D is for Daring

Daring...a perfect adjective for what educators are doing on a daily basis. We dare to offer students a different choice: using the virtual experience to learn. Not play, not organize, not produce slides, but teach and learn. Lots of "D" words rise to the surface: daring, different, daily. Add in doubtful, diligence, diagnostic, distance, dangerous....

Diligence is critical in the online environment. You and your student must be consistent and on task. The tone is set in the early days of a term, a course, a webinar. Serious attention to process, expectations, and progress can spell the difference between success and failure. When the content and delivery are virtual, the rules remain the same, crafted to work within the environment. A flipped or blended classroom? If you aren't going to "be" there in person, you need to develop guideposts along the way, like the signs on a highway telling you how far you are from the exit.With tools like wikis, Google Hangouts, dropboxes, you have easy and creative ways to check progress and keep communication flowing.

Diagnostic is not a dirty word. Teachers who are monitoring progress are using all manner of diagnostic testing. If the word "test" is disturbing, try assessments, check-ins, quick quizzes, or progress stops. It doesn't really matter the name, the intent is the same. To make sure every student's needs are addressed, spotlighting where he or she is in the content, and what is needed to move forward. And are we diagnosing just content? Just because the venue is changing from on-the-ground to online, whether fully or partially, it doesn't absolve educators from knowing the total student. Consider how the environment, background, economic standing all still affect each learner.  You need to make notes in that personal Student Directory you have created or in an online database or platform if provided by the school. Refer often to your various diagnostic tools and gathered information.

Distance is a circumstance some learners embrace, others fear. You need to reassure all stakeholders that learning is happening. You need to insure transparency. In the early years of online education, some teachers jumped from on-the-ground to online for obvious reasons: simplicity, the novelty of working from home, setting your own hours, and being schooled in "all things Internet and tech." What played out was natural selection. Some teachers just didn't handle that freedom well, weren't as tech-savvy as needed, and learning stalled. Those who persisted and remained excited about the potential in the Internet as a teaching tool have used distance to benefit their students and their own professional and personal growth. Teaching online requires as much or more of educators.

Disconnected is not okay. Don't make the assumption that a disconnected student is one who doesn't care. Again, knowing your students will prevent misconceptions. Your belief should start with yourself. You can be the educator for change for all students no matter where they are located. Only then can you offer a true commitment and belief in the learners committed to your classrooms and care.

Reflection: Can you dare to do more? Decide what that looks like, share with colleagues (and me!), and then do it!

C is for Creativity

Creativity isn't just for art and music teachers. You don't need to be a professed "right brain thinker" to access your creative side. Creativity also refers to such things as problem-solving and ways we view the world. In the virtual world sense, I assert that each of you is very creative indeed. You look at what needs to be done from every angle, assess the unlimited possibilities, and then, using one or more of the many tools available, find a solution that works for yourself, your student, or the school.

Have a student or colleague who is routinely long-winded in emails and rarely makes a point? Some people think and write this way and need to just get it all out there. I find it an effective tool to reply with the previous content included, and using a different text color, drop responses into that email conversation as needed. Something as simple as a smiling emoticon will let the writer know you paid attention. You are honoring the connection, not overlooking an email, and being responsive and creative.

Students, parents, colleagues, and administrators all respond to positive outreach. This doesn't take a lengthy email, but a quick note saying why you are sending an article you recommend ("Found this article on positive parenting tips and thought it might make you smile too" or "Great read on servant leadership"), then attach and send. While I may not have time to answer all emails each day or read everything that comes across my desk, I have set up a sorting system that allows me to move attachments to a "Later Review" folder so I don't lose anything important. If information like this is coming into Gmail, save these things in a special folder in Google Drive. You can do the same in Outlook or, as an organizational tool, Microsoft One Note is great at organizing future reading material. A quotation, a quick idea, a positive take on an issue, a weblink for some new content - all of these are a quick and thoughtful way to "drop by." And whenever someone else send something to you, remember your mother's admonition: always say thank you.

 Nothing makes someone smile more than a positive remark, and nothing says it more creatively than a quick, short video. In the age of camera availability, it is a quick and happy way to deliver a thank you, thumb's up, short idea, or  just a good morning to the class while you take attendance. I guarantee people will enjoy it and it does NOT need to be polished and perfect! Think of this as the new post-it note - easy to use, colorful, and always well-received.

