Fascinating video about transforming learning:

I love the flexibility of online learning. This week I have TCAP testing, Colorado’s state test. It means that 3 out of 5 days of this week will be spent proctoring exams instead of in my home office working on teaching. In a traditional school, those three days would not be school days for my seniors, who don’t have to take the test. They would be completely off on those days or come in for just a few hours in the afternoon.  However, because of online learning, those kids can continue to work on course content and make progress in their studies while the rest of us are caught up in TCAP mania.  It provides for truly uninterrupted studies.

The other huge benefit to that flexibility is that I can adjust my workload accordingly too. On weeks where I have to be away from my home office, I adjust the course content so that it’s more manageable (although still completely insane!). Students might have an auto-graded quiz instead of a reading response journal or they might have a blog entry, moderated by the class, instead of an essay submitted to me. While that kind of work wouldn’t be ideal for in-depth student learning every week, on crazy weeks, it’s one way to keep my sanity while students continue to learn the content.

What do you think? How are you using the flexibility of online learning to keep everything balanced?

Congratulations to the 2012 iNACOL/SREB National Online Teacher of the Year finalists, Asherrie Yisrael, Tracy Seiler, and Leslie Fetzer.  Just last night the 2012 NOTY was announced–Leslie Fetzer of North Carolina Virtual Public School (far right in this picture)!  Congratulations to Leslie!  She has an extremely busy year ahead of her filled with fascinating people and challenging learning experiences.

Since the end of my reign as NOTY is officially coming to an end, it’s an excellent opportunity to reflect on the past year.  I’ve grown ten fold as a professional through the experiences this award has allowed me to have.  From public speaking to working with reporters to thinking about policy, my worldview has expanded and my understanding of the online learning landscape has grown immensely.  I’m so grateful to SREB and iNACOL for the opportunities.

I think over the last year my focus has also changed.  When the NOTY selection committee asked me what my core message would be as the NOTY award winner, I talked about the need for differentiation in the online classroom and quality course design.  This is still a critical message and something I continue to explore in my own classroom.  However, if I were to answer the question again, my answer would focus more on the critical need to empower online teachers and help them find their voice.  We are still a very young segment of our profession.  The focus of the online learning community needs to be on helping online teachers to find their voice and develop a community.  It’s time for us to share the great work we do and consider together what makes a good online teacher.  We need to share with the world what online teaching is all about and we need to find ways to share with each other.  This is important work and it continues long beyond the NOTY award!

I recently finished reading Fahrenheit 451 for the first time, in preparation for reading it with my English 12 class this semester.  What a haunting read!  I’m definitely recommending it to everyone I know as it’s a poignant warning for our future.

The basic premise of the book is that in the future people stop reading books because they are so enthralled with entertainment, specifically with being entertained by movies, television, and images.  Eventually books become not just unfashionable but illegal because they cause people to think and question society’s norms.  Fahrenheit 451 is supposedly the temperature at which books burn, which is the new profession for firemen in the story.  They burn books instead of putting out fires.

The book really got me thinking.  Are we devaluing the written word by giving students e-readers, iPads, and online classrooms?  Are we in danger of making Bradbury’s nightmare a reality?  I think in some ways technology is dangerous in this way.  Students are being entertained rather than going out and seeing the real world.  We need to be sure that our kids still connect with nature and know the smell of a flower and the feel of rain, just as Clarisse challenges Guy to do in the book.

However, I don’t think we’re headed down the path that Bradbury foresaw in Fahrenheit 451.  The reason is that we are not just passive consumers of knowledge when we work with ereaders and in online classrooms.  When we have students think critically about content and create new products from what they have studied, they are not passive consumers of information.  We are not just entertaining them.  They are instead active creators of ideas.  As Professor Faber points out in the novel, it’s not the books themselves that are important.  It’s the ideas.  As long as our society continues to value ideas and thought, we won’t head down that path.

The impetus is on the teacher.  As online teachers, our job to make sure that our students are still interacting critically with content.  They cannot be just entertained by our courses.  Instead, our courses must challenge them to think.  Otherwise we doom them to become Bradbury’s book burners.

I recently came across a blog post that had this to say about online learning:

As teachers we are supposed to teach. Online aspects are, I feel, busy work in a since. Its almost like teachers don’t really have a say in what the student does minus here is a list that you need to complete by a certain date.

I’ve seen the charge of online learning being “busy work” before and it disturbs me.  I think it displays a misunderstanding of not just online learning but also the learning process overall.  I wholeheartedly believe that people learn by doing and discussing.  They don’t learn by listening to someone lecture.  If we define “teaching” as “lecturing,” we have completely missed the boat on what learning is all about.  I’ve never enjoyed being the “sage on stage” and I never want to go back to that role.  Instead, I am a facilitator, helping students to move through a series of tasks that will help them to learn the material.

Yes, students in online course are completing a series of tasks designed and evaluated by their teachers.  However, those tasks are designed to create learning.  Busy work, by definition, is when you have a student do something just to take up time or keep them busy.  If they are involved in an experience that leads them to a deeper understanding of a topic or that helps them demonstrate that knowledge in a unique way, it is not busy work but a learning experience.

Unfortunately, the word “busy work” has become an expletive that students can throw at anything they don’t enjoy, in both face to face and online courses.  It’s time for teachers to take a stand.  It’s time for us to believe AND practice pedagogy in which students are active participants in their learning and, yes, they will be busy!

