It does not need to be the focus of all classrooms but teachers do need to be able to communicate with their students in their own language. This was not the most fun presentation I have ever given but it was effective. Our principal and superintendent have allotted work sessions for staff development days to develop and research LMS. There may be some money available for professional development this summer but that is uncertain as of right now. Not all teachers agree that this is necessary for their profession but I teach high school math and fought integrating technology in the classroom as long as I could. It is a tool for all disciplines and those teachers who continue to fight will probably have more explaining to do in the future. Although they may be outstanding classroom teachers they need to understand they are no longer in the same classroom as they started. We all need a healthy blend of classroom teaching and careful use of technology to reach the most success with our students.