Courses are completely online; no travel to campus required. 8-Week Online CoursesRecommended Course Sequence
EDUC 760 E-Learning for Educators two start date options: February 8, 2010 or March 22, 2010
EDUC 762 Assessment in E-Learning Begins January 11, 2010
EDUC 763 Instructional Design for E-Learning Begins February 1, 2010
EDUC 761 Creating Collaborative Communities in E-Learning Begins January 25, 2010
EDUC 764 E-Learning Practicum (Prerequisite: Completion of EDUC 760, 761, 762, 763 and Consent of Instructor)
For more information, visit http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/elearningcertificate.html You may enroll in any single course for professional development or complete all four courses and the practicum to receive the Certificate in E-Learning and Online Teaching.
Plan for at least 5 hours of instruction (about an hour a day). It will be easy to put in more time than that. We hope you’ll find the information so interesting that the time will fly by.
Do I have to login at a specific time each day?
The course is completely time shifted. It’s designed so that participants can enter the online classroom 24/7 and still interact. This let’s you fit the class to your schedule. We’ll go Monday – Friday, with the following Saturday to wrap things up.
What will I learn how to do?
Create a Google account
Upload documents to Google docs
Share a Google document with a colleague
View the revision history of a shared document (a wiki like function of Gdocs)
Publish a shared document as a web page that automatically updates when the source document is edited.
We also have an optional independent study module on how to use Google Docs offline.
How is this course taught?
Instruction includes the use of illustrated webpages and video. Additionally Dennis O’Connor will be facilitating this class. (Dennis is a highly trained online teacher.) There are discussion forums where participants can share ideas. The instructor will also be monitoring the class for questions and be available for trouble shooting help.
What about teaching resources?
You will find many resources with ideas for teachers and librarians interested in using Google Docs in the classroom.
How long will I have access to this course?
The course remains open to you for at least three months so you can continue study and have access to the resources.
How do I register?
First establish an account on http://21cif.mrooms.net. Note the graphic on the course home page. (Each person taking the class should create their own account.)
Next login using your established username and password.
Click into the Gdocs online classroom.(Found in the Information Fluency Category.)
When you first enter you’ll be presented with a PayPal registration page.
Click through to pay for the class by credit card.
You do not need a Pay Pal account to use this secure system. (We do not store your credit card information.)
Once you have paid you’ll be returned to the Gdocs class.
I’ve been researching and writing about Information Fluency since the turn of the century. My work is published on the 21st Century Information Fluency Portal: http://21cif.imsa.edu You’ll find modular online learning content including games, micromodules and assessments on the portal. (Free for all educators.)
I include information fluency training in all of my online classes. I introduce power searching and website investigation to the graduate students studying in the E-Learning and Online Teaching Certificate Program at UW-Stout ( http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/elearningcertificate.html ) because I believe that Information Fluency is a foundation skill for all online teachers and learners.
What continually surprises me is that most educators (including those with advanced degrees) lack formal training in this field. Unless I’m working with a Library Media Specialist, most have little experience in searching, evaluating, and ethical use of digital materials.
Curiously, most educators think they are competent searchers and evaluators, when they are really just beginners. Their disposition is to ask for help rather than search for answers. With simple instruction many radically improve their ability to search, and evaluate. This is empowering and greatly increases learner satisfaction. Instruction in copyright and fair use is also part of the program.
At the same time I push the idea that it is everyone’s duty to teach website evaluation and ethical use as part of any online curriculum. Too often educators assume someone else should have done the job by the time their students walk through the door. The application of information fluency to all curriculum areas is profound. Students given even rudimentary instruction in Information Fluency immediately benefit.
As online teachers and learners we work in a computer where information is just a few keystrokes away. I hope we can promote the disposition in all online teachers and learners that skilled use of Internet resources is the essential learning skill of our times.
Dennis O’Connor
Program Advisor
E-Learning & Online Teaching
School of Education
Online Professional Development
University of Wisconsin-Stout
Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University oconnord@uwstout.edu
530-318-1145 (Cell)
Skype: wiredinstructor2
Anyone who works for an educational institution will recognize this large scale explanation of the tension between old style organizations and the new model of Internet bred collaboration.
The examples here should be familiar to you. What’s intriguing is that this TED talk took place 3 years ago and is fresh and on point right now. Shirky predicts a revolution based on free collaborative technologies that will lead to 50 years of chaos in communications communities. Based on what I saw at NECC 2008, the ideas are just beginning to trickle into institutionalized learning & we need a little chaos to break the logjam that is clogging innovation in education.