Not all courses or platforms utilize synchronous teaching events. Many are asynchronous. Why not schedule a synchronous session, set the time, and invite those students who are free to attend? If you are just getting to know one another, keep it short and include a Q and A. If the content might evolve into helpful teaching, make sure you record it and offer to meet again later in the course, then share the link with the whole class. If you are teaching kindergarten through 12th grade, schedule a session for the parents. Be creative. Use a game format (you can find them on Pinterest, within Microsoft PowerPoint - just do a search). And if you want to have a conversation around an idea with fellow teachers, try VoiceThread for some wonderful conversations in the Cloud.

The best part of this online world is all the endless possibilities. I rarely go a week before I hear of another set of tools I just need to explore. Simple or complex, new or trusted friend, these online tools are themselves game-changers when considering creativity.

Reflection: Often the shortest connection makes the  biggest difference. How quickly and creatively can you message "I care?"

B is for Bonding

Research from previous school or course launches shows one irrefutable fact: if the student doesn't connect within the first weeks (or even days) of school, he often fails to connect at all. It is critical the teacher gives each student immediate and multiple opportunities to bond - with the teacher, other students, the course or program content, and the school culture. It is easier to think students will find their way driven by personal commitment, but it is not an accurate conclusion. Students will disconnect before they ever start to learn.

The teacher must use all the tools available if you are to make an impact. Keep a database of your students separate from the one offered within the course structure. Dub it your personal Student Directory and make a commitment to have notes beside each student's name before the end of week two. By the end of the first month, multiple entries should be your goal. No student should be "online anonymous" to the teacher. And the converse is true: no teacher should be anonymous to the students. As I work with instructional design and assist in building curriculum, the first and most impactful creation is the instructor introduction. Be it snazzy with creative tools or a simple and relaxed video recording of who you are or what your students can expect, it should be the first thing students see. If you are primarily serving students on-the-ground, it is still important to make a digital impact - it is their world. When you are real to your students, the connection happens and remains. Consider an augmented reality presentation where you "come to life" when they focus on a trigger picture on the bulletin board.

You need to have regular conversations with students. No teacher can accomplish talking to every student daily, but if you set a schedule, as artificial as that may seem, the process pays dividends for everyone. It is time well-invested; posting grades isn't enough.

Share ideas regularly with colleagues about how you can make this happen. It doesn't look the same for every instructor. I repeat: every student is every teacher's responsibility. I recently had a conversation with a college course instructor and this approach wasn't something he had considered as necessary or important.

"These students are adults, they know what they need to do, and they either do it or they don't." I shook my head and suggested many outcomes would improve for both his students and his course evaluations if he didn't leave connections to chance.

You can't live in isolation as the teacher. You need to surround your students with ideas, innovations, solutions, laughter, and life. You need to surround them with "you." In turn, they won't take less responsibility, but more.

Consider starting a data bank of ways to make this bonding happen. Share with your colleagues and gather their ideas. Maybe even put it in the same Excel workbook or Microsoft One Note where you keep notes about the students themselves, but even better, post a working document on Google Drive so others can add to the database of connection tips and tricks. What seems intuitive to you might not occur to another teacher. I guarantee you will see a difference when you make this a focus.

Reflection: Consider those things which prevent students from bonding with teachers, their school, courses, even peers. Which ones can you positively affect and how?

A is for Attitude

It's all about attitude in our virtual world - yours and your students. You need to face each day with a positive determination to make a difference in the lives of both your students and your colleagues. The first few weeks of each term are filled with challenges as you work to gel as a staff or team who are on the same page and getting the job done. You will have questions and you need to find answers with the help of other educators so you can move forward. Whether virtual or face-to-face, teaching is not a solitary activity, but better done as a collective effort.

Even though some of you are teaching fully online on Learning Management Systems, others are accessing courses or applications to fortify your content. In either approach, you are the first point of contact for the students and their success is founded on your confidence. You will have those students who will wander contentedly through your online offerings, and others who are curious but hesitant to jump in for fear of failure. You are the key.

Even if you are new to online teaching (and remember, the definition here is any use of online tools and course content whether integrated or by buffet), you are the point person for student success no matter the age of that student. While more independent as an adult learner, I depended heavily on my instructors as I made my way through graduate work. If they were confident and available, I breathed a sigh of relief because I knew I wasn't alone in wanting to succeed. Younger students, their parents, other mentors are all in need of "you" as their positive cheerleader.

