Michigan Educators Push for More Online Courses

Aloha kākou,

Cassie, Kel and I did a Blackboard Training session for DOE teachers who are partnering with Kauhale Kīpaipai to offer courses to newly hired DOE teachers. One of the questions a few teachers asked me was about how prevalent online courses for students were outside of Hawai`i. I think they were a little surprised at how rapidly it is growing and how soon, I think, it will become a norm and not an exception designed for only a very specific population of students. I came across this article this morning. I'm always interested in what is happening in the state of Michigan because when I first started working in ISC (a.k.a KSDL a.k.a VSDL :)) six years ago, Michigan had just passed a law mandating that all students pass at least one online course as a graduation requirement. You'll see in the article that Michigan now offers around 15,000 online courses. I think the interesting points in the article deal with changing laws and policies to keep up with the growing demand for online learning opportunities and how this demand will encourage law and policymakers to be innovative to meet the learning needs of their students which are similar discussions we also have on a much smaller scale with the DL Project Charter.

Kelly

Comments

Scratch - OWAU discussion 10/28

Aloha kākou, I while back, I learned about this product from a presentation at the eSchool conference. The speaker was so excited about Scratch and was having so much fun demonstrating it that my mind began racing immediately. "I could use it in `Ike Hawai`i courses and I bet I could use it to develop tons of activities for the A`o Makua `ōlelo Hawai`i courses". Then, reality set in as I returned to work intending to try it out after I finished my "next" task. Well, you know how that goes. 7 months later, I finally took a stab at it out of necessity of course. I really wanted some type of activity to teach my students about different Kapu in old Hawai`i without having them just read a list of them. So, what it Sratch? Simply put, it's a developer's tool (a very inexpereinced developer like myself). It allows you to create activities and games using "coding" that is in a drag and drop format. The codes are pre-written & range from phrases like ...

3/19 Owau: FaceBook CourseFeed & Blackboard

Initially when I first joined FaceBook, it was because I wanted to see what the hype was all about since many of our learners seem to be hooked onto this social networking site. After I set up an account, I didn't do much until my friends from high school, college and even my own family (including my dad) started inviting me to be their "friend" to network together. It was only until recently that I realized why our students would probably prefer logging into Facebook first before even thinking about opening up Blackboard to begin their online course. Once your network of friends is set up, it's definitly an easy way to keep updated on what's going on at a distance. I really haven't done much in Facebook besides the basics, but I thought it would be interesting for us to look at the CourseFeed interface ( http://apps.facebook.com/coursefeed ) that was developed. CourseFeed is a free Blackboard Building Block and Facebook app that alerts students in Faceboook w...

E pule kakou . . .

Aloha all, I was trying to think so hard of a "techie" tip and finally gave up. I even googled "tips and tricks" for various programs and then thought "I can't blog about something I don't actually use!" Then, as I was sitting in my Papa Makua class, doing all kinds of protocal and thought about how we keep looking for a short pule to do to open our meetings. I had `A`ali`i write a pule in Hawaiian. He was worried about the grammar and structure of it so I asked Kelly C. to kökua by editing and doing an audio recording so you can hear the pronunciation. Hope it's helpful :) E ho`omalu käkou E kö mäkou makua i loko o ka lani Mahalo no nä pömaika`i a pau. Mahalo no ke ali`i lokomaika`i o Pauahi a me këia kula nei. E `olu`olu, e kia`i iä mäkou i ke alahele küpono me ka lökahi. Ke nonoi ha`aha`a nei mäkou i ka inoa o Iesu Cristo `Ämene `Unuhi (translation): Let us pray Our Father in heaven Thank you for all the many blessings. Thank you for the gen...

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

Search This Blog