I was interviewed for this EdUp podcast.  I was, as you'll see, pretty freewheeling. I was told not to prepare, and so that's how I went into it. But I like the YouTube version better. EdUp didn't caption the session. You'll hear me get into that, but you can use the YouTube captioning with this version ..read more

Here's a blog post I wrote for the Digital Learning Collaborative. Illinois Passes Law to Require Digital Accessibility in all K-12 Schools  BY RAYMOND ROSE Raymond Rose is the Public Policy Chair for the Texas Distance Learning Association, and a member of the development and implementation team for their Digital Accessibility Certificate program. He has been involved in online learning for almost three decades. On September 2 Governor Pritzker signed Illinois House Bill 26. The new law is designed to make digital content on third-party curriculum used in K-12 schools fully access ..read more

 I've been having a discussion with some colleagues about what it will take to get some changes in both the way we prepare folks to run our k-12 schools and how we get them to understand more about online learning.  We've seen, over the past year and a half, that educational leaders in general, don't have a good idea of what high-quality online learning looks like, or what it takes to make it happen.  Our past experience with emergency remote instruction (sometimes called virtual education) was generally not the best experience.   (I do try to mention, when I have the ..read more

  The headline in the Boston Globe magazine read Civil Rights groups urge state to change ‘discriminatory’ vocational school admissions policies to lottery. I had to read it. I was a Civil Rights Specialist with the Massachusetts Department of Education 1978-1980. I had a role in reviewing the admissions policies for the public regional vocational-technical high schools. At the time, many of the VocTechs had a set of hoops students had to go thru to get accepted. One was a Differential Aptitude Test (DAT).  At the time, the test had separate scoring for males and females. It had been ..read more

Distance education has existed for a long time. Think correspondence courses and the pony express. Education at a distance has evolved as new technologies have been created. Radio and television played a role in distance education sometimes used to reach students who were unable to attend classes in a brick-and-mortar setting. Often the technology has been used to attempt to reflect as close as possible the traditional instructional brick-and-mortar models. Early email instruction resembled first correspondence and then lecture classes.  In the mid-90s a new approach to education at a dis ..read more

Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs)   The TETCs should be viewed as a first step in a larger reform effort to better address technology integration in teacher preparation programs. The release of the TETCs provides future research opportunities including, but not limited to, implications for course design, relevant faculty development for teacher educators, and policy implications. The TETCs have been written by insiders, and seemingly for insiders.   There’s a lot hidden between the lines. The problem with that is that while it makes it easier to write a set of co ..read more

John Watson from DLC and I collaborated on this latest blog post from DLC. (If you don't follow them you should.)  And this saves me from writing a post today, which was on my to-do list.   ..read more

Accessibility for All K-12 Students in Remote Learning I had announced this webinar was happening before it took place, but then never posted the actual event.  You can watch the webinar. It was fun to present with Mary Rice again. Here's the direct link: https://youtu.be/5q1ondOKuUI How to Become an Instructional Designer: 13 Experts Give Their 3 Key Tips A colleague asked me to be part of this blog post.  I have had an interesting relationship with instructional designers, especially when it comes to online courses.  In the early years of virtual education my complaint ..read more

https://virtualschooling.wordpress.com/2020/08/13/tuc-gsoe-diversity-now-webinar-series-accessibility-for-all-k-12-students-in-remote-learning/  ..read more

There have been a variety of statements written in the past few weeks about the systemic racism that has been recognized and acknowledged by a variety of educational organizations. Friend and colleague Michael Barbour posted the ones he was seeing on his blog Virtual School Meanderings.  He posts, for information purposes, the messages he gets. I get many of the same, but look through his blog to find the full texts of the few I’d like to highlight. The “thoughts and prayers” comments used, especially by politicians after mass shootings – rather than a commitment to action were not ..read more