Don't be afraid to help as you learn yourself. Some of my best personal learning as an online educator came about because someone needed me to help. The best response when asked a question you can't yet answer: "I don't know that answer, but I will research it and get back to you as soon as possible." Then, follow through. Ask colleagues, query online, tweet with compelling hashtags to get answers from those who can help. Your network is no longer confined to a building, a hallway, a room, and that's exciting! The unasked questions are where we make mistakes, setting up ourselves and others for failure.

We teach in a world of usernames, avatars, hashtags, email identities, and more. We can't escape that now, but knowing your students' names and using them is critical. Names are the focal point for interpersonal relationships with students of all ages, and people respond when addressed. Our workloads might necessitate one or two sentence responses but are softened when they start with, "Hi, Maryalice" and the closing is a signature sentiment all your own - warmly, kindly, many thanks, stay in touch, etc. You set the tone and yes, the attitude.

Finally, you will have days of frustration filled with grading backlogs, overly-full inboxes, phone messages awaiting response, and those mounting text messages and tweets. Focus on moving through your responsibilities with grace and persistence, and have an ongoing and shifting priority list so you can stay in control. You will be a positive role model with an infectious enthusiastic attitude. You will make a difference and students will respond.

Reflection: How do you project a positive attitude in your classroom, especially if your teaching is completely virtual?

New Series: "The Alphabet Guide to Virtual Teaching

I am launching a new blog series with my next post. I wrote the content for this guide while I was a principal for a statewide online school. I launched one per week during the school year as my reflection piece at the beginning of the team's newsletter. It spurred many conversations during the week and opened a dialogue with my teachers that otherwise might not have happened. While I am re-crafting some content to reflect a broader audience, I am certain the content is timeless and can be taken to heart for online, on-the-ground, and blended learning teachers at every level.

The reflective writing starts with the belief that no matter where the teaching and learning take place, the beginning is the educator and moves to each student one at a time. While there are myriads of conversations taking place about the authenticity and integrity of the mandate "No Child Left Behind," one thing rings true: teaching is done one child at a time no matter how many you have in your classroom kindergarten through postgraduate. You'll notice the slogan has never said no children left behind and the reason for that is clear.

My personal editorial comment is this: successful education is based on every individual student's needs. No approach, no theories, no fancy or simple tools, will do the job until we reduce class sizes. It doesn't matter how talented the teacher is or how forward-thinking the district if students are overlooked each day because a teacher is stretched too thin. Students with disabilities are assigned one-on-one interaction, not because they have handicaps, but because their needs are identified and it works.

Think about this: Johnny might have ADHD or partial sight loss, but the other children each come in with their own individual needs. The list is long and as unique as your students: abusive parents, hunger, distractibility, poor self esteem, giftedness, exhaustion. The teacher needs to work with each one of the students, not to change him or her, but to understand and elevate and care.

If you personally succeeded as a student, or your child is making progress and growing, a teacher cared. It's really quite a simple formula.

I hope you will enjoy the series and feel comfortable engaging in a conversation with me and others who stop by. Let me know you are "there" - it encourages my efforts more than you know.

Is There a Brake on that Freight Train?

I have been reading articles, blogs, and opinion pieces lately which focus on the good, bad, and questionable when dealing with the new Digital Age and our children.  YouTube is peppered with videos showing babies engaged with the computer, iPhone, and iPad - engaged, not just watching the screens. We don't need videos to spotlight how much more intense that commitment becomes in direct proportion to the age of the child. What may have started out as listening to music, playing alphabet games, identifying animals and sounds, and reading downloaded books, quickly turns to gaming, texting, video conferencing, social and school/homework portals. All in all, it "becomes" the identity of the user.

Teachers' and district administrators' inboxes are filled with alluring ads for the next greatest tool to make teaching or learning bulletproof. Companies are springing up like dandelion on an untreated lawn (longing for spring here), and we can't run the risk of not checking out as many as possible for fear of indeed missing something phenomenal, life-changing, education-altering. Download that app and get busy!

I am guilty. I am writing this blog under the subtitle "Online Teacher Underground," tweeting the newest and best tool to followers with that in mind, and capturing relevant and cutting edge suggestions via ScoopIt! and Pinterest boards. I am excited about everything I see and everything I will see. There has never been a time quite like this - ever!

