Vermont Educator 2.0

Presentation Notes

1) Why I'm Here.

In the following presentation you will learn about edu20.org, its features, how it has been used by Vermont educators, and why it should be adopted state-wide.

2) What is Edu20.org?

Web-based Learning Management System (LMS) - similar to Blackboard, WebCT, or Moodle
Hosted in the Cloud - no server maintenance required! 99.9% upttime over 3 years. Local backups are quick and easy.
Free for basic version, inexpensive for advanced versions (only $5/month for individual teacher upgrade)
Designed by an independently wealthy software engineer and former educator and his small team of developers - they seem devoted to education first, profits second. Not a dime has been spent on marketing in 3 years. Still over 200,00 users world-wide.
Community driven development - not open source but definitely community driven.
It allows an online school to be built and classes to be started in a matter of minutes.
Offered in many different languages and being used by schools all over the world.
Built using Ruby on Rails - one of the latest and most efficient programming language. Approx. thirty-five thousand lines of code for the entire system vs. well over one MILLION for Moodle.

3) A Little About Me and Why it Matters

Systems Thinker - I've always loved trying to figure out how things work and how to make things run more smoothly. I still remember Scrooge McDuck's advice "Work Smarter, Not Harder" and I've spent my whole life living by that credo. My passion for edu20 stems from the fact that it is the ONE technology I've used that actually makes the art of teaching easier and more efficient!
Idealistic and Socially Conscious - I was completely disengaged in my high school social studies classes, but have always been outraged at social injustices. Growing up as chubby kid with an extremely hyper-active and hyper-aggressive older brother cause me to consistently root for the underdog in just about any situation. As such, I am a strong advocate for high-quality public education. However, I feel like we are stifling the creativity and love of learning for many of our children. School feels like a prison because we do not offer enough choice and we expect the same outcomes from every child even though every child is dramatically different. A learning management system like edu20 gives teachers the ability to more easily differentiate their curriculum and create individualized learning plans. This technology makes possible something that was not possible or feasible on a large scale before.
Experienced in Online Education - I fell in love with the social sciences later in life and when I finally chose to make it my major at Johnson State College I took my studies and my subject very seriously. It was at Johnson State that I was first exposed to online learning as a student. I took my participation in these courses very seriously and excelled in the online environment. As a result, I was offered a job teaching online courses for CCV after graduation. I taught over 20 different courses over the span of five years and built many courses from scratch. I have personally used many different LMS's including Blackboard, WebCT, Angel Learning, Sakai, and Moodle. There are pros and cons to each, but I believe edu20 provides K-12 educators with the best possible choice at this time.
Classroom Experience - Over the past 4 years I have been a half-time Social Studies teacher and half-time Technology Integrationist at Harwood Union High School located a half-hour southwest of Montpelier. I have also served as a part-time technology consultant with the Green Mountain Valley School where I helped the school adopt the use of edu20 school-wide. It has been a great success at GMVS. Anybody interested in learning more about the experience of GMVS can contact Jen Ball (jball@gmvs.org). I'm a real teacher with real experience using these tools in real classrooms.

Disclaimer: I have no official connections to edu20 nor have I ever worked for the company or received a penny from them in any way. My passion for the product is based purely on what I believe it can do for public education.

3) What can edu20 offer Vermont Educators?

Edu20 offers benefits to users at many different levels from the basic to the more advanced, and is a large step toward transformation.

Basic Level - Makes what we already do easier, more efficient, and more accessible.

At the most basic level edu20 provides schools with a very inexpensive way of providing the following features:

Allows teachers to make their curriculum available 24/7
Provides a quick and easy way for students to submit work online
Provides a place for teachers to store and quickly access previous lessons, resources, documents, media clips. It acts as a digital filing cabinet - no more losing handouts, no more trying to find handouts. Less time preparing lessons and more time improving them!
Provides an online gradebook with parental access that can be turned on/off
Provides a place for students to quickly access all of their assignments
Provides numerous tools for student collaboration including integrated wikis, blogs, threaded, discussion forums, chat rooms, and group pages.

