Languages from a Distance

I’ve just purchased a Smartpen. The cost was about $250 after adding on special notebooks and some of the accessories. This tool is a significant breakthrough for distance learning. I have begun pencasting but am still trying to get the hang of it … Mr Disaster (see below) is a great source of inspiration for me.

Click here to go to a set of instructions that my colleague, Chuck Duncan, physics teacher in KET Distance Learning wrote for his students.
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Arrived back home late last night. The weather is rainy and cold …but I have my coffee.

As stated during our presentation I am posting a url for Tom Welch’s site: www.twelchconsulting.com  It is always great to be able to work together with Tom. The Virtual Learning Magnet project is an awesome endeavor that I’m looking forward to hearing more about.

Lots of good impressions from the conference. I enjoyed presenting even though we had to introduce and discuss technology sans  the technology….

Above all though, it was great talking to so many interesting people afterwards. In the next days I will make some posts relevant to the discussions I took part in.

I was struck  how everybody seems hungry for ideas about how we can better reach our students  in the DL  format. It definitely can be challenging!  But there are many success stories that we need to constantly remind ourselves of. Here is one.

Idea: Perhaps we could compile a list of such stories that anyone could access with the click of a mouse.  In DL we are helping break down geographic barriers that have been obstacles to learning for too long.  I think that we need to continue working on getting the word out about the inspiring stories of many of our students.  Let me know if you have a story that you would like to share!

Happy George Washington’s B-day! Hey, speaking of presidents…. there’s a presidential election going on: an election, in which the word “change” has been evoked throughout. What a fitting theme to all the activity that is taking place in the world of distance learning! Connectivity, choice, and personalization can now be provided as never before to ALL students regardless of geographic location.

Some of the new components of KET’s Distance-Learning German program are outlined on this short video. Click here and have a look!

The DL German Program at KET was awarded the Public Media Innovation Fund Grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) last month! This is an exciting time! Here’s a slide show I created for a group of Highly Qualified Teachers on Zoho (ZohoShow) in order to 1) present a basic overview of our program and the changes that are in store, as well as 2) provide some background on Web 2.0 tools and formats. ZohoShow worked pretty well though there were some quirks and the finished product is less than polished…. At any rate I thought that it would be a good way to demonstrate the efficacy of read/write web-based tools—by using some in the presentation.

You can also click here to go directly to the ZohoShow site if you prefer.

Not all distance-learning programs rely on video instruction as a component of their courses. In fact, most do not. Why not? Well for one, videos can be costly. Traditionally video involves a whole team of people who work together writing, producing, and packaging what becomes the final product: a complete series of lessons on tape, DVD, or web.

Video formats have been a part of KET Distance Learning since the beginning. KET’s innovations in video as a teaching medium (see below) allowed students even in the remotest areas of Kentucky the opportunity to connect with other learners of German (as well as other many other subjects)—an opportunity they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Of course some things were different back then… The program was televised live via satellite to participating schools. German classes in the various schools all met at the same time so that they could watch the show when it was broadcast. Is that amazing, or what? Today every school seems to be in its own little universe with a distinct timetable and any variation of block scheduling (with extended 90 minute classes), or regular scheduling (usually 55 minute classes,) or even a combination thereof (alternating between 90 and 55 minutes.) Some schools offer shortened class periods of 45 minutes. Others provide no time at all during the regular school day for German DL classes. Interested students have to meet before or after school and count on office staff somewhere in the building to help act as facilitators to download tests and enter grades. And then there are the students that are learning from home, either through home-schooling or cyber schools (like the Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School.)

W H A T has been going on here in the last ten years??!! A revolution?

And it appears that it is just the beginning. This trend in education towards individualized learning with more choice and greater local control will not be going away any time soon. Distance learning programs will have to keep pace.

Ironically enough, live broadcasts back in the nineties allowed for a more interactive format than what we have today. Back then, individual classes at the various schools were encouraged to call in to ask the teacher questions during the broadcast. Each episode featured a “school of the day” that would remain on the line for most of the lesson. Students interacted with the teacher as well as with other students who called in. In addition, KET pioneered a wonderful technological tool to allow student input: the KET keypad, a fully patented device that helped the KET distance program win national recognition (have a look here and here.)

But it was inevitable that the format had to change. School schedules were rapidly diverging from the norm. Dependence on satellite service also became an issue. It became necessary to go to pre-recorded video tapes.

That leads us up to today… Fortunately we can now rely on other means to achieve the all-important interaction that we need. The read- write web, or Web 2.0 , provides all kinds of possibilities. The question here is: Will video instruction continue to play a role, given the changed environment?

I think it can.

One important advantage of the video format is that it brings the image of the teacher to the learner and thus helps remove the distance out of the dl equation. Providing students a way of “getting to know” their teacher can’t hurt and may even make them more receptive to the course content. As different teaching styles work for different teachers, there is probably no one right way to approach video in a K12 DL course. Nevertheless we could probably come up with an outline of best practices for effective video teaching in the 21st century.

What items would be on such a list? At this point I can only come up with a few descriptors for an unfinished list, but I’d definitely like to expand on it. Here’s a start:

Video instruction in K12 distance learning should be…

-divided into shorter segments

-organized in a way that encourages student exploration

- easily accessible (available online)

-focused on student needs in DL (not driven by a textbook agenda)

-conducted by a teacher persona students can relate to