However, I do worry. No matter how the prognosticators wrap the package, we are not sure where this revolution is headed and how we stop it if we suddenly figure out it is not as good as we think.

I didn't watch television as a child. We had one, but it wasn't on very much. I spent a large part of my childhood doing creative and athletic things. I have had conversations with parents who have made a decision to not allow technology to be central in their family's life and they share how much harder it is to take it away once the children have had it. Also, critically hard to cut the power cords at home when schools use, push, and have expectations for technology, especially in this era of flipped classroom thinking. The whole conversation around completely online education from nursery school through terminal degrees is for another time.

Each generation is a product of their upbringing. Do we see ambitious and brilliant adults in their forties, fifties, sixties who were raised without the benefits of online accessibility? Yes indeed. What does that tell us? Are we learning from the past? Can we harness the best of all this tech availability and keep the wild-eyed, frantic, shotgun pellet approach to a minimum? I am not sure we can at this point. You know how the pyramid of exponential growth works. One user tells one more, and then they each tell one more which makes 4 who know, then 8, 16, and on to a cast of millions. Welcome to technology gone viral.


So what do you think? Here are my questions:

• Is technology good or bad? (fundamental query)
• Should young children (under two) be exposed to the Internet, online games, and more?
• Can we turn back? Should we? 
• If not, how do we make sure we are in charge of this movement and not the other way around?

Perhaps you think this is too big an issue for a simple conversation, but I maintain we need to keep an eye on this new era, one person at a time. Or maybe you think it's a moot point - we can never change the trajectory of this digital evolution. The train has left the station and we can never get it back.

Let me hear your voice. I welcome your thoughts, and this topic isn't just for teachers. Please share!

Classroom Challenges a la 2015

The topic, Classroom Challenges, has a potentially long list. The varied school types, teaching approaches, and contemporary educational issues could provide blog content for a very long time, agreed?

Earlier in my career, when the Internet was still driven by only a few and remained a mystery to most, the number of square feet in my assigned room divided by the available desks and chairs times the number of enrolled students...these were the classroom challenges.

Late in summer, when I rolled down the carts from the storeroom and set out my allotted grammar and literature books, patched up the worn bindings and wondered where textbooks numbered 332 through 336 had disappeared...these were classroom challenges.

The years I was assigned to an outside classroom, a "portable," brought in to accommodate the bulge in student populations were challenging indeed. I wondered how to move notebooks, textbooks, teaching aids, and myself (with favorite pen and hot cup of coffee) out of the building in bad weather for one period and then back to my main classroom in a 4 minute passing time every day.

What are the new challenges for teachers when this topic comes up in staff lounges, school hallways, and  private dinner tables?

Let me share just a small partial list:

• Enough per pupil funding still coming into the schools instead of being siphoned for "those charters"
• Aforementioned funding being used for "the right things"
• Enough computers available for classrooms and students
• Amended: enough working computers available for classrooms and students
• Subtopic: an IT-savvy person (not just a helpful, self-appointed tech expert) to keep computers, networks, all peripherals working
• Adequate training and time to make sure teachers can use technology to their advantage
• Adequate time and training to insure students are using tech as more than an educational babysitter

Overheard repeatedly: "Anyone know the name of that app that makes slide presentations more interesting? (SlideShare, Canva, Prezi, more)

Better yet, "Are there apps which will take my current slides and bring them to life so I don't have to recreate my static presentations?" (refer to previous sentence)

The Computerized Testing Challenge

Add to all these challenges an important and relatively new fact. For the upcoming testing season (strange how "one test for understanding" is now known as a "season"), the tests are delivered online. And yes, schools were given a buffer year - they could opt to take paper tests one more year. But the inevitable is on the horizon: schools need to provide the hardware, expertise, extensive allotted time for preparation and practice and test-taking if their students are going to be successful.



A behind-the-scenes look:

If a school is going to use online test delivery, all computers need to be networked, connected to the right software, meet the list of technical requirements, have protected connections for security and durability (read: won't be compromised or "go down" in the middle of the extensive testing process).

All teachers and test proctors (and yes, not all proctors are teachers but all teachers are proctors) need to be trained, outside of classroom time, in what part they will play. The testing manual is thick and filled with those actions which could invalidate the testing process or test scores.

Did you know that students must handle the entire process without the teachers helping in any way?

