2015 DL Conference

Join this pre-conference session dialogue about alternative configurations for distributed learning that support more personalized and flexible learning solutions.

The is one of two 2-part series with educators from public BC programs to learn from emerging projects and new approaches.  Join one of the two second pre-conference sessions following at 3:00 pm:

• "blendED: Beyond BC" to hear more from Alberta educators and beyond (http://sched.co/2HOV), or 
• "Blended Learning in Unique Learning Environments" - Jenny Morrison's session with a focus on BC middle and elementary school programs (http://sched.co/2GA0).

This first session will address how BC schools and districts are organizing for flexible and personal learning opportunities in secondary schools, all while maximizing learning resources and enhancing teachers' tech skills.  Specific outcomes of this session include:

1. Awareness of specific emerging blended models in BC;
2. Understanding of policy and funding implications inherent in various models; and
3. How re-characterizing the “Carnegie Unit” opens new opportunities for flexible and engaging learning approaches.

• A deeper consideration of the possibilities for implementing unique blended learning programs in their schools and districts;
• How blended programs can work as a strong catalyst for the personalization of learning; and
• Why blended learning is an essential disruptive innovation by design and intent in 21st Century Learning.

Here is the link to Kristen's masters work: http://ksviudigitalcitizenshipdlf.weebly.com/ 

Content Connections™ has highly engaging online and site based Math courses that are fully IRP and Western Protocol compliant – in use in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan & the Yukon. Their visually appealing content includes Flash based lesson animations (videos) with audio explanations to explain the concepts and ‘Jings’ based practice assessments.  The courses do not need any text books.   

StudyForge™ has developed a powerful and impressive management software App that gives teachers the ability to create Custom Courses, to conduct Video and Question searches, and provide detailed Progress Reporting Tools for granular Student Tracking – all of which can be done easily on the fly.  Additionally, there is an Interactive Question Engine and a student Cloud-Synced Workspace.  All of this is available through a Single Sign-on with any LMS and works in PC, iPad and Android environments. 

Come see why Content Connections powered by StudyForge will provide teachers with the flexible and powerful Math environment that they have been asking for. In this session you will be able to get hands-on with a Content Connections course, and see how it can be manipulated and used in whole new ways, within the StudyForge software platform. Come ready to be blown away by the possibilities opened up for classroom (Flipped Classroom, anyone?) and Distance Education environments, and see the unveiling of StudyForge’s new question engine. You won’t want to miss this event.

Click here for presentation 

This collaborative and participatory workshop is an extension of the conversation begun in the "Beyond DL" session at 1 pm.  Part Two will focus on a variety of project case studies and exemplars from Alberta experiences and beyond.  

Discussion will move beyond tech to consider how instructional design choices influence Blended Learning.   Please bring your Blended Learning projects to discuss, share and dissect.  Let's share our successes to date and figure out how to design great Blended Learning opportunities for our students together.

Presentation can be found here.

• A deeper consideration of the possibilities for implementing unique blended learning programs in their schools and districts;
• How blended programs can work as a strong catalyst for the personalization of learning; and
• Why blended learning is an essential disruptive innovation by design and intent in 21st Century Learning.

A discussion about how to plan for and implement blended learning programs in unique environments with a focus on both middle school and elementary school blended learning settings.  The session is an extension of the Beyond DL session at 1:00 pm.  The focus of that session is more on secondary schools in BC.

Learning environments discussed will include Sun Peaks Blended Learning Centre, Venables Valley Hare Krishna Blended Learning Centre, and both the Chris Rose Therapy Centre for Autism and Insight Community Services Centre.

Delegates should leave with ideas about how to implement blended learning into their community and/or district. They will also have information about programs to use and structures/strategies that work in these unique settings.

Achieve3000® believes in the power of truly differentiated online instruction to enable significant and sustained Lexile®/reading growth — a belief supported by a decade-plus of scientifically proven performance.

