by Sheryn Anthes
I am proud to announce the 2012 Catalyst Award Winners. The Blackboard Catalyst Awards honors those who push the boundaries of their educational programs and technology in order to deliver innovative and effective learning experiences. This year we had 61 submissions for the Catalyst Awards and 151 submissions for the Exemplary Course Award. This represented over a 50% increase from last year’s submissions. We changed the award structure slightly; there are Platinum and Gold Winners. For the Exemplary Course Award, there were a total of 37 courses rated as exemplary but 6 winners will be awarded the ECP Director’s Choice for Courses with Distinction.
We are excited to honor the winners and their achievement at the Catalyst Awards luncheon at BbWorld in July 2012. Please stay tuned as we highlight the individual winners in an upcoming blog series.
And the winner are…
by Stephanie Carrillo
My Tech Team."On the count of three, who do YOU think was closest to a nervous breakdown this summer?"
Hello. My name is Traci House and I am the Director of Technology at Joplin Schools. Before my 18-year tenure with Joplin Schools, I served 10 years as an IBM K-12 Education Specialist. Recently I have had the privilege of contributing to the following articles:
How A Tornado Inspired Innovation In Joplin, MO Schools
Joplin Takes Digital Approach to Rebuilding Education
Joplin, Missouri, One Year Later
Emergency notification systems add features to better spread the message.
How Laptops Helped Save Joplin High School
Though I have shared our Joplin Schools story on numerous occasions about vast devastation and a remarkable rebuild effort, it is especially poignant to be giving this presentation in a city that was dealt a similar devastating blow in 2005. Comparisons between Hurricane Katrina and the EF5 tornado that ripped through Joplin, Missouri on May 22, 2011 are inevitable, as recovery efforts will continue in New Orleans and Joplin for years to come.
by Annie Lewis
Last week, I had the pleasure to spend the morning with Leslie Fetzer, an Occupational Course of Study Biology teacher at North Carolina Virtual Public Schools (NCVPS), who was in DC visiting the Department of Education because she was recently named the iNACOL/SREB National Online Teacher of the Year. Leslie works in a blended model, partnering with a face-to-face teacher, to teach students with disabilities. She is also on the NCVPS team that builds all of the online courses from scratch and depends daily on Blackboard Learn and Blackboard Collaborate.
As a former teacher who loved walking in the door each morning to greet my classroom full of energetic second graders and hear their stories from the evening before, I am always curious why teachers like Leslie made the decision to teach online. Leslie strongly believes in the connection between students and teachers as well. She thinks it is important to “watch what they watch, listen to what they listen to, and read what they read.” She also thinks it is important to engage them with the tools and topics that they respond to, which is what led her to using technology in her classroom.
Through activities like collecting polling responses through cell phones and sharing content through prezi, she noticed an increased energy and enthusiasm in her class. Leslie remembers one student acting up in class and another coming to her defense saying, “Don’t mess with the Fetz!” This loyalty enabled her to get her students excited about science. As technology options in high schools progressed, she began teaching part-time in an online school.
Leslie remembers clearly the moment when she decided to switch to teaching online full time. She was teaching a chem lab. Her class size had grown over the years, and in one moment, she looked across the room and noticed ~12 hands in the air. She knew each student had a different question, and she couldn’t get to each of them fast enough. She felt strongly that if she had been teaching online, she would have been able to give each of her students the personalized attention that they needed.
by Deb Everhart
Everyone is talking about analytics applied to education and how “big data” can (will?) transform many aspects of our educational institutions. And for those of us passionate about improving opportunities for learning, the phrase “learning analytics” is particularly intriguing.
So what do we mean by “learning analytics”? In short, it’s “the use of data and models to predict student progress and performance, and the ability to act on that information,” as defined in the Next Generation Learning Challenges (see the useful Educause Learning Initiative brief). Learning analytics overlaps with the somewhat broader phrase “academic analytics,” which encompasses other institutional bodies of data such as enrollments, graduation rates, and institutional outcomes tracking. A combination of learning analytics and academic analytics can provide an environment where administrators, advisors, faculty, and the students themselves have the data visualization tools they need for learner success.
For example, what happens when students can see their own course participation & grade data and compare it to that of others (anonymously) in the same course, while the course is in progress, allowing them to change their behavior mid-course? This type of exposure to learning analytics can be a powerful motivator. Students become more aware of their activities and time on task in their courses. And while the technology is not comprehensive (some courses have more online activities than others), the balance between online and offline activities can be understood by the student despite the lack of data on the offline activities, once the student has crossed that important threshold of self-awareness.
by admin
As you may have heard already, BbWorld 2012 will have five key themes this year – each Feature Theme Session will be presented by thought leaders in Education.
We rolled out the theme “Social Learning” last week and now we are proud to announce the Feature Theme Session Keynote Speaker for Digital Content – Tom Caswell! An Open Education Policy Associate at Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, Tom handles special projects that directly impact the power of Digital Content such as running the Open Course Library, piloting a community college Open Learning Initiative (OLI) in Washington State, and supporting the OPEN initiative for Department of Labor C3T grantees. As a Policy Associate, Tom also raises awareness about the use of Digital Content and sets policies for sharing content.
