4-4+Notes


 * ** Review of agenda, Updates ** |||| **Common understanding, Identification of additional items** (** Questions/Actions are listed below in red **) ||
 * Note: there will be no meeting in April due to the 1:1 conference coinciding with the same date. Below is an update for online council members.

The Chief Directors approved the addition of 33-day addendums for the statewide instructional designers and K-12 online learning specialist. There was also considerable discussion about the 50-cent per enrolled student fee, and whether this was an important element to funding of this system. The Chiefs will be discussing the fee at their April meeting to make a decision about the fee for the 2013-14 year.
 * 1. Chief Director Update**

The Chiefs also support any efforts by the system to pursue online learning supports for K-12 students that coincide with the DE's vision. This includes the services outlined below (personalized learning). Jason Glass is holding a two-day visioning meeting for stakeholders on May 20 and 21, and would like the AEAs to bring their options to the table. The Governance Council has requested that we cost out the proposed additions ahead of the May meeting.

The Chiefs also received (again) the notes from last month's Online Council meeting regarding consensus around AEA K-12 Online's purposes. They did not have time to discuss it at their meeting.

2. **Services at a Glance** As a review, take a look at the table below for a look at the services offered by the statewide system.



Hello-
 * 3. Changes to CoPI (from email sent out 3/30)**

I want to give you a quick update on CoPI (for those unfamiliar with the program, please see here, at least in the near future). CoPI, in brief, is our effort to help districts implement blended learning in their classrooms. One of our biggest goals this year was to move CoPI out of a "beta-mode" and into something that is open for all to join. We had our kickoff event for learning about and joining CoPI on Thursday of this week (it was an Adobe Connect Pro event, and therefore it has been recorded for those unable to attend). We had approximately 73 participants attend statewide.

We've also had conversation at the Director level (both with the Instructional Service Directors and the Communication Directors) about CoPI and confusion around it. We have ramped up our communications around CoPI considerably this year, including our websites, our internal updates and external newsletters, and such. There may, however, be some confusion that is unavoidable unless we change our approach.

At the heart of this are two proposed changes agreed to at the Instructional Service Directors meeting. One, under the ARRA grant, there was confusion about whether this was an "all-hands-on-deck" initiative, or a "take-it-or-leave-it" service. The Instructional Service Directors visited about the objectives for this work last summer, and determined that it was important work to do, and rose to that "all hands-on-deck" level, with AEA PD Online providing the coordination. However, with more experience under our belt, we have found that this arrangement does not work the best. Among the AEAs, there were concerns that the CoPI work was working too fast, and concerns that it was working too slow. There were concerns around the DE's involvement, and concerns around the DE's lack of involvement. There were concerns about the percentage of learning that was taking place in an online format. There were concerns about the quality of the work. And there were concerns that the people who were concerned about the quality were keeping anything from being done.

I would hasten to add that all of the concerns are valid, mainly because this work is too challenging to coordinate on an initiative level and prone to many diverse perspectives. Furthermore, AEAs are especially challenged to supply the resources (i.e. the staff) to support this work.

So our first change is to identify this work as a "take-it-or-leave-it" service that AEA PD Online provides directly. This means:

1. Individual AEAs are not obligated to market or advocate for any of the efforts of this service (though obviously AEA PD Online encourages them to do so) 2. Individual AEAs are not obligated to provide individuals for steering committees. Moreover, they could direct their own employees to not be a part of this service if they choose. 3. AEA PD Online would solely manage the functioning and resources for providing this service, as overseen by the AEA PD Online Governance Council 4. Individual AEAs may pursue their own services in regards to blended learning 5. If AEAs are pursuing their own blended learning services, we encourage a partnership with AEA PD Online (for example, AEA PD Online would make available its instructional design and technology support if the AEA agrees to donate the finished product back to AEA PD Online to be served across the state). We would be purposeful in assuring a partnership beforehand. 6. As with any other service that is offered in multiple locations among the AEA system, both the individual AEAs and AEA PD Online will not dissuade LEA teachers from using the services of any other entity.

We had unanimous agreement at the meeting that this would allow individual AEAs the flexibility they needed to appropriately allocate their resources, as well as simplify the coordination task for AEA PD Online. We saw this as a win-win.

The second change: In conjunction with this, the brand "CoPI" would cease altogether. Since it would now be a service, we would call it (in agreement with our other service naming systems) "AEA PD Online: Blended Learning". This would connote who is overseeing the service, what the service is about, and allow an individual AEA the room to provide their own service as well. Just to reiterate, the CoPI brand would be going away, but the services will remain... just not in the format of a statewide initiative.

