The California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (CATESOL) annual conference was held in San Diego from October 24-27, 2013. Over 1,000 attendees were able to select from a wide variety of high-quality sessions and hands-on workshops. One of the highlights for me was a workshop offered by my OTAN colleague, Branka Marceta. She highlighted frameworks for K-12 and adult education that had a strong technology focus. Workshop attendees reviewed the frameworks and then came up with ways to effectively incorporate technology with specific student groups.

Some of the sites Branka used in her workshop included Poll Everywhere, Voki, and USA Learns. To see her complete presentation outline, visit http://webtwopointohinadulted.wikispaces.com/CATESOL+2013

This was my first time attending CATESOL, and I look forward to future events!

Copyright

As an educator, are you confused about what information and content can be used with your students? If so, you may want to print and keep the "Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers". The chart provides copyright information on media from printed materials and software to video and television.

Copyright and Fair Use

For even more information, visit the Creative Commons Web site for details about specific types of licensing or to search for media to enhance lessons.

Community College and ROI

According to a recent report from The American Institutes of Research and Nexus Research and Policy Center released earlier this month,  California receives an average rate of return of $86,257 for every student who earns an associate’s  degree and doesn’t go on for a higher degree over the course of his or her career. 

Return on Investment

California gets the best return on its investment in community colleges, compared to other states. View the entire EdSource article here: http://tinyurl.com/n95w2aj

GED Academy Seat Licence Offer for California Adult Educators

Essential Education will provide any adult educator in California access to five free (5) seats of the GED Academy™ program for use from November 1st to December 30th, 2013. This offer will allow you to enroll adult students that are close to finishing the 2002 assessment or are in the early stages of preparing for the 2014 assessment. 

In order to receive the five free seat licenses, sign up by selecting this link Trainings will be delivered on October 29, 30 and 31, 2013 (see schedule below) on how to use the management system. 

Training Schedule

October 29   11:00 A.M.
October 30     8:30 A.M.
October 31     3:00 P.M.

Contact Randy Erickson from Essential Education at randy@essentialed.com for more information.

Prepare Students to Pass the GED!

Digital Citizenship Week

Every day, your students are tested with each post, search, chat, text message, file download and profile update. Do they connect with like minds or share too much information? Do they behave creatively or borrow ideas recklessly? Do they respect relationships or inadvertently damage reputations?

Join other educators for Digital Citizenship Week, October 21-25, 2013, and engage students, teachers and families in your community in thinking critically, behaving safely, and participating responsibly online. It is a great way to celebrate Connected Educators Month .

Online PD Course Reflection

The SETDA online course I'm enrolled in now followed one I completed previously. I recognized a few of the names from the roster as former colleagues in the last course. I made some new friends online and read, used, and shared information from the course assignments with my work team members. The California budget kept me from participating as fully as I would have liked because I was tasked with providing compelling reasons why positions shouldn't be cut- which took hours and hours of time.

Since the organization I work for does not allow reading or posting on blogs or wikis using company computers, most of the course assignments had to be completed after work using my own computer at home. It was a somewhat frustrating experience for me because I really wanted to be able to use some of the Web 2.0 tools to help connect and communicate with the middle grades educators in this state. I spent a lot of time talking with our IT department, trying to get sites unblocked so I could access course resources. Each site that was blocked required a separate phone call and follow up email, a justification as to why I needed to access that particular site, and my signature acknowledging that the site would only be unblocked for a limited amount of time and that I didn't plan to do anything subversive with the information found on the site. *sigh

I do believe that Web 2.0 tools are of great benefit in education. I was happily surprised to learn today that my department is contemplating developing online content to be posted on iTunes University. It helps to know that other states are experiencing non-assistance from their IT departments, too. We can't give up!

Getting Started

For the past few years, part of my responsibility has been to create content for the sections on Relevance and on Leadership for the California Department of Education's portal for middle grades educators, "Taking Center Stage--Act II" or TCSII (http://pubs.cde.ca.gov/tcsii) .

This is year two since the portal has gone live. It has only been within the last six months that we have begun to track Web hits to find out which parts of the portal receive the most traffic and at what times of the day most people visit the site. It was surprising to learn that although the portal was created to be used by middle grades teachers, it is actually education adminstrators who seem to be using it the most. When teachers do use the site, we found that they access the portal from their home computers, most often between the hours of 7:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. Focus group feedback determined the reason for this activity peak is twofold: 1. teachers don't have time during the school day to go online and 2. technology infrastructure at the school site does not support quick downloading of information or streaming of the many videos posted on the site. We must explore other ways to get the word out and to make it easier for teachers and others to quickly locate and access the information they need.