Hintonblogger

Back to Blogging with Gusto! I'm back at NECC and loving my first day of sessions and activities. I was fortunate enough this year to be able to present at NECC on Strategies for using Moodle effectively in the classroom and it was an awesome experience. I'll blog a little more about that later. Now about my first day at NECC:

I was nervous about presenting, but decided I needed to take advantage of being here and planned a full schedule for today. The first session I attended was about Virtual Schools and really looked at the concept of online learning and virtual schools from an institutional perspective. It was presented by people from the Southern Regional Education Board. For me the biggest impact was the reminder that online courses, learning, and teaching is expanding and not going away, in fact, as the presenters shared, it is a viable learning option for students. I started feeling a little panicked (and not because I was presenting next). The reason is that I want to be a part of this great new learning opportunity and I feel like I'm somewhat unprepared and I don't want to be left behind.

One of my questions is how can I get involved in teaching online? (I've taught one class so far) Another is how I can I help influence the direction of online learning in my state and school district? Who is making the decisions about online learning possibilities and are they listening to people like those in this session who have been carrying out online learning successfully?