We also believe that the need for differentiated instruction has never been greater. With the increased demands of College and Career, the imperative for students to become independent readers of complex text grows by the day.

This session will investigate how true differentiation can impact teaching, learning, and students and lead to dramatic increases in reading skills.

Here is a Dropbox link to a folder with my presentation as well as other valuable information.

There’s an overview document (“Literacy Brochure International”), two white papers on RTI and English Language Learners, a large scale study on the effectiveness of the program (“Achieve3000-NatlLexileStudy_10-11”), and a paper explaining the pedagogy and research behind the program (“ResearchToPractice2013”). There’s also a sub-folder with various case studies. 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/17d0e0f6wcwyg2i/AAC36fop8I5R0AJnUYiDnwUNa?dl=0

eDynamic Learning publishes online courses that provide an exciting and academically meaningful online student learning experience. Our expert team of curriculum writers and instructional designers work with your school to provide a low cost curriculum solution.

We can custom design courses, or help redesign current offerings, in order to meet your school’s curriculum needs. Additionally, a school may choose to license one of our existing courses from our growing course catalog.

All our courses include next generation instructional design, professional audio narrations and engaging interactive activities. Schools across the country have discovered how eDynamic Learning can successfully address the educational needs of today’s diverse and growing online student population.

See how easy it is to use a few Google tools to get some instant results (and not work so dang hard). Avi will show you how to be lazy, yet effective in your endeavors to make assessment meaningful and to build community in your online, blended, and hybrid courses.

After we look at several strategies and tools Avi has used, you will get to try a few yourself in this hands-on, get'n some digital dirt under the fingernails session. Please ensure you have a Google account to fully benefit from this session.

Tailored for Elementary and Secondary teachers, and other people.  Session will run until 12:30.

Click here for Avi's resources. 

Here is the link to their Moodle site referred to in the presentation:

http://moodle2.openschool.bc.ca/

Geniosity, an exciting new cloud-based solution, provides Canadian educators with access to engaging curriculum-relevant, free and fee-based digital learning resources from a variety of leading content providers, all from a single platform. The intuitive interface and ability to create, customize and share lessons, makes it easy for educators to curate content to meet a range of students’ needs. Geniosity can also be integrated with any of your existing LTI compliant systems (e.g. LMS, SIS).

During this session, you will discover how Geniosity can support your digital learning resource management needs and facilitate sharing across jurisdictions.

Visit www.geniosity.ca or contact us at support@geniosity.ca.

We know the world has changed at an exponential rate and we owe it to our students to do whatever we need to do to create an educational experience that prepares them for an ever changing world.  We also know that we must get them ready for careers that may not currently exist.  This will mean a transformational change in the what, why, and how we do “graduation learning years”.  We must move from  knowledge to understanding and from answers to questions.  In order to engage students in their learning we must offer choice and flexibility and assist them in finding and pursuing their passion with purpose and in a personalized way. 

How can we systemically and strategically create a unique educational experience in the final years of our k-12 journey that engages students and aligns with everything we know about teaching and learning? 

1. A better understanding of what youth and educators are actually doing online both in and out of school; and 
2. How educators can minimize both their criminal and civil liability when using the Internet and Social Media in the classroom.

Unfortunately this session has been cancelled.  Please find another session to attend.  Our apologies.

More and more, students need special education support to succeed in distributed learning. By using "design thinking" throughout course creation and implementation, teachers can help special ed learners succeed, while reducing administrative challenges.

In this workshop, participants will take a tour of experiences from real BC Special Education providers and course designers. We'll then turn those experiences into actionable, personalized design plans that each participant can take home  and use, to create courses that matter to students of all types. 

ChatterHigh.com gamifies exploration of postsecondary & career options, health, finance and Graduation Transition info. It is free, PIPA compliant and fun. The daily 9 minute activity makes this information accessible to DL students, building awareness of many paths. BCIT said this was the best online portal to directly engage students in 2014. Learn how Burnaby Online and FVDES have integrated a ChatterHigh assignment into their Planning 10 curriculum.

