Remembering 9/11

This day has been an interesting day for me over the past eight years.  On 11 September 2001 I was in the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland for professional development meetings associated with the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation.

Tonight the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) are showing the Pope Productions movie Diverted again at 8:00pm this evening (note that the Pope Productions website doesn’t appear to have been updated in about two to three years, so there is no information about Diverted actually located there).  According to the CBC blurp about the movie, Diverted is:

A fictional story inspired by what happened to the people of Gander, Newfoundland and the passengers on the planes on Sept. 11, 2001, when the Federal Aviation Authority shut down the skies over the United States. Suddenly, more than 200 aircraft flying over the Atlantic at the time had to find a new place to land. Thirty-nine of those flights made their way to Gander, Newfoundland, and on that day 6,500 people descended on a town of 9,000.

While Gander is probably the most remarkable story (largely due to the size of the community and the number of people that were stranded there – see some images and news stories here), communities like Stephenville, St. John’s, Goose Bay and others throughout Eastern Canada also accepted unexpected visitors.  In addition to the movie Diverted, I would also recommend the Jim DeFede book The Day the World Came to Town (see a review here or purchase the book from the publisher or on Amazon).

At the time I never knew that I would be driving through New York and Washington a year or so later and seeing the crash sites, that I would end up doing a doctoral degree in the United States, or that I would be working in the United States.  At the time I could only sit at a Jungle Jim’s restaurant with a group of virtual school administrators, online teachers, and school-based teachers responsible for their online students and watch the scenes unfolding on the television – like many across North America and around the world I would imagine.  We would all be leaving Gander later that day – as our professional development sessions ended.  I imagine that the rooms we occupied in the hotels and the space in the school we were using were quickly filled by those who were stranded.

So today, as I reflect on the events from eight years ago, I’m going to watch Diverted and the dramatization of turmoil that was happening just down the street at the airport, and what happened as I left the community without realizing the full weight of what was going on in the tiny community.  And today I’d ask my readers to spend a few minutes looking at the images from Gander on 9/11 and the days following, along with some of the personal stories that come out in this ABC news item and the write up that appeared on Snopes.

Killick Centre for E-Learning Research

I mentioned the Killick Centre for E-Learning Research on this blog in the past (see Killick Centre tag).  Basically, it is a project housed at Memorial University of Newfoundland that is funded by the federal Government through the the Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) Program of the the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which “aims to foster innovative research, training and new knowledge in the area of e-learning in the field of education.”  One of the main partners in this research is the provincial virtual school, the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation.

Anyway, I was poking around their website a couple of days ago and noticed some new links.

• Published Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Chapters in Books
• Peer-Reviewed Journal Article and Chapters in Books (Accepted for Publication)
• Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Chapters in Books (Submitted)
• Book(s) Under Contract
• Non-Peer Reviewed Items (Published)

While some of the items appear on multiple pages and I notice that some are out of date (i.e., I know the article has been published, but it is still listed as accepted or submitted), but it is worth promoting the research that is coming out of this project.

As there are very few folks doing good empirical research into virtual schooling, and even fewer in Canada, I wanted to post this quick update to keep this work fresh in everyone’s minds.

CSSE 2009: Teachers’ Preconceptions Of Virtual Schooling [AND] Teacher Volunteerism & Good Will

Well, today at the 2009 annual conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE) I gave the final two K-12 Online Learning At CSSE 2009.

DAY 3 / JOUR 3 (Monday, May 25 / Le lundi 25 mai 2009)
Timeslot 15 / Période 15
11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. / 11 h 30 – 13 h

15.11
446 Tory Building / Pavillon Tory
CATE/ACFE
Technology in Teacher Education  / La technologie dans la formation en  enseignement
Multi-paper session / Plusieurs communications

Teachers’ Preconceptions of Virtual Schooling: Challenging Myths & Misconceptions / Les préconceptions des enseignants au
sujet des cours en ligne : des mythes et des idées fausses dérangeantes
Michael Barbour (Wayne State), Kelly Unger (Wayne State)

Teacher Volunteerism & Good Will: Local Teachers to Distance Education Responsibilities / Le bénévolat et la bonne volonté
chez les enseignants : les enseignants locaux et leurs responsabilités vis-à-vis de l’éducation à distance
Michael Barbour (Wayne State), Dennis Mulcahy (MUN)

I made recordings of both sessions, which I hope to turn into podcasts in the next few weeks.  In the meantime, I have uploaded the slides for both presentations to my website, see:

• Teachers’ Preconceptions of Virtual Schooling: Challenging Myths & Misconceptions
• Teacher Volunteerism & Good Will: Local Teachers to Distance Education Responsibilities

In terms of the conference thus far, I have to say that I have been quite disappointed with the session chairs.  Yesterday, I mentioned how the session chair decided that she wanted to present second and switched the order to the presentations (which caused me to miss over half of the presentation I wanted to see even though I followed the published schedule).  In the session I presented in today, I was scheduled to present first and third (out of four sessions).  The first thing the chair wanted to do was switch that to first and second (and I’m glad that I didn’t as I had someone come up to me afterwards, who came in just before I started by second presentation, just to see that presentation).  Next, as there were four papers each person was supposed to have 15-20 minutes for their papers.  I took 15 minutes (14 minutes and 40 seconds based on the recording on my iPod) for the first paper.  The second paper was presented by a group of four people who included the session chair – and they took 27 minutes!  As I was giving my second presentation (i.e., the third paper of the session), at the 10 minute mark the session chair gives me the two minute warning and at the 12 minute mark she holds up her sign to wrap it up.  I continued and according to my iPod recording was 14 minutes and 48 seconds.

