Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

A friend of mines, who works for Microsoft, sent me some interesting conferences coming up regarding to distance learning or online learning. Not sure if any of you are interested. Some have virtual segments, so you don't actually have to go. Here are the links to those conferences: American Society for Training and Development Instructional Technology Council United States Distance Learning Association (maybe submit for an award?) Networked Learning Conference (okay, because he is international relations for MS, I don't think we would travel to Denmark; however, he said they have an online version of the conference. I guess we would need to look into this.) Just a few from all different areas. I pretty sure everyone has their specific ones they like to attend, but just thought I would throw these out there.

Okay, so I hope you read well because it says "SHIFT" and not the other word. This video was shared with me by a colleague and it is Education 3.0. If you watch halfway through the video it starts to talk about online learning and where it is heading. However, most of the information they present is in the post-secondary environment, but they provide more information about the trends of online learning. Take a look. Let me know what you think.

Technology is advancing and so are the teachers in New Jersey. Teachers are slowly integrating the use of Web 2.0 tools — the so-called second generation of the web that includes creative, collaborative, shared content. Students are writing on wiki pages, blogging about their classroom activities, recording audio files for band practice, videoconferencing with people around the globe and chatting online about literature. Read the article - http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/students_discovering_online_co.html Also, to support the integration of culture-based learning and technology resulting in some type of impact on students, Education Week published an article in January 2008 that shows the evidence on effects of culture-based teaching. This was a very interesting article and only supports our initiatives. You can access the article from here .

We talk about 21st century skills and many times teachers struggle to understand what this looks like. Dorothy's blog put the concepts and skills together very well from the webinar she had. I thought I would share the http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ site that has a great resource for teachers who need to understand this in teacher language to gain concrete examples - http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=185 . They cover the core content areas and break it down by different grades as to the skill definition, interdisciplinary theme and student samples. This is definitely a handy resource.