• Links to current Innovative projects that participants can join; and
• Online resources with the potential for individual remixing in their own practice.

The Ministry's Digital Literacy Framework has been updated to include student learning outcomes that reflect knowledge, understanding, and competency in computer programming...but is this enough? Our students need more opportunities to learn about programming, and practice computational thinking. Come chat about a new partnership between educational stakeholders and an initiative to provide BC students with the opportunity to learn programming. Your ideas are needed!

• Hardware and Software you can use;
• Steve's recording process;
• Editing and packaging of the videos; and
• Publishing to YouTube.

The course features page is here: http://www.openschool.bc.ca/features/writing_12.html and the OER version may be accessed here: http://ocr.openschool.bc.ca/

Faced with declining enrolments and diminished Ministry funding, Adult and Continuing Education programs have been disappearing in BC.  Due to budgetary shortfalls, school districts are under pressure to cancel even more of their adult learning programs. With each course cancellation, teachers lose jobs and students lose pathways to graduation. 

The Burnaby School District is turning the tide on this downward spiral with a new blended approach for adult education.  By exploiting the wealth of quality online course content, teachers are able to deliver two distinct courses within a single time block.

Here’s how it works. In a three hour time block, a teacher will give direct instruction to half the class, while the other half works independently and in groups on an online course. Half-way through the class, the groups will switch, allowing the teacher to now give full attention to the new group while the others complete their online activities. This model means that two distinct courses can now be delivered by one instructor. Given the skills and experience of the teacher, the subjects might be as diverse as Social Studies and Mathematics.

In this session David Le Blanc will share how this blended model has stopped low enrolling courses from going down the drain in Burnaby’s Adult & Continuing Ed. Program.  

Here's a link to his presentation:  http://tinyurl.com/n2nvohm

• Knowledge of how MoodleFN plug-ins work, and with links to downloads.
• A model for creating coding projects to customize Moodle.
• Opportunity to connect with others interested in a K-12 voice for the Moodle community.

Here are two links to Ted's slides: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DfZAbN4MFUid4HXhayom6ReBwZTA8vtDRzsz2phaG0c/edit?usp=sharing

http://tiny.cc/behave

• Education reports find that blended approaches integrating both classroom instruction and online learning offer the best results.
• Make sense of blended learning in your own instructional practices.

• Digital learning tools offer significant advantages over traditional textbooks. With the Rosetta Stone solution, students learn key language skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking, and the instruction can be modified to support individual learning styles.

Join our rapid-fire dialogue and discussion on:

Connecting. Engaging. Growing. Fostering community online.

Flexible approaches are critical to engaging learning online – for both classroom and online/DL teachers.  Engage with our noted panelists and delegates in a dialogue regarding successful strategies to foster community online and engaged learning approaches.

Discussion Format:

• Panelists will provide brief remarks of 3-5 minutes on a pre-selected topic.
• Moderators will wander the ballroom to invite your questions and comments (please be brief – if you can't say it in under a minute, folks will likely tune you out).
• The back channel (Twitter hashtag #edtechbc) will be curated and brought into the live discussion (BYOD!).
• Panelists may also ask questions of the audience.
• Audience members can add to the discussion with their own successes, issues, and insights.

The session is not intended to be a panel of experts presenting their ideas; rather, it is a planned and structured rapid-fire dialogue.  Much of what will be discussed will flow from delegate input solicited in advance of the conference.  However, discussions stemming from the pre-conference, Monday keynote and workshop sessions, from your conference foyer conversations, chatter during social events and dinner discussions are also a key part of the panel discussion.

The panel dialogue is an opportunity to share openly the risks, challenges, and problems associated with developing flexible learning practices in a manner that augments good teaching, fosters greater learning, and leverages today’s tools for tomorrow’s leaders.