Again, I was very encouraged at the conversation we had yesterday, and I believe that all in the room were as well. I will be working with the Communication Directors to help better our approach to this simplified marketing, and I am in the process of communicating these changes with current CoPI members. There might be some lag in the "scrubbing" of the CoPI logo in places; feel free to contact me if you find places I have missed.

One final item of caution, there was some good advice that came out of the meeting. We have to be purposeful in NOT saying "CoPI is going away", especially to those who are already involved and have done great work in CoPI this year. As we said earlier, the brand is going away, the services remain.

Thank you-

__The Elevator Talk__: The "Agora" is the ancient Greek word for the gathering place at the center of a community, where the public forum was. A good 21st century equivalent of the Agora is the shopping mall, complete with several different stores for different purposes.
 * 4. Agora**

Think of AEA PD Online's Agora as a shopping mall, where different organizations in the state can set up shop. They could be the statewide math team hosting a math community or the statewide counselors having a counselor community. It could be organizations like the STEM council facilitating a STEM community or service organizations like ITEC, ICTM, or ICTE running their own respective communities. They could be athletic conferences or other regional alliances looking for a common spot for professional development, or it could be temporary work, like around a statewide task force. And it can extend to outside partners, such as SAI or ISEA.

In these stores, the tenants can set them up in different ways. For example, there will be threaded discussion forums for discussions, as well as repositories for sharing of resources, teacher products, and student examples (one repository it will connect to is Iowa Learns). There will be a place for on-demand professional development modules for community members, as well as a calendar where facilitators can list community-wide events. There will also be a mechanism for embedding RSS feeds, such as Twitter hashtags or Diigo bookmarks that the community is using. And, that's just the starting spot. All in all, while AEA PD Online is there to help, the individual community gets to set up the shop the way it works for them.

The most important feature is that all the communities will be in one location, allowing for cross-pollenation. Just like going to a mall and discovering the stores that exist, educators will visit the Agora and discover communities they did not even realize exist. It will provide the mechanism to get people connected with their communities in a way we haven't been able to do before.

In this setup, AEA PD Online is like the mall management, helping recruit new tenants and working with the steering committees of those groups to better operate their community. We make sure the whole Agora is operating, help people with their parking... er, password recovery, and do overall marketing to raise awareness among educators. The ultimate aim is to create a system for this format of professional development, flexible enough to fit a large variety of needs, but with enough structure to make it an efficient process.

__Next Steps__: We are working through our next steps. We are entering in a Beta phase with some early adopter communities (such as the STEM council) as we continue to build and improve the structure. Our timeline for full roll-out is to be ready for the beginning of the school year next fall.

In addition, we are working through policies for the Agora, including the process for new communities to be approved. Below is the revised draft of the requirements for "tenants" in the Agora.



Still looking at a 7/1 launch, though the amount of content available will be slimmed down initially. I am overseeing work on user group permissions and authentication. Bryan Bauer is overseeing work on the schema. Lisa Albers is overseeing work on the Iowa Core taxonomy. Gwen Nagel is overseeing work on quality control.
 * 5. Iowa Learns (formerly Equella)**

The DE will approach the AEAs about design for the website, with an available contract.

6. **AEA PD Online Live** April - Diigo, Agora May - COPPA? June-External Partner Events Build Intel Tools Recorded Event and lead them to the Elements courses? Build Live Recorded event for August Launch? July-External Partner Events, Intel??? Aug-launch Live! as a service

Live!: reserve for recorded, public events Admin: reserve for recordings that are private and may be embedded into courses

A reminder, our app is available at @http://myapp.is/AEAPDOnline We have had excellent traffic to our blogs and our Twitter feed recently. Below our some of our brochures for upcoming administrator meetings this spring:
 * 7. Marketing -**


 * 8. Intel Elements**

• The current grant (year 2) will not be transferred from the DE to the AEAs. Instead, the DE will sub-contract with the AEAs to complete the work. • Our Intel sub-committee will meet to look at the overall plan for the grant and to oversee where the funding will go. We are hoping to have that meeting (including our statewide team, Sue Swartz, Sandra Dop, and current Intel Master teachers) soon. • We will be working with a cadre of Elements teachers. Through an interest survey, we have a list of 12 interested instructors. Our steps for working with this cadre after the sub-committee meets are a) Meeting Wizard to set up dates/times, b) Initial meeting (what is Elements? what is Engage? what is the cadre?), c) Q&A meeting (after cadre has had a chance to look at the content), d) face-to-face planning (June: Discuss course additions/improvements, calendar of offerings, marketing, etc.)

