Getting Your School Started with Online Learning

(Below is my presentation for Tuesday, 11:00 at ITEC).

Is Your School Ready for Online Learning

View more presentations from Evan Abbey.

Key Concepts
• How online learning can be used in your school. (Blog - 4/26)

• Most common roadblocks facing Iowa's schools
- Fear for teachers of being replaced
- Primitive view of what online learning is
- Tradition of what "school" is to look like
- Money

• Action Steps
1) Become an advocate
2) Share and refine a vision of online learning in your school (Have conversations with your influential people)
3) Sell your idea to your publics
4) Lay the foundation--plan your course server, your student access, your policies, your professional development. Examine the processing questions
5) Learn what resources/opportunities exist (network)
6) Target specific areas & early adopters to work with
7) Commit. If you wait for the perfect course to be developed, you will never offer one. You learn by trying.

• Current Efforts in Iowa
- Iowa Learning Online (contact Arlan Thorson).
ILO offers free courses in several areas for Iowa students. They also offer free content for schools to use, and have brokered courses for schools, helping with marketing & registration.

- ARRA Grant.
The state AEAs, in partnership with Cedar Rapids CSD, Davenport CSD, Sioux City CSD, Waterloo CSD, Iowa City CSD, Council Bluffs CSD, and Dubuque CSD have received a $2.7 million grant to develop capacity to deliver online learning in Iowa.

Goals of the grant =
1) Provide online content for Iowa schools in math, science, and literacy.
2) Help connect teachers with free online content.
3) Build a repository to host the online content.
4) Provide systemic professional development in online pedagogy for K-12 schools.
5) Connect schools with Iowa Learning Online to use their services to enhance online offerings.
6) Help schools find new models for providing credit recovery and alternative programming.

- OLLIE (Online Learing for Iowa Educators).
To help build internal capacity for online learning, we are developing a sequence of professional development courses, to be facilitated by AEA consultants or locally at an LEA.

The modules include
1) Introduction to the Online Learner (1 credit)
2) Technology for Online Instruction (2 credits)
3) Online Instructional Design (2 credits)
4) Facilitation (2 credits)
5) Assessment, Feedback, and Evaluation (2 credits)