Company

Guest blog post by John Watson. John is the founder of the Evergreen Education Group. He started consulting in 2000 after serving as director of business development and consultant for eCollege, where he helped educational organizations launch their online programs and was instrumental in developing the company’s K-12 strategy. John and Evergreen’s work has been cited in the New York Times, Education Week, and eSchool News, he has appeared on NBC Nightly News, and he has presented numerous times at the Virtual School Symposium of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, Technology and Leadership Conference of the National School Boards Association, and other conferences. Prior to online learning, John worked in environmental consulting, environmental education, and a variety of other education, environmental, and travel-related fields. John holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MS and MBA from the University of Michigan.

On behalf of our 14 terrific sponsors, Evergreen Education Group is thrilled to announce the release of Keeping Pace with Online and Blended Learning: A Guide to Policy and Practice 2012 in conjunction with iNACOL’s Virtual School Symposium, being held this week in New Orleans.

Keeping Pace strives to be a resource for K-12 online and blended learning practitioners and policy makers around the country. We work with programs, districts, LEAs, state agencies, and other online organizations in every state to bring you the most up-to-date information possible. Highlights from this year’s report include:

The following is a guest post from Mark Radcliffe, Director of Professional Development at the not-for-profit company blendedschools.net. Mark has worked in various K-20 education positions for the last 10 years including working directly with students and teachers on technology integration projects. At blendedschools.net Mark manages the teacher development program including onsite and online professional development for over 10,000 teachers. Mark is currently located in Norfolk, Virginia, USA but is originally from Manchester UK. He enjoys the city and loves music and the visual arts.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in beta testing the latest release of  Blackboard Learn . This came soon after I attended the Blackboard Calendar focus group in July as well as countless road map presentations.

The phrase that sums up my beta experience with the learning management system (LMS) is “improving can be greater than adding”. I’ve been using Blackboard for almost 10 years and I’ve seen a lot of changes in that time. I can hold up my hand and say that I was one of the Blackboard Learn version 9.1 whiners. I longed for the simplicity of Blackboard Learn version 8. However as Blackboard has changed, I too have changed [my mind].

The Virtual School Symposium (VSS) is right around the corner, and I look forward to joining the hundreds of K-12 education leaders from across the country and beyond to discuss the challenges, successes and innovations around online and blended learning.

In the midst of preparing for VSS, I stopped for a moment to reflect on this year’s conference theme, “Inventing the Future of Learning.” I couldn’t help but smile and think of Blackboard’s own vision, “Let’s Build a Better Education Experience.”  Both themes are forward looking. Both acknowledge that previous methods and tools for learning need to adapt to the needs and expectations of today’s active learners.

Guest Blog Post from Kimberly Seeber. Kimberly lives in Bloomington, Indiana, US. She is a licensed elementary teacher and a graduate student in the Instructional Systems Technology residential master’s program at Indiana University. Her interests include technology integration in the K-12 environment and online learning. Kimberly is sharing the wealth of knowledge from Week 3 of the Designing an Exemplary Course MOOC focused on authentic assessment.

Instructors discussed possibilities of how assessments can be implemented efficiently. In addition, the instructors evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing pre-packaged assessments, open education resources  and custom-designed assessments.  One instructor defined an assessment as authentic if it is client or project-driven or if it involves service learning opportunities.  Another instructor commented on the emerging need for concentrating on student competencies as opposed to knowledge transfer.

Being social means knowing—and acting on—the latest developments. Being a social leader also means knowing—or at least having a good prediction about—the next developments.

Kevin Alansky, head of Blackboard’s growing social marketing team, was a social leader before the term “social” was widely used. As revealed in a particularly curious document he had forgotten about but recently uncovered, the title he once suggested for himself was “Blog Czar.”