9. **Personalized Learning** - Evan and Jeff Herzberg recently visited with Director Glass and discussed ways the AEAs can help support Personalized Learning/Competency-Based Education with the provision of some online learning supports. We see three possible areas:

• __Online Student Communities__ - similar to the Agora model, these communities would coalesce around objects of interest for students that are either outside the core curriculum, or are not adequately covered given the passion around them. Topics could include robotics, creative writing & publishing, video game design, architecture, mock trial, graphical design. Communities would bring students across the state in touch with other passionate students as well as statewide experts. The community could organize events for student performance, as well as create introductory training materials.

• __Online Student Portfolio__ - similar to our training system, this would allow students to complete on-demand self-paced modules and earn "badges" for completion. Students could amass a portfolio of completed competencies outside the curriculum, and the portfolio could be a marketing piece for higher education or a future profession. Topics could be either mandatory or exploratory, and could include things like copyright awareness and citation, digital citizenship, financial literacy, using computer applications, etc. This could work hand-in-hand with the communities, so that the badge system is inter-connected and that communities could create their own trainings in the portfolio system.

• __Online Apprenticeship__ - an outreach of the other two, this would be a network of career pathways with connections to industry leaders. The pathways could include foundational material (in the portfolio system), a community of learners, as well as structured curriculum to accompany a job-shadow, or a mentorship program.

The Chief Administrators voiced their support for pursuing these systems. Up next is a May 20-21 statewide stakeholder meeting to discuss what options are available. If the meeting provides the go-ahead for the AEAs to begin in this area, 2013-14 would be development time for these services, with a possible rollout coming in fall of 2014.

10. **"Super Module"** - We will be requiring a "Connecting Your Learning" module in every online course. This will be a Soft Chalk module that can simply be added via link to the course. This would includes: 1. What’s the district/buildings initiatives? (This will be submitted into a large database, including fields of initiative title, description, and optional link, that would help individuals avoid duplication). 2. Self-assessment? What role do you play in that work? How do you think this course might help you in your district/school work? How will this course further the work? How does this work help you school reach its school improvement goals? 3. Overview of example initiatives- (Iowa Core, RTI)--community created database-title, description, link for more information 4. Reflective directions at the end asking them to make connections between the content in the course and state/district/school initiatives.

Then, instructors would be required to ask students to conduct the learning of their course with the localized professional learning. We would provide some sample forums for instructors to use, such as "Reflect on your learning for the course. Explain what you see the fit with your learning is with the Iowa Core or your local professional development efforts."

The instructional coaching train-the-trainer session has finished. AEAs interested in offering their own local versions of the course can contact Peggy to get set up. We will be getting a small cadre of teachers (4) to offer the course on the AEA PD Online catalog on a year-round basis.
 * 11. Instructional Coaching**

Here is the feedback on a survey of interest among AEAs for statewide hosting. Currently, we are planning on moving away from Remote Learner for the hosting of a Statewide Moodle server. There is interest among the state to provide this service centrally with AEA PD Online. At this point, we believe we can ramp up our current provision of services without a necessary adjustment to the budget, though this might change in the future depending on the number of districts participating. Districts would receive this service among others for their opting into the 50-cent-per-enrolled student fee.
 * 12. Statewide Moodle Hosting -**

We hope to have planning and LEA marketing ready for AEAs in May.

The statewide team is collectively taking a MOOC on digital learning from Digital Learning Day and North Carolina State. The purposes of this will be for our own planning with digital learning regarding our AEA K-12 Online initiative, but more so to experiment with the PD format of a MOOC and see its applicability to AEA PD Online.
 * 13. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course)**

• 4/4 - 1:1 Conference (Booth and Presentations) • 4/4 - Grant Wood AEA Superintendents (presentation) • 4/12 - IACON statewide online learning conference (Booth) • 4/18 - UEN curriculum/HR directors (presentation) • 4/24 - Grant Wood Standards-Based Grading conference (recording for Live!) • 5/1 - Prairie Lakes AEA Superintendents (presentation) • 5/2 - Northwest AEA Superintendents (presentation) • 5/17 - Visit with Green Hills AEA leadership • 6/17 & 6/18 - TICL (booth and presentations) • 6/18 - TIC - Dubuque (booth and presentations) • 6/27-28 - Iowa ASCD competency-based education conference (?) (possibly presentations) • 7/11-12 - iPad U (?) (possible presentