A return to blogging, with a look ahead and behind

I had promised to myself that I'd have met my year-long goal of re-designing the look of the blog before I started blogging again, but that's still a work in progress.

In the meantime, it is fall conference time, and I'll be presenting at the following in October:

• "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cyberspace PD" at the Iowa World Language Association conference (I'm co-presenting with Waukee Middle School teacher Susan Sandholm-Petersen)
  
• "Getting Your School Started with Online Learning" at ITEC
• "10 Things You Need to Know About Being an Online Teacher" at ITEC
• "Technology Isn’t Enough: Structuring Your Gifted Program to Fully Utilize Digital Learning" at the Iowa Talented and Gifted Association conference.

But, I'm more excited about what has happened over this past summer. The AEAs are making headway to having a statewide system for online professional development, a one-stop shop for Iowa educators for online trainings, webinars, online communities, and for-credit online courses. That should roll out this winter, with complete offerings in those areas up and running next summer.

In addition, the AEAs are collaborating with the districts of Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Dubuque, Iowa City, Sioux City, and Waterloo on a federal stimulus money grant. The grant brings nearly $3 million to the state to build the state's capacity to deliver online learning for K-12 students, especially in the areas of rural schools, high-need/teacher shortage areas, and credit recovery. The grant will do this through 1) systemic professional development, 2) collection and development of content that is free for Iowa's schools to use, and 3) creation of a repository for online learning to take place.

These are two big developments (and directly responsible for my blogging hiatus), and Iowa's teachers and students will greatly benefit. In upcoming posts, I'll help highlight the details of these developments.