I just got back from an amazing trip to Washington D.C. to discuss Digital Learning at the National Town Hall meeting on Digital Learning Day.  A huge thank you to the Alliance for Excellent Education for sponsoring the trip.  If you missed the town hall, you can watch it below.  The links on the right will let you navigate through each segment.  The segment I was in is number five.  It was a really interesting discussion of what’s possible in education using technology!

By the way, during this trip I was also able to meet Senator Bennet, Arne Duncan, and Jared Polis and share a bit about what we’re doing in my district with online learning!

Today is Digital Learning Day!  What an exciting opportunity to try out new digital tools in your classroom and share how you’re making a difference with technology.

Please don’t forget to visit Twitter today and answer this question, “How do you make a difference using digital tools?” and add the hashtag #DLDay #onlinevoice.  I can’t wait to read your posts!

Below is a speech I gave at the Jeffco Virtual Academy graduation last year.  It was a fun speech to give and a great way to think about the benefits of online schools!

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In 1988, Robert Fulghum published a book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (before you all had even started Kindergarten!).  These are just a few of the critical life lessons that you learned in Kindergarten:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.

Today I offer you a new version of Fulghum’s list, perhaps more appropriate for the occasion today: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in My Online School.

The first thing you’ve learned in your time in an online school is that, “Midnight is a tough time to meet a deadline.”  Perhaps you can all think back to that nightmare evening.  You realized at 10 pm that you had an assignment due by midnight.  Eyes drooping, you frantically completed your essay on the Historical Significance of the Atomic Bomb, hoping that Mr Bailey might be generous.

Into every life, a few deadlines must come.  Meeting them with diligence and planning not only improves your chances of success, it also saves a lot of stress!

The second thing you’ve learned in your online school is that, “Showing up is important.”  Remember the first day you heard there was an attendance requirement for this crazy online school of yours?  But it’s an online school!  How can that be?  But as the days went on you realized that logging in daily created a routine.  It helped you manage your deadlines and perhaps helped you avoid a few late nights.  Sage modern prophet Woody Allen says that “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”

This too will be important as you enter the “real world.”  I beg of you to continue to show up.  Show up for your job.  Show up for your family.  Most importantly, show up for yourself.  Don’t allow mediocrity to be your norm.  Be someone that people can rely on.

The third thing you’ve learned in your online school is, “Know when to ask for help.”  As you tackled your online courses, there were many tricky problems that you had to overcome.  Links sometimes break.  Directions may sometimes be unclear.  You had to forge ahead into this new frontier and bravely tackle problems that you faced.  But you also had to know when to ask for help.  You knew that you were not alone, even when your way perhaps seemed lonely.

In the “real world” you are now entering, you will take great pride in being the lone ranger.  Paying taxes, grocery shopping, doing the laundry, etc. will become a part of your daily life and you’ll be right to be proud of doing it on your own.  I’d even encourage you to have ice cream for dinner sometimes—just because you’re now an adult and you can!

But, sometimes you’ll find sticky problems—ones that are hard to solve on your own.  Remember that you are not alone.  You can and should ask for help.  Parents, friends, and even teachers can continue to be helpful guides and you should never be too proud to seek out their assistance.  After all, none of us can do this alone.

The final and most important thing you’ve learned from your online school is, “Have the courage to seek something new when your status quo isn’t working.”  You all came to the Virtual Academy seeking something different.  You knew that your current circumstances weren’t working for you.  You wanted something different.  You needed something that worked for your style, for your strengths, for your passions.  When people questioned your decision to school online, you bravely answered their questions and didn’t allow other’s expectations to limit your possibilities.

I urge you to have that same kind of courage as you face your life ahead of you.  When you find yourself unhappy or dissatisfied with the status quo, have the courage to seek something new.  Find the path that works for you, even if it’s different from what others expect.  Having courage to try something new is what life is all about and you’ll never be sorry that you challenged yourself.

Each week that you’ve been in my class I’ve added an announcement that began, “Welcome to a new week in English 12!”  Today, I’m proud to say, “Welcome to a new phase of your life!”  Again, from the staff of Jeffco’s 21^st Century Virtual Academy, congratulations!

This year I am honored to be a part of the first-ever Digital Learning Day on February 1st, 2012.  Digital Learning Day encourages teachers from around the country to try something new in their classroom using digital tools.  What an exciting chance for teachers to try out new technologies as well as involve their students in a national movement!

In online learning, we are using digital tools every day to increase student achievement and engagement.  Unfortunately, the online teacher voice is often missing from the national media coverage about online schools.  Let’s use Digital Learning Day as an opportunity to change that.

This February 1st, I’m encouraging online teachers to use Twitter to get out the word about how digital tools have fundamentally changed the relationship you have with students, teachers, and parents.  To do so, just tweet your response to this question, “How do you make a difference using digital tools?” and then make sure you add this hashtag:  #DLDay #onlinevoice   Make your voice heard and help spread the word about the value of learning with technology!   (A special thanks to SREB and iNACOL for encouraging the idea!)

On February 1st, I’ll also be presenting at a national town hall meeting in D.C. about what it’s like to be an online teacher.  Special guests at the town hall include U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.  You can watch the whole thing via a live webcast.  Find more details here!