Five Blended Workshops Offered at ESS

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Five, three-hour workshops will be offered during this year’s eLearning Strategies Symposium. Thursday workshops include Using iBooks Author to Create Interactive Resources, presented by Burt Lo; and Tables in the Classroom (iPad or Android), presented by Kyle Brumbaugh. Thursday workshops, which run from 1pm to 4pm are just $75.

The three Saturday workshops include Teach the Common Core with Blended Instruction, taught by Catlin Tucker; Flipped Classroom – Hands on Getting Started, presented by Lisa Highfill; and Google Forms: May the Forms be With You, by Will Kimbly. Saturday workshop registration is just $75 and includes Jon Bergmann’s closing keynote at 11:30.

Using iBooks Author to Create Interactive Resources
Burt Lo
Thursday, 1pm-4pm
iBooks author can be used by administrators, teachers and students to create dynamic and interactive resources for school or classroom management and for student learning.  Participants must have a Mac device with iBooks author installed.

Tablets in the Classroom (iPad or Android)
Kyle Brumbaugh
Thursday, 1pm-4pm

Workshop focuses on strategies for instruction with a tablet. Bring your tablet to look at instructional practices, classroom management, SAMR model, blended learning classroom

Flipped Classroom – Hands on Getting Started
Lisa Highfill
Saturday, 8:15-11:15

There are many myths of what the flipped classroom is and isn’t. Bring your laptop to have a hands on approach to creating elements for designing an instructional environment in the flipped classroom style.

This workshop is not compatible with tablets, a Mac or PC is required.

Google Forms: May the Forms be With You
Will Kimbly
Saturday, 8:15-11:15

Learn how to create Google Forms to use for quizzes, surveys, rubrics, and assignment Dropboxes. Create quizzes in Google Forms, and then use Flubaroo to auto-grade and provide student feedback. Take control of student Docs sharing nightmares and tracking assignments. Create self-grading rubrics and much, much more. Google Forms can now be created with images – come learn how.

Teach the Common Core with Blended Instruction
Catlin Tucker
Saturday, 8:15-11:15

Are you overwhelmed by the idea of transitioning to a new set of standards? Don’t be! Learn how you can use Web 2.0 tools to effectively engage students and teach the Common Core State Standards. Teach technology and media literacy while providing students more opportunities to develop their reading, writing, communication, collaboration and critical thinking skills (and eliminate piles of paperwork!). More effectively prepare your students for life beyond high school!

Flipped Classrooms Leader to Keynote at ESS

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CUE and CLRN are proud to announce that Jon Bergmann, one of the pioneers in the Flipped Classroom movement, will provide the closing keynote at this year’s eLearning Strategies Symposium.

Bergmann2Co-author of Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, Jon believes educators should ask one guiding question:  What is best for my students in my classroom?  To the best of his abilities he has done this in his twenty-four years as a high school science teacher.  He is a co-founder of the Flipped Learning Network, a nonprofit organization that provides teachers the resources needed to implement flipped learning (http://flippedlearning.org).  He serves on the advisory board of TED Education.

We’re excited to hear from the inventor of flipped classrooms,” said CUE’s Executive Director, Mike Lawrence, “He’s an innovative speaker with a passion for blended learning, and he brings an important perspective to our symposium.”

Early Bird Symposium registration is now open until October 1st. Just $159, registration includes Friday and Saturday sessions, two keynotes and lunch on Friday, and a closing keynote on Saturday. Groups of two or more who are from the same school, district, or organization may register for $149. Hilton rooms for the symposium are just $129 per night.

Jon Bergmann will present the closing keynote on Saturday, December 7th. The 2nd annual eLearning Strategies Symposium is being held on December 6-7, 2013 at the Hilton Costa Mesa. More information can be found at www.elearns.org.

Nominate a Great Online or Blended Teacher or eLearning Advocate

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Do you know a great online or blended teacher? Do you work with an eLearning leader, someone who has advocated for and led online and blended initiatives?

The eLearning Strategies Symposium is now accepting nominations for two eLearning awards, which will be presented on December 6th during the ESS keynote address.  The CUE and CLRN sponsored eLearning Strategies Symposium is an annual California conference for K-12 educators, administrators, and advocates focused on online and blended learning. Scheduled for December 6th and 7th, ESS will host three keynote addresses and more than 80 concurrent sessions.

