The fifth session of the day at the MVU Symposium are also break-out sessions, and I decided to attend:
Teaching Online and the Future of Education
(Room 103) 10:00 a.m. – 11:10 a.m. • 1:00 p.m. – 2:10 p.m.
This session will explore how Internet-based delivery models are changing the role of educators at the K-12 and higher education levels, in particular how online education is impacting teacher preparation and ongoing educator professional development. Presenters will highlight the skills needed to be an effective online educator, share their experiences as online instructors and talk about the future of online learning. The session will also provide a brief overview of MVU’s Online Instructor Training program, in which more than 450 Michigan educators have participated, and plans to create a new Michigan online teacher certificate program. This session is convened by Greg Marks, Director of Product Development, MVU.
Presenters:
Rhonda Egidio, Professor, College of Education, Michigan State Universtiy
Molly Bruzewski, Online Instructor, Michigan Virtual School; MKB Consulting, LLC
Kristi Bush, Online Instructor, Michigan Virtual School; Media Specialist, Shepherd Public Schools
Michigan Online Teacher of the Year
Note the fourth session was a keynote over lunch that was very entertaining, but was during lunch so I didn’t do much with it beyond these few Tweets:
MVU Symposium – Buckleitner: View his videos and other items at http://rutgerstech.wikispaces.com/MVU 19 minutes ago from web
MVU Symposium – Buckleitner: If you graph Moore’s law, process power and dissertations on technology there is an inverse relationship. about 1 hour ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium – Buckleitner: This is actually unfortunate, as the speaker is both interesting and entertaining thus far. about 1 hour ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium – Warren Buckleitner is now giving the afternoon keynote – while lunch is being served, so I doubt there will be much activity about 1 hour ago from TwitBin
This session began with this video:
We then moved to a very lengthy overview of the course management system and the environment used by Michigan Virtual School (and in all honesty anyone who has been into a CMS even once before did not need this overview – so I wonder if anyone in the audience actually needed this portion). Unfortunately this was all the first presenter did, twenty-five minutes of it (see the Twitter stream below for more candid, in the moment comments.
The second presenter began talking about tips for how to manage your time as an online instructor and the SafeAssign feature of Blackboard. The third presenter is talking about why and how to teach online. Basically a bunch of “touchy feely” platitudes about the need for online learning with adolescents, the benefits of it, the power of it. Things you’d expect to hear about or read back at the beginning of this decade when online learning was still new – in a session about teaching online and the future of education at the tenth anniversity of the Michigan Virtual University, one would think that we’ve past that by now.
Fifty five minutes into the presentation, we finally get to some content from the description. Unfortunately it was just a barebones description and sales pitch for a Certificate in Online Teaching and Learning that would be offered by Michigan Virtual School. The course themes would include
- online learning
- the e-learner
- e-instructor
- assessment/evaluation
- e-curriculum
- practicum
Available Summer 2009-February 2010. Four to five courses, about five to six weeks for each course, asynchronous delivery.
Interestingly, the session description indicated that this session would:
…highlight the skills needed to be an effective online educator, share their experiences as online instructors and talk about the future of online learning
…provide a brief overview of MVU’s Online Instructor Training program
I’m still waiting for any real information on either of these… Also of interest was the amount of simply reading the PowerPoint slides to the audience was done. Even when the slide had as few as three words!
My Twitter entries from the session:
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – 55 mins in and we finally get something from the description, and its a sales pitch for a future certificate. 2 minutes ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – Third presenter looking at how and why to teach online – thus far buzzwords & promise about online learning. 11 minutes ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – Second presenter was another 20 mins about as useful as the first presenter. 13 minutes ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – Strategies for managing your time as an online teacher. Still waiting for content from the description. 23 minutes ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – Moving on to the second presenter. Wow! This session was misadvertized based on the description! 27 minutes ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – 25 mins in & we are now in Q&A – which is better than the CMS overview. 28 minutes ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – 20 mins & still going… I should have gone to the session that featured the MVS students. 35 minutes ago from web
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – Okay, 15 mins in & we are still being told about how they use BB, much like it was used in the 1990s. 40 minutes ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – The session actually began with this video http://tinyurl.com/2ejqvc Quite entertaining!!! 43 minutes ago from TwitBin
MVU Symposium: Egidio et al. – In a session titled Teaching Online And The Future Of Education & listening to 10 mins of what is Blackboard. about 1 hour ago from TwitBin