I guess this is my way of suggesting to CSSE that they need to do a better job of preparing their session chairs – and might I suggest not selecting people who have a vested interest in the papers being presented in that session (i.e., don’t select someone who is presenting themselves in that slot)!!!  Anyway, thats my beef for today…

Tomorrow I am participating in the panel Congress 2009: Academic Blogs – Connecting People And Ideas.  As a lead up to this panel, I wrote the following entries related to the questions we were given in advance:

• About This Blog
• Academic Blogs – Blogging And Academic Work
• Advice For Academics
• Advantages And Disadvantages
• Trade Secrets

Until tomorrow…

CSSE 2009: Web-based Learning In Aboriginal Schools: The Experience In Coastal Labrador

Okay, so the first K-12 online learning session that I attended here at the 2009 annual conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE) – see K-12 Online Learning At CSSE 2009.  The information for the session was:

DAY 2 / JOUR 2 (Sunday, May 24 / Le dimanche 24 mai 2009)
Timeslot 11 / Période 11
3:00 – 4:15 p.m. / 15 h – 16 h 15

11.11
206 Tory Building / Pavillon Tory
CASIE/ACÉÉA
Multi-paper session / Plusieurs communications
Chair/Prés: Margaret Kovach (Saskatchewan)

Web-based Learning in Aboriginal Schools: The Experience in Coastal Labrador / L’apprentissage au moyen du Web dans les
écoles autochtones : l’expérience sur la côte du Labrador
Rose Neville (MUN), David Philpot (MUN) and Dennis Sharpe (MUN)

While I showed up about 10 minutes into the session, this was supposed to be the second paper in this 75 minute session.  Having said that, the presenter was already about half way through her session – apparently the session chair (who was supposed to be the first paper presenter) switched the order for some reason.   So I missed the first half of this presentation (and let me tell you, I am none the wiser and quite bored sitting through the other paper – as she is up there now basically giving us her complete academic history, totally unrelated to her presentation – which I should have missed had she not reversed the order).

Anyway, some general background on this presentation…  The study was conducted with five Aboriginal schools in the Labrador School District in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.  As best I can tell – as I missed this slide – the research was based on surveys and interviews, along with document analysis and statistic analysis of student course and exam scores (although the findings seemed to focus more heavily on survey and/or interview results).

Some of the things that she mentioned that stood out for me.

• Students in these five aboriginal schools in Labrador performed as well in their CDLI courses as they did in their classroom courses. [MKB - This finding doesn't take into account the fact that there is often gate keeping at the school level so only stronger students register in the CDLI courses.]
• The speaker spent a lot of time talking about the school-based support, how the schools were organized in terms of local supervision and the various roles of the individuals involved and the kind of commitment that took. [MKB - And this is the focus of one of my own presentations tomorrow morning.]
  
• The readiness of the students to take an online course – and the presenter primarily spoke about technical skills, although she did reference the soft skills. [MKB - The speaker referenced the latter in a manner as using these skills as a way to determine whether students were suitable to learn online, which leaves the question what about students that HAVE to learn online?]

There were ten recommendations in total that related to scheduling issues (with the time zone change between Labrador and the island), the role of the school-based support, closing access to online distractions, introducing an online learning readiness course in grade 9 (or take a portion of a course or a full course in grade 9), looking at student characteristics before enrolling them online (particularly independent learning skills), and greater communication between CDLI and school (particularly between online teachers and parents).

If I can get access to the researchers presentation slides I may post something else later.

Elluminate Newsline – May 2009

Note the second item related to the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation, the provincial virtual school in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Elluminate Newsline The ePublication created exclusively for educators. May 2009 FEATURED STORY The Princeton Review Delivers Synchronous Course Content, Internal Training, and Faculty Professional Development with Elluminate. “My teachers are so happy with this product, especially those who used to use Wimba,” reports Andrea Williams, Online Course Manager at Princeton Review. “Elluminate facilitates the transition to online teaching and provides the tools and collaborative environment instructors need to be effective online. And our students excel on this platform. Elluminate has pretty much blown everyone away.” Learn more.»	Build online session plans. Try Elluminate Plan! FREE for 30 days. Create video podcasts. Try Elluminate Publish! FREE for 30 days. Manage your subscription. Customize your Newsline today.
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