The three Saturday workshops include Teach the Common Core with Blended Instruction, taught by Catlin Tucker; Flipped Classroom – Hands on Getting Started, presented by Lisa Highfill; and Google Forms: May the Forms be With You, by Will Kimbly. Saturday workshop registration is just $75 and includes Jon Bergmann’s closing keynote at 11:30.

Using iBooks Author to Create Interactive Resources
Burt Lo
Thursday, 1pm-4pm
iBooks author can be used by administrators, teachers and students to create dynamic and interactive resources for school or classroom management and for student learning.  Participants must have a Mac device with iBooks author installed.

Tablets in the Classroom (iPad or Android)
Kyle Brumbaugh
Thursday, 1pm-4pm

Workshop focuses on strategies for instruction with a tablet. Bring your tablet to look at instructional practices, classroom management, SAMR model, blended learning classroom

Flipped Classroom – Hands on Getting Started
Lisa Highfill
Saturday, 8:15-11:15

There are many myths of what the flipped classroom is and isn’t. Bring your laptop to have a hands on approach to creating elements for designing an instructional environment in the flipped classroom style.

This workshop is not compatible with tablets, a Mac or PC is required.

Google Forms: May the Forms be With You
Will Kimbly
Saturday, 8:15-11:15

Learn how to create Google Forms to use for quizzes, surveys, rubrics, and assignment Dropboxes. Create quizzes in Google Forms, and then use Flubaroo to auto-grade and provide student feedback. Take control of student Docs sharing nightmares and tracking assignments. Create self-grading rubrics and much, much more. Google Forms can now be created with images – come learn how.

Teach the Common Core with Blended Instruction
Catlin Tucker
Saturday, 8:15-11:15

Are you overwhelmed by the idea of transitioning to a new set of standards? Don’t be! Learn how you can use Web 2.0 tools to effectively engage students and teach the Common Core State Standards. Teach technology and media literacy while providing students more opportunities to develop their reading, writing, communication, collaboration and critical thinking skills (and eliminate piles of paperwork!). More effectively prepare your students for life beyond high school!

Co-author of Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, Jon believes educators should ask one guiding question:  What is best for my students in my classroom?  To the best of his abilities he has done this in his twenty-four years as a high school science teacher.  He is a co-founder of the Flipped Learning Network, a nonprofit organization that provides teachers the resources needed to implement flipped learning (http://flippedlearning.org).  He serves on the advisory board of TED Education.

We’re excited to hear from the inventor of flipped classrooms,” said CUE’s Executive Director, Mike Lawrence, “He’s an innovative speaker with a passion for blended learning, and he brings an important perspective to our symposium.”

Early Bird Symposium registration is now open until October 1st. Just $159, registration includes Friday and Saturday sessions, two keynotes and lunch on Friday, and a closing keynote on Saturday. Groups of two or more who are from the same school, district, or organization may register for $149. Hilton rooms for the symposium are just $129 per night.

Jon Bergmann will present the closing keynote on Saturday, December 7th. The 2nd annual eLearning Strategies Symposium is being held on December 6-7, 2013 at the Hilton Costa Mesa. More information can be found at www.elearns.org.

The eLearning Strategies Symposium is now accepting nominations for two eLearning awards, which will be presented on December 6th during the ESS keynote address.  The CUE and CLRN sponsored eLearning Strategies Symposium is an annual California conference for K-12 educators, administrators, and advocates focused on online and blended learning. Scheduled for December 6th and 7th, ESS will host three keynote addresses and more than 80 concurrent sessions.

Online Teacher of the Year
The Online Teacher of the Year Award recognizes an online teacher who has made a noteworthy contribution to eLearning in an online or blended setting. Supporting and engaging all students online** is the key element in this award. Nominees must be currently teaching online with K-12 students. Nominations may be submitted by the individual nominee or by another person who is able to support the nomination through personal involvement with the nominee. Last year’s winner, Renee Citlau also became iNACOL’s national online teacher of the year.

eLearning Advocate
The eLearning Advocate Award is presented to an individual or organization that has contributed significantly to promoting, advocating, or implementing eLearning at their school, district, county or state. It may include organizations, members of the state and/or federal legislature or their staffs, educators, or individuals who have made sustained and/or extraordinary efforts in promoting eLearning to advance student achievement.

Nominations are now open until September 9th. For more information, visit our ESS Awards page.

And this has been my 300th post.

Former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a nonprofit organization that has become a national leader and a respected advocate for the Common Core State Standards, deeper learning, digital learning, adolescent literacy, and other key education policy issues.

 After serving a combined twenty-four years as governor, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and state legislator, Gov. Wise has become a popular speaker and advisor on education issues as well as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Education, White House, and key policymakers in the U.S. Congress. In 2011, Gov. Wise was named to the NonProfit Times’s “Power & Influence Top 50,” an annual listing of the fifty most influential executives in the nonprofit sector.

Dr. Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University and Area Dean of Applied Physics. An internationally recognized scientist and researcher, he leads a vigorous research program in optical physics and supervises one of the largest research groups in the Physics Department at Harvard University.