Online Teacher of the Year
The Online Teacher of the Year Award recognizes an online teacher who has made a noteworthy contribution to eLearning in an online or blended setting. Supporting and engaging all students online** is the key element in this award. Nominees must be currently teaching online with K-12 students. Nominations may be submitted by the individual nominee or by another person who is able to support the nomination through personal involvement with the nominee. Last year’s winner, Renee Citlau also became iNACOL’s national online teacher of the year.

eLearning Advocate
The eLearning Advocate Award is presented to an individual or organization that has contributed significantly to promoting, advocating, or implementing eLearning at their school, district, county or state. It may include organizations, members of the state and/or federal legislature or their staffs, educators, or individuals who have made sustained and/or extraordinary efforts in promoting eLearning to advance student achievement.

Nominations are now open until September 9th. For more information, visit our ESS Awards page.

And this has been my 300th post.

eLearning Census Infographic: Courseware Preferences

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This has been an eventful week. Following the California eLearning Census release on Monday, followed by five days of infographics, we were surprised and impressed with yesterday’s publication by the Christensen Institute, Is K-12 Blended Learning Disruptive? An introduction of the theory of hybrids”, which built on their landmark work, Disrupting Class. The theory of hybrids is, by far, the most important paper i’ve read this year.

Our final infographic looks at the courseware preferred by California’s districts and direct-funded charters. As we had expected, a variety of publishers have entered the marketplace, some disrupting it with high-quality courses. Others pitching online textbooks disguised as interactive courses. One thing is certain, the market place will continue to expand and powerful courses will be created. Publishers will continue to compete with each other, gradually improving their courses to meet iNACOL’s criteria.

This year, the primary players are nearly the same as last year. What impressed us is that 46% of districts and charters are purchasing courses from more than one publisher. This seems to indicate a growing comfort by districts to investigate more deeply and to purchase courses based on their students’ needs.

Are Charter Schools More Disruptive than Traditional Schools?

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After reading the @ChristensenInst report, “Is K-12 Blended Learning Disruptive? An introduction of the theory of hybrids”, I felt a need to ask the next question, are charter schools disruptive? Are they more likely to promote the eLearning disruptive innovation or are they creating and implementing sustaining innovations? One is a hybrid, a temporary solution. One is revolutionary.

So, we looked back into our 2013 California eLearning Census data to find out if charter schools are more disruptive than traditional school districts. The answer is not what you may think.

First, we eliminated all elementary  (K-8) institutions. Our data, and the Christensen/Horn/Staker report shows that online and blended learning is primarily occurring in secondary schools. Check out our disaggregated blended learning models here to see how differently elementary and secondary schools are approaching blended learning.

Of the 55 direct-funded charters that remained, 16 are full-time virtual schools, the majority which are operated by K12, Inc. 37 secondary (k-12 or 9-12) charter schools are blending their learning.  There were 136 K-12 or 9-12 school districts in our sample. 33 operate an on campus virtual school, 18 of which also blend their learning with other students.  Below is how charters and districts compare.

charters2 The short answer to our question is “no”. Direct-funded charters are not more disruptive when it comes to online and blended learning. Unified and high school districts are actually implementing more disruptive technologies than charter schools. Of the four blended models, Rotation is a sustaining innovation that is implemented in traditional classrooms. While Rotation grew in this year’s eLearning census, traditional school districts seem to be more disruptive than their direct-funded charter competition.

Enriched Virtual: 37% to 35%

Flex: 28% to 27%

A La Carte (formerly Self-Blend) 50% to 43%

Rotation: 38% to 38%

 

eLearning Census Infographic: eLearning Populations

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How many students are participating in online or blended learning in California? The answer may not be as important as you think. With our second California eLearning Census, it’s the trend lines that seem more important, particularly the rise in median populations. This year populations rose in all categories: overall totals, averages, and medians. Blended learning was up 17%. Virtual learning rose 23%. Medians, the number where half of all districts have more and half have less, are more telling. This year median populations for both virtual and blended populations rose 25%. Download the entire report here. 

You don’t want to miss our second annual eLearning Strategies Symposium which will be held December 6th and 7th at the Hilton Costa Mesa. Governor Bob Wise and Dr Eric Mazur will keynote on the 6th. Early-bird registration is just $159.