Spotlight: Create Innovate Explore Blog and Rachel Jones

Congratulations, Rachel Jones

Today's spotlight is the blog entitled Create Innovate Explore by author Rachel Jones. Her blog is a 2013 Edublogs Finalist and is filled with resources, teaching, inspiration, and so much more. The post which caught my attention and drew me to her informative site is entitled "Ten Ways to Use Technology to Enhance Creativity Across The Curriculum." Jones is a Google-certified educator and this post, written February 5, 2015, has been featured on both the LinkedIn Reader Leader Forum by Rob Furman and in the industry expert article section on the site, Innovate My School. Her coauthor for this article is Nicky Moxen, art teacher at King Edward VI School, Southampton. The Guardian recommended her as a must read of 2014 due to her blogging and twitter presence. I do agree.

I was gratified to see she is promoting Canva, the on-computer and now new app which I highlighted in an earlier blog post. The best descriptor for Canva is versatility. Instagram has also surged forward in education, business, entertainment and for personal use, and teachers are constantly looking for ways to use its versatility. It isn't just for storing pictures for friends anymore!

(c) Piktochart logo

Look to Google Tour Builder for innovative assignments offering the opportunity to tell stories through the use of maps, and Piktochart for a fun organizational tool which learners can use to create infographics.

You don't need to spend a lot of time on any of these websites to see how education is being enhanced by the availability of these tools and how you might use them personally. Jones with Nicky Moxen as done an admirable job of cutting the list down to the most promising entry into creative teaching and learning.

Let me add that Rachel has a new book published, Don't Change the Light Bulbs, Independent Thinking Press, 2014. The promotional and descriptive text tells us: "Rachel Johns is an emerging voice in the world of education, especially via social media. She has edited this collection of hints and tips for teachers, covering all aspects of teaching, including leadership, inclusion, special educational needs, etc. It is a resource to be dipped into as needed for new ideas as to how to engage with students."

Start that conversation with her on Twitter: @rlj1981 and visit her website.

Spotlight: SlideShare and Donna Moritz

SlideShare logo

Slideshare has many remarkable presentations, and is a tool easily used and shared. You will find many exciting content creation tools on this list. Hat's off to Donna Moritz for creating and sharing. Make sure you click through to her website, Socially Sorted. You will find a transcript you can download via SlideShare as well. Enjoy!

36 Visual Content Creation Tools the Pros Can't Live Without from Donna Moritz

Spotlight on Badges: Credly

A few years ago online vendors were beginning to design ways to recognize students for completion of both course elements and full courses online. What started as a promising movement then has cascaded into a fully-integrated recognition for learners' lifelong achievements via the "leading platforms for sharing and managing digital badges and credentials." (Credly site)

Credly is one of the best, insuring achievements are recognizable and easily connected to learning venues who look to prove completion. Earning and issuing credits is free and can be connected to places that matter to you in your career and business: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and embedded on your personal blogs, portfolios, and websites. An issuer designs badges, decides what the criteria is for awarding the badge, and can track data to know where the badges travel and who is using and seeing them.

Exciting to note such organizations as New York City Department of Education, Educause, Ohio Department of Education, Dallas Museum of Art, Harvard, Smithsonian, Yale University, and Training Magazine use Credly to make achievements compelling and visible.

I read through the most recent site announcements and the list of the software which integrates Credly and makes the award process even easier is both impressive and growing at a fast pace. Here are some I know you will recognize: MailChimp, Salesforce, Pathbrite, Eventbrite, and Brandman University.

Finally, while the free application will be perfect for many reading this, know there are three more tiers - Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Edition, and the pricing structure is competitive. At the highest level or Enterprise Edition, a school or platform can totally customize and integrate the badge system platform to reflect their needs.

Do I still download the certificates? Sure I do when they are offered, but this system of crediting achievement is here to stay. If you want to see my badges (sparse at this point - several I designed for a course I am constructing), check out the links I posted in the right menu.

To read more about the growth trajectory, I have attached a link to a paper written by Educause which has a wonderful history and analysis that will answer many questions:
http://bit.ly/1AUz8WS

Whether the badges are awarded by an instructional institution, open-sourced, or earned through completion of a MOOC, these are really hyped up gold stars and I loved getting those as a child. The rationale for the visibility and motivation is still there, just 21st Century.