Intermediate Level - As we use the system it starts to change what we do and how we do it.

It becomes easier to use digital media in the classroom, thus creating a more multi-modal and media rich learning environment
It becomes easier to differentiate how students are able to learn and how they demonstrate their learning.
It introduces all students to digital communications and makes it easier to create collaborative experiences within the classroom as well as outside the classroom walls - perhaps even with classrooms around the world
It provides the ability to grade with rubrics including common assessment rubrics that can be pre-loaded, accessed, and used quickly and easily by teachers.
It provides the ability to easily embed html widgets from many different sources - prezis, google presentations, videos, bubblus maps, glogsters, voicethreads, etc. etc.
It provides a way for teachers to share resources, lesson plans, and assignments with other teachers around the state, country, or world, which means less re-inventing of the wheel = less mediocre learning experiences for students!

Transformative Level - Edu20 gives us the tools necessary to transform our educational system.

Allows for the creation of proficiencies, which in the near future will be linked to specific rubrics that can be tracked over time (similar to VCAT, but easier). It would gives schools the ability to see how any of their students are progressing toward the school proficiencies. Other student data will also be able to be uploaded and disaggregated, such as standardized test scores like the NECAP. This is currently what the State of Rhode Island has been working on for years - see Rhode Islands Diploma System.
Allows for Individualized Learning Plans through Individualized Assignments, Gateway Lessons and Learning Groups.
Learning Circles will allow groups of participants from different schools to collaborate on projects - including schools from all over the world - the one common language every student can speak is HTML!

4) How Vermont Educators have been using edu20.org

Edu20 is only a platform for creating a digital workspace. It does nothing miraculous on its own, but it does make it easier for teachers and students to utilize all of the amazing web20 tools available today.

Joyce Hammel at GMVS used the Discussion Board Forum to create a role-play scenario where students took on a specific role and made arguments surrounding the bioethics issue of human cloning.
Linda Duran at GMVS has flipped her entire teaching philosophy on its head. Instead of teaching the basics of algebra in class and having students work on questions for homework, Linda now teaches the basics to students via short youtube videos and then uses class time to expand upon the basic knowledge. Linda says she is able to reach higher levels of understanding than ever before.
Cathy Plas and Jen Ball at GMVS have created assignments that have ask students to record their speaking in a foreign language using audacity. They are able to quickly and easily post their audio to edu20.
Kathy Cadwell at Harwood is using edu20 lessons to chronicle everything she does in her Philosophy class making a snap for students who missed class to stay caught up. It greatly increases her efficiency and organization as well.
Jean Berthiaume at Harwood has used edu20 to deliver all of his curriculum online and has recently had great success with an assignment that asked his students to use Google Maps to make a personal map of their local area.

5) Why edu20.org should be adopted Statewide

1) Adoption of edu20.org gives schools a very powerful tool to help improve student learning at many levels - see above.

2) Adoption of edu20.org will give Vermont a great deal of power to help mold this LMS to meet our state's specific needs. The developer of edu20.org has offered to speed up the development of features deemed important by Vermont educators in exchange for a one-year statewide commitment.

3) Adoption of edu20 will require minimal effort by the technologically challenged, improve the quality of teaching for all teachers, and give the teachers on the cutting edge a powerful tool to create powerful and authentic learning experiences for students.

4) Adoption of edu20 does not mean it needs to replace current systems (like Powerschool or VCAT). It can be used along with these tools.

5) Edu20 can provide major benefits at all grade levels. Lower grade levels will benefit from having a safe, walled-community, where teachers, students, and parents can communicate and build media-rich projects. Everybody loves hearing student voices and seeing student work! And imagine what a students portfolio would look like after 12 years of use. Not to mention the fact that it allows teachers the ability to gain a very powerful perspective of incoming students.