In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles…
I’d like to share a wiki I created as part of a presentation I gave for D2L at NECC in San Antonio last week. Bottom line: The Virtual Classroom is a Web 2.0 Tool.
Carl Heine, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy with Dennis O’Connor
Monday, 6/30/2008, 11:00am–12:00pm; HGCC 206 A
blog tags: necc, n08s402
Motivate students to evaluate Web sites with information forensics. Track down elusive authors, dates, check the accuracy of claims, and more using investigative search techniques. Recommended by ISTE’s SIGMS
I was asked recently if web publishing pictures of kids at a summer camp on a school website was a violation of the alphabet’s soup of federal law (Coppa, Cipa, Ferpa).
Feeling compelled to ask this question and worrying about the answers says a lot about the media hyped climate of fear swirling around kids use of Web 2.0 technologies. Schools feel responsible and vulnerable and tend to react by locking things down. Lock downs may stifle the use of web tech in schools — one place where kids could learn the evaluation skills needed to protect themselves on the web. Ugly Irony.
Here’s a briefing update on new research sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. It doesn’t surprise me that Kids aren’t learning Web 2.0 skills in school. Perhaps outside of school is where this kind of education is destined to take place?
PALO ALTO, Calif.–Among the generation of kids growing up wired, many teens are hyper-motivated to learn a special skill like how to create a podcast, direct a YouTube video, publish an anime site, or hack an iPhone. ”
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA): http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html This federal law addresses privacy of student records and parent & student rights to access those educational records. Photos of kids at summer camp aren’t protected educational records.
Children’s Internet Protection Act (Cipa): http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cipa.html “Is a federal law enacted by Congress in December 2000 to address concerns about access to offensive content over the Internet on school and library computers.” This law regulates school & libraries receiving federal e-rate funding. It requires establishing internet safety policies and filtering technology to protect kids. See what the ALA has to say about CIPA: http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/woissues/civilliberties/cipaweb/cipa.cfm
Photos of kids at summer camp aren’t harmful online content.
This is the law that is likely the source of confusion: Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)http://www.coppa.org/coppa.htm
This is an FTC act aimed at website collection of personal information from kids under 13 for commercial purposes. The FTC is regulating commercial sites directed at children. Photographs are not mentioned in the act.
Personal information is defined as:
“The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and Rule apply to individually identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full name, home address, email address, telephone number or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact the child. The Act and Rule also cover other types of information — for example, hobbies, interests and information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms — when they are tied to individually identifiable information.”
We are not collecting photographs online via sign-up forms designed to attract kids. COPPA Parent notification and permissions are tied to data collection directly from kids by a commercial website. Posting pictures of kids having fun on a school website is clearly not the object of COPPA regulations.
Dealing with the climate of fear… It helps to understand the problem…
New Section Forming! April 28 – May 22. Power Searching in a Web 2.0 World: 4 Week Online Course.
Searching, evaluating, and ethically using digital information. Activities include self-paced learning modules, online flash based games, and forum discussions.
To Register Online: Click Here (This Moodle based course begins April 28, 2008)
This proven four-week on-line course empowers participants to search efficiently, evaluate Internet and Web 2.0 information effectively and use it ethically incorporating the full range of 21st Century Information Fluency skills and resources.
Developed by the 21st Century Information Fluency Project, this course is open to all adults who desire to become fluent in searching and evaluating on-line resources. Anyone who intends to teach 21st Century Information Skills to students and staff should complete this training.
For more details or to register online click here!
Free fully featured social networking environments right out of the box. NING.com is one hot property in education at the moment. Quite the buzz. Here’s some background:
Bad News for Blackboard, Good News for Moodle at e-LiterateThere is a Change in CMS preference at Jr. College level. This blog post provides a strong overview of a shifting market. This is a must read for anyone contemplating a CMS change. As Moodle rapidly gains market share (and Blackboard looses it, perhaps in part by their claim to own online learning technology) the time is ripe for some strategic thinking. Comparing seat costs between the major players one will quickly see that IF Moodle came with a hosting support package that rivaled the likes of Blackbaord, D2L, & eCollege the cost of Moodle (open source free code) makes it a safe choice for decision makers. For those looking for hosted support (from single teacher installations to commercial level accounts with hundreds of thousands of user look to Moodlerooms.org. Enough said. (For Now!)(tags: moodlecmsBlackboard)
Social Networks from 