Dr. Mazur is also a renowned educational innovator. He believes that better science education for all — not just science majors — is vital for continued scientific progress. An early adopter of educational technology and e-learning, Professor Mazur is a founder of Learning Catalytics, a cloud-based technology that enables instructors to engage students with authentic formative assessments in real time, and rich data analytics to drive student interactions.

In his keynote, Confessions of a Converted Lecturer, Dr. Mazur will share how his teaching approach evolved after he discovered that his students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material.

“We’re excited to hear from both Governor Wise and Eric Mazur,” said CUE’s Executive Director, Mike Lawrence, “Both are innovative speakers with a passion for online and blended learning, who bring important perspectives to our symposium.”

Early Bird Symposium registration is now open until October 1st. Just $159, registration includes Friday and Saturday sessions and a keynote/lunch on Friday and a closing keynote on Saturday. Groups of two or more who are from the same school, district, or organization may register for $149. Hilton rooms for the symposium are just $129 per night.

Governor Wise will present the opening keynote on Friday morning, December 6th, while Eric Mazur will provide the lunch keynote after the 2013 eLearning awards are announced. The 2nd annual eLearning Strategies Symposium Awards is being held on December 6-7, 2013 at the Hilton Costa Mesa. More information can be found at www.elearns.org.

New Directions: Online Learning and the University of California’s A-G Subject Area Requirements – Monica Lin

Keeping Pace with K12 Online Learning with John Watson and Kelly Schwirzke

Jenny Thomas – Creating a Community in the Online Classroom

Captured on December 8, 2012 at the eLearning Strategies Symposium, Hall Davidson of Discovery Education engages and enlightens attendees.

Call for Speakers

Share your online learning expertise with California educators and policy makers at the second annual eLearning Strategies Symposium on December 6th and 7th, 2013. Having exceeded our expectations last year, we’re looking for a variety of sessions, geared towards educators and administrators, about online and blended learning.

Two session proposal windows are offered. During this Early Bird window, which closes May 2nd, we’ll be filling two-thirds of the concurrent sessions. A shorter, Just in Time, proposal window opens mid-August and closes in mid-September for the final third. Speaker acceptances for the first round will be emailed the week of May 13th. All speakers will receive a complementary registration to the symposium. Industry-sponsored sessions must include a Corporate Partnership Application.

Symposium presentations should focus on one of eSS’ five strands:

• Big Picture, which includes administration, management, evaluation, research, policy or advocacy;
• Content (curriculum and online course development, best practices, accessibility, or instructional design);
• Capacity Building (professional development);
• Gear (tools, technologies, learning management systems, or application development); or
• Pedagogy (engaging students, teaching and learning pedagogies, blended learning models, learning communities, or assessment).

Symposium presentations are one-hour in duration with one session each hour being live-streamed and recorded for future distribution. Speakers may opt-out of live-streaming.

With online and blended learning growing 20-25% each year and with more than 200,000 California students participating in virtual or blended learning, now is the time for a California conference focused on teaching and learning online. Please join us in Costa Mesa next December.

eLearning Strategies Symposium Call for Speakers

Congratulations Renee! We’re looking forward to hearing from you at ESS 13.

Nominations for the 2013 ESS Online Teacher of the Year and the eLearning Advocate award are now open.

The eLearning Strategies Symposium is now accepting nominations for two eLearning awards which will be presented during the December 7th keynote.  Full information, links to the online submission form, and the timeline are listed below. Recognize your local online teacher and eLearning advocate by submitting a nomination by September 9, 2013.

Online Teacher of the Year

The Online Teacher of the Year Award recognizes an online teacher who has made a noteworthy contribution to eLearning in an online or blended setting. Supporting and engaging all students online** is the key element in this award. Nominees must be currently teaching online with K-12 students.

Nominations may be submitted by the individual nominee or by another person who is able to support the nomination through personal involvement with the nominee.

**”Supporting and engaging students online” based on iNacol National Standards for Quality Online Courses means: “Learning activities and other learning opportunities are developed to foster instructor-student and student-student interaction. The technology and course content encourage exchanges amongst the instructor and students through email, discussions, synchronous chats, simulations, lab activities, online collaborations and other group projects. Within the grading policy, guidelines defining student participation and expectations are provided.

Threaded and/or synchronous discussions are available for developing community, asking and finding answers to questions about the course, and around the content. Access is available to groups or individual students based on the purpose of the activity. Rules, roles, and expectations for the discussion are clear and posted within the discussion forum.” (iNacol, 2011, Standard 10, p. 13)

Nominations for this category are submitted through the eLearning Special Interest Group (eLSIG). Unless ineligible, the eSS Online Teacher of the Year recipient will become the CUE/CLRN nominee for the National Online Teacher of the Year Award through SREB/iNACOL.

Required Nomination Materials:

• Two-page overview of the nominee’s contributions to educational technology in a classroom setting and how the nominee uses technology to support standards-based curriculum on an ongoing basis.
• A current curriculum vitae or resume.

Timeline

Submit an Award Nomination