Webinar

This session features findings from a case study examining 18 cyberschool leaders regarding the differences between their jobs and those of traditional brick-and-mortar school leaders, including interactions with students, teacher supervision and day-to-day operations.

This episode’s guest is Grace Magley, the Director of Online Learning at Natick Public Schools in Natick, Mass. Grace wears a number of different hats when it comes to administering and promoting high quality online and blended models in Massachusetts. We talk a bit about how she’s able to work with so many educators in her district to control for high-quality online content and develop effective teaching strategies, as well as helping to change the leadership mindset around the state when it comes to possibilities for online and blended learning. Be sure to follow Grace on Twitter at @gmagley, check out the Massachusetts Computer Using Educators website, as well as all the initiatives being undertaken by BlendinMass.

In this webinar, presenters discuss findings from a study where we examined an online tutoring program’s impact on struggling middle school students’ mathematics achievement, including an analysis of tutor descriptions of their online tutoring practices and student perceptions of tutoring experiences as they occurred in real-time (the tutoring was provided as a Tier 3 support to enhance the overall effectiveness of a school-wide mathematics reform effort).

In this episode, we talk with Denise Airola, the Director of the Office of Innovation for Education at the University of Arkansas. Denise and her team are incredibly knowledgeable about how schools can be flexible and innovative to try to better face challenges in their own contexts and meet the needs of the students they face. We talk about policy factors that influence how schools embrace innovation and what sorts of targeted supports her office can offer those who looking to do things a little different in their own educational environment. Learn more about her work by checking out the OIE’s website and following them on Twitter at @InnoEdOIE.

What do we know, and what do we still need to know about the effectiveness of blended learning? Join us to talk about a proposed path forward for measuring blended learning initiatives, including steps that each of us can take to help grow our collective understanding of what the evidence says.

In this episode, we’re chatting with Kristin Fontichiaro, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Information at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. Kristin and I spend some time talking about a current project of hers that is focused on building student capacity to interpret data and statistics. She worked with librarians throughout the state of Michigan to develop and implement professional development modules for that effort. We also chat about another passion of hers, maker spaces, and how they can be used to engage learners in creative and stimulating ways. Learn more about the Michigan Makers project by visiting their website, and you can follow Kristin on Twitter at @activelearning.

This webinar highlights recent scholarly inquiry into the experiences of educators in fully online schools as they work to serve students with disabilities; issues in instruction, supervision, relationship building/collaboration, and IEP compliance will be major topics.

In this episode, we have an engaging conversation with Dave Lefkowith, perhaps better own as Lefty, of the Louisiana Department of Education. As the Assistant Superintendent at the LADOE, Lefty worked on the launch and oversight of that state’s course choice program. During our conversation, we get a good sense of the political context in which the program was formed, and how the program changed over time to reflect different objectives. We also get into some of the program’s detailed specifics and look at how it might be expanded and improved going forward. You can see Louisiana’s course choice catalog at lacourses.net, read more about the program at louisanabelieves.com and reach Lefty personally at [email protected].

In this episode, we chat with Rose Colby, who is involved in a number of different initiatives at the state and national level concerning competency-based education. We ask Rose exactly what people mean when they’re discussing competency-based education, and how a shift to such a model can take place with the facilitation of technology. We also chat briefly about an exciting pilot project in New Hampshire aimed at assessing competency-based learning systems and how such a project might shape the movement going forward. Be sure to read more about the PACE program, take a look at Rose’s book, and follow her on Twitter at @rose_rosecolby.

Our guest for this episode is actually a returning guest: Christine Fox, Director of Educational Leadership and Research of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, or SETDA. Christine shares with us some great new resources exploring the shift in different states to digital instructional materials, and we talk about how the project was conceived and what its goals are. You can view the paper, Navigating the Digital Shift, and its accompanying resources at http://www.setda.org/priorities/digital-content/navigating-the-shift. You can also follow Christine’s and SETDA’s work on Twitter at @cafox and @SETDA.