Teaching with Aurasma

I can't let this thing called Augmented Reality go and my mind is whirring with ideas for its use in schools, community, churches, companies, marketing. If you search online, it is everywhere, but from my recent conversations with teachers, this is still one of the newer trends to be explored and implemented. I compare it to how excited I was when I learned I could create and print overhead acetates on my computer rather than draw by hand; the explosive realization of moving information to a smartboard, let alone a whiteboard; and digging back even more, the versatility of formulaic actions on an Excel sheet, those things I remember well doing by hand. While these examples might seem one notch away from the one room schoolhouse to those who have never known teaching or work without technology, we are not done improving, improvising, creating, exploring, and blasting the edges of possibility. Don't be complacent and think you have found the last great education tool. Thankfully, we will never be done!

This video by Charles Cooper from NorthWest High School gives you a fast look at how to use in hallways and classrooms. Follow his channel, search YouTube for others, join the excitement. This one is just a little over 4 minutes - enjoy!

Spotlight: Aurasma and Augmented Reality

(c) Aurasma logo

I have been introduced to some excellent online tools this week and I will eventually write about each one. But for today, the winner is Aurasma, hands down. I attended a wonderful online webinar yesterday through INFOhio and I am ready and willing to promote, design, and share. (FYI: I have linked the webinar site but it isn't live yet...keep checking back for it.)

Aurasma is the cutting edge (not just a cliche this time) for using augmented reality to teach (after this known as AR). If you remember the QR codes we got excited about a few years ago, then AR is QR codes times a hundred. The website tells us that every image, object, or even place can have its own "aura," this company's term for an AR experience.

A wonderful universal example is what Guinness World Records has done for their 2014 published record book. Look for the AR symbol on the cover to make sure you have purchased the right version. Find the trigger image on a page, open the iOS or Android app on phone or tablet, aim the camera at the symbol on the cover or pages, and see the information come to life. One example used in yesterday's webinar was the world's shortest woman. Because you can rotate and move with your camera and see the AR picture in all 360 degrees, students who viewed this were able to take a photo that made it seem like they were posing with the shortest woman. Priceless learning and great fun!

Aurasma is your ticket to create these for yourself and your students. Advertisements (marketing classes), architectural drawings (design classes), art history (3D of statues in museums around the world), music performances (focus on your choir's trigger photo and listen to them perform!). Are the ideas beginning to form? Keep a list.

I believe one of the most compelling uses for this AR model is creating a bulletin board that has designated triggers around your topic.

• Math: make the trigger a picture of the problem and the AR can be the video you created showing how to solve it.
• Art: post student artwork and the trigger shows a short clip of the student explaining the design.
• Social Studies: Martin Luther King Day and the MLK photo triggers his speech or trailer for the movie, "Selma."

Many applications support this AR movement. I hope to cover some in the future. What child wouldn't like to color a trigger picture from the ColAR app, then see the picture come to life and move across the page. If you want to play, download the application on your phone or tablet (check your App Store on your phone), print one of the sample trigger pictures and have your grandchild or student color it, then turn on the app. Magic!

Most of the apps are free - what a plus! And Aurasma lets you create your aura via your own "channel," and as long as the person trying to view the trigger is connected to your channel, your content is easily shared.

Don't be afraid of this one. Three steps gets you from start to finish in Aurasma, so it is easy to see how it works. Once I have a few of my own created, I promise to come back and share my channel so you can explore. This is exciting!

Follow Aurasma on Facebook too. And many thanks to INFOhio and Morgan Nickolai, Sidney High School, Sidney, Ohio.

The Power of Feedback: Turnitin

(c) Turnitin Logo

Ever since I worked for the charter formation of a statewide online high school and served as its principal, feedback and integrity has been a foundational issue. How can we insure student work is their own and best support students with meaningful and strong responsive feedback?

One of the first tools on the market was Turnitin and although in those early years it appeared challenging to integrate to the proprietary learning management system (LMS), problems were solved quickly and Turnitin has become an industry standard. I am now doing course design contract work with Clemson University Online and have been excited to once again see Turnitin and am pleased it is their go-to tech tool for insuring quality work. The best has survived!

They just launched an infographic describing what their research and surveys show is the substance of what students really want in feedback. I downloaded the pdf as soon as I saw it. I believe some educators and educational institutions will be surprised at what their students had to say. Oh, I am sure students jump to that all-important grade - it's human instinct. But I am pleased to see students aren't interested in only negatives or meaningless fluff. After all, what does "Your writing is strong" really mean? We can do better and Turnitin is here to help.

