Collaborative Learning Environments

My new work includes managing and supporting the distributed learning environments used at the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We use Sakai, an open source courseware system, to link mentors with mentee teachers and administrators so they can share work, distribute assignments, and analyze practice.

For me, with my experience with Blackboard and Moodle, I am easily transferring my experience to this new platform. It does work differently, and has presented some unusual and unexpected problems, which is where I am mostly focusing my time at first.

Part of my learning is becoming acquainted with the vast resources, discussions and resource materials available for Sakai. It seems that while K-12 has become more enamoured with Moodle, and while Blackboard is becoming the one commercial system of note, Sakai is being adopted at the University level more and more. The support, design and best practice materials are vast! The majority of my email through my new UCSC account is mostly filled with conversations regarding Sakai, and I only joined three groups.

I have a lot to learn, and I hope to be able to contribute to the community as I learn more.

Starting a Consulting Business

I am beginning a new quest to begin a consulting business. Of course, with my history, I want to focus on using technology in classroom instruction. This means professional development, evaluation of classroom practice, and technology planning, for the most part.

My deep experience and the results of my work to date are my best assets, I think. I have written, evaluated, and helped K-12 district teams work through all facets of technology planning. In fact, I recently completed a plan for a rather large district in Santa Cruz County, and am currently working with Holy Cross School in developing their plan. We are currently in the data gathering phase, analyzing current status, parent and staff perceptions of how technology is being used, and taking a close look at where everything would like to be in three years. Exactly how technology can be used to support student learning and teacher practice is most critical. This is a case where a lot of wonderful parent support and the purchases made over the last year have really moved the school forward. But, purchasing has not been planned with how students can be supported. Rather, cool ideas have been realized. Now comes the interesting part: consolidating the recent purchases of interactive white boards and a new lab with the nitty gritty needs of teachers and students. Work on!

It will be on to the CUE Conference (Computer Using Educators) in Palm Springs this week. I look forward to seeing friends and looking at the newest vendor offerings. Road trip!