This is the first one of these I have received (hopefully not the last).
Virtual School Society
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VSS Educator Connection
Go To Website Stay Informed
Stay Informed As announced at our 2008 Annual Spring Conference, the VSS is committed to providing you with programs to enhance your ability to teach through distributed learning. So you can expect weekly broadcasts which we renamed the VSS Educator eBulletin containing announcements and information about professional learning opportunities as well as tools and resources you can use to effectively access technology to assist learning and teaching online.
To ensure we reach as many teachers as possible, please share The VSS Educator eBulletin with your colleagues!
And to have continuous, easy access to what’s available, make sure to list LearnNowBC as one of your favourites in your web browser!
Career and Academic Advising
“Ask the Advisor” Common Knowledge Base & Academic Advising
Ask the Advisor On September 2, the Virtual School Society implemented the “Ask the Advisor” Common Knowledge Base tool on LearnNowBC. Ask the Advisor provides users with answers to commonly asked questions in plain language. It will eventually replace the FAQs, currently on the site but both will remain until this new tool becomes familiar.
Ask the Advisor has two main elements:
Question Box
An Ask the Advisor question box form is located in the header of every page on LearnNowBC. You enter a question in the text field and then click the “Ask!” button.
Ask Button
Response Page
An Answer Page pops up the “best” response to the question based on how the question matches various responses that are contained in the Knowledge Base.
Answers Other Functions
• View the top 10 questions asked in the previous 15 days, by clicking the “Top 10 Questions” button
2008 VSS Needs Assessment
Needs Assessment
In conjunction with our mandate of providing programs to teachers to enhance their ability to teach through distributed learning, the VSS is already hard at work conducting a needs assessment of the professional learning needs of educators in BC.
To date, phase 1 which involves reviewing historical, academic and research records and interviewing key individuals in the MoE, has been completed. Phase 2 will be completed in October. It includes regional focus group sessions with educators throughout the province as well as surveys of administrators and rural educators to ensure that the study represents a true cross section of BC’s education community. Phase 3 will involve analyzing all the data collected and making recommendations for next steps by the middle of December.
Ultimately, the VSS would like to provide a comprehensive, integrated, yet flexible professional learning program which addresses the needs of BC educators interested and involved in using technology to assist learning and teaching online.
Updates will be provided in future broadcasts of the VSS Educator eBulletin.
The Advising Centre
Advising Centre
The Academic Advising section of the LearnNowBC has been significantly updated:
New name - The Advising Centre - to reflect the expanded scope of advising services offered
Career and Trades advising services have been added with phone and email. Career & Trades advising services at career_advising@learnnowbc.ca
Academic Advising at academic_advising@learnnowbc.ca
New courses will be added to the Course Finder:
- Intro to Work Experience
- Work Experience 12a & 12b
- Apprenticeship 11a & 11b
- Apprenticeship 12a & 12b.
For more information about The Advising Centre please contact Chris Lynch at LearnNowBC at 250 940-1140 x2007 or send him an email.
Educator Services at LNBC
educator services
LearnNowBC now provides you with access to a wide range of technology services, tools and resources you can use to develop and deliver learning experiences and support learners in new ways.
Check out the Educator Services section for links to the Rural Education Network, Professional Learning Opportunities, the PL Calendar, our Annual Conference, Learn To Teach Online and Online Tools & Resources.
Many resources and training opportunities offered to you this Fall are the same programs that were available last year:
- 10 knowWEEKS programs (see Back By Popular Demand: KnowWEEKS)
- Teaching Online 101
- SuccessMaker Online
- Two “New to DL” programs - Teachers Working With Students, Teachers Working With School Administrators.
Issue No. 11, October 1, 2008
Professional Learning Events
Oct 5, 2008
knowWEEKS: Introduction to knowWEEKS & Online Environment Resources
The biggest factor in moving from F2F to online is finding the time to build the skills needed to support your students. If you are new to knowWEEKS, this session will help you wet your feet online and introduce the process that the knowplace Family of Sites uses in the knowWEEKS Community. You’ll discover a list of resources for you to refer back to throughout the year while you build your online facilitation skills.
Daily Physical Activity Tracker
Activity
To support the BC government’s goal to have the most fit population to host the Olympics, the VSS, working with the Ministry of Education (MoE), has created the Daily Physical Activity (DPA) Tracker located on the LearnNowBC site for use by students.
What is DPA?