I have been a lifelong writer and English teacher. Despite every iteration of my syllabus attempting to teach research writing to students, many continued to struggle with what citations and bibliographies were. I had students in my online and on-the-ground office asking me why certain references or paragraphs weren't their own, clearly confused by the expectations and process. The explosion of the Internet only made things more difficult. Turnitin, however, clearly shows students that even a phrase from a website or author takes away their personal authenticity. The Internet may be huge, but information and sites don't escape Turnitin's reach. What a boon for teacher efficiency.

Turnitin provides blog posts, webinars, and cutting edge tools to make an educators' job easier and more meaningful. Just look at their recent acquisition of LightSide Labs to support formative feedback and the integration to your tablets for convenience. It is just getting better and better!

Take the survey results to heart and if your school doesn't have Turnitin, consider it worth investigating and run, don't walk, to their website for more information. Just as Turnitin has, you will raise the bar on student submissions and integrity, and who wouldn't see that as a plus?

Well, maybe the student who told me just a few years ago: "But they [the researchers] said what I wanted to say. How could my words be any better?" Ah, youth!

What Online Teaching Is and Is Not

Online educators are pioneers. It doesn't matter that people have been learning online for over a
decade now, this teaching modality is still new. All of the successes and failures we have talked about prior to this were spread across decades, centuries. Education kept shifting focus every few years in an attempt to meet needs and have the better idea.

We have moved from all ages in one room with slates and charcoal to bigger classes or smaller ones; notebooks newly-defined; same gender classes; academic versus business "majors;" special education in separate rooms versus integrated one and all. I think I need to produce an infographic on this because our "this or that" solution approach endures. Sure, researchers backed most of these, but truth? We continued to reinvent the models.

However, while the primary responsibility of teachers to educate has never changed, online teaching has brought the single biggest change to how we do this thing called teaching. Totally online K-12 education means it is very possible that a teacher won't actually "see" a student during their entire program. Other teachers might meet them, but if a Math teacher is 500 miles from the student and only online and the webcam never gets turned towards the student's computer, that teacher might not meet the student before or at graduation.

This reality has many implications for teachers and I am here to first point out what online teaching is NOT.

• It is NOT just wearing sweats and teaching from your sofa.
• It is NOT simply moving content from textbooks to a computer screen.
• It is NOT just grading content and answering emails.
• It is NOT adding up online quizzes and tests passed and declaring a student has passed.
• It is NOT gimmick-teaching, adopting the idea the more clever the tools, the better the learning.

And now, what online teaching IS:

• It IS an opportunity to meet and work with students over a wide geographic area.
• It IS a teaching method which uses the most cutting edge online tools available in education today for the best reasons.
• It IS the finest full emphasis on learners making learning we have ever employed.
• It IS the positive conversion from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side."
• It IS collaboration, not a solitary experience. Students make meaning,

While not a comprehensive list for certain, I wanted to start the conversation. I was at the gate when teachers first came to K-12 online work and we were all naive to a degree. I not only worked

Tops on Facebook and Twitter

Docebo is both a blog and a Cloud learning management system. Through several feeds this morning like elearning feeds, today's post on the Docebo blog gives us a wealth of information on where to find the current top elearning connections.

I know, I didn't jump into Twitter for a long time but truly, it is a versatile social media tool. I will soon highlight some of the live ed conversations that take place on Twitter feeds with the top people in the online education industry. But that's another post. I digress.

Today's Docebo blog post spotlights Facebook and Twitter feeds. On Facebook, such powerhouses as Instructional Design and E-Learning Professionals' Group (number 1 right now), Elearning! Magazine, and eLearning Guild.

Twitter (remember that hashtag!) lists @elearnindustry, @elearning which is the Twitter account for Dave Anderson and the Articulate authoring tool, and @eLearningGuild a trusted industry leader for marking trends and technology.

There are others listed so I haven't spoiled all the fun. Check out these leaders and get connected in your field. Now more than ever, in education and especially online education, the landscape keeps changing and all those involved (teachers, administrators, designers, parents) must stay informed. Never has it been this easy in the history of education.

If you are reading my blog, you have the tools you need: computer and Internet connection. Read on, gather knowledge, and share!