We know that active, healthy students are happier and learn better. They also develop good habits that bring better chances of longer, healthier lives. To help students achieve their best, the MoE announced the introduction of Daily Physical Activity, for all schools and students in B.C. Schools will provide 30 minutes of daily physical activity for K- 9 students; students in Grades 10 to 12 will perform an average of 150 minutes of daily physical activity a week as part of their graduation requirements. Daily physical activity works alongside other Government initiatives, such as the Healthy Schools Network, Action Schools! BC, the School Fruit and Vegetable Snack program and revisions to guidelines for the sale of food and beverages within schools, all of which are tackling BC’s obesity and healthy living challenges.
What is the DPA Tracker?
It’s a tool developed by the VSS that students can use to record their daily physical activity and create a report to submit to their teacher for class credit. The DPA Tracker is available online at LearnNowBC.
Please let your students and their parents know!
Edmark House Series
Edmark In early September the Virtual School Society added four new interactive courses for Kindergarten to Grade 2 children called the Edmark House series on our LearnNowBC website. The result of a licensing agreement among the MoE, Ministry of Children and Families and the Virtual School Society, in cooperation with BC ERAC, the series is an interactive software program that aims to provide access to early learning supports for young children.
These online courses are available to parents and children exclusively at LearnNowBC, can be accessed by both PC and Mac users at school or anywhere web access is available, and best of all, they are free of charge.
They are available in four titles in four subject areas:
pic1
Bailey’s Book House
(Language Arts)
pic2
Millie’s Math House
(Math)
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Sammy’s Science House
(Science)
pic4
Trudy’s Time and Place House
(Social Studies)
In addition, there’s a series of learning resources available to educators for each subject title:
- A complete Teacher’s Guide (PDF format)
- Individual Classroom Activity Guides
- Individual Take-Home “Together Time” Activities
- Activity-specific Lesson Plans.
Visit LearnNowBC’s Learning Centre to access these courses and resources. For answers to questions, please call the VSS at 1-800-946-8332, or send an email.
Back By Popular Demand: knowWEEKS
knowplace knowWEEKS is brought to you by the knowplace Family of Sites with participants and sites all over the globe that help individuals and organizations build online courses and communities in moodle and other open source environments and freeware tools. KnowWEEKS is a series of unique week long online offerings focused on tools, tips and strategies for teaching with technology and teaching online.
As the webstats show, the 2008 series was well attended.
- Participants came from school districts and independent schools throughout the province as well as some from other organizations, including the VSS
- Participants were educators in a wide variety of subjects but the majority of them were teachers of math, the sciences and media subjects (visual arts, computers, IT etc.).
- Participants represented the entire K-12 grade range but the majority were teachers of grades 8-12. However, it is important to note that some of the sessions were populated heavily by teachers of a particular grade level.
Since nearly 60% of the participants were novices and nearly 93% of all participants believe that they might or will teach online in the near future, this indicates that the professional learning opportunities with the greatest appeal are those targeting teachers who are newcomers to online teaching and learning.
These statistics as well as knowplace’s own analysis of historical data and continuous polling of participants has revealed that there is a growing demand for online professional learning opportunities for BC educators.
Therefore, the series this Fall is targeted primarily, but not exclusively, to newcomers.
To ease the trepidation experienced by some new participants, the knowplace team of professional online facilitators, coaches and knowMATES (former participants) support you quickly with an informal welcoming tone. For example, when you first join a knowWEEKS session, support is provided through an initial description of offerings, site access, and system nuances. This is followed by intensive support when you participate in the online discussion area.
Assistant facilitators are available to support the facilitators and you. Their role is to stimulate discussion, follow-up with people who haven’t logged in or posted and assist the facilitator as required. The numbers of assistants vary according to the number of participants and their entry skill level but it is knowplace’s policy to always have a minimum of two.
Francis Long Click the picture to view a description by Frances Long, President knowplace, about what knowWEEKS is and how it can help educators get involved with teaching and learning online (approx 3 min).
Check the calendar for the sessions occurring from Oct through Dec, 2008.
Information For You To Share With Parents
parents
DPA Tracker
Remind parents to check out the DPA Tracker.
Edmark
Also remind them about the Edmark House series.
Click here to see everything that is available for parents through LearnNowBC.
Information For You To Share With Students
Information
Tell all your students they can access courses through DL by visiting
LearnNowBC.
Courses
Remind them there’s another option open to them if the courses they want or need are unavailable.
Edmark
Also remind your K-2 students about the Edmark House series.
Click here for information about the other services available for students through LearnNowBC.
Visit LearnNowBC: Visit LearnNowBC Calendar of Events Contact Presented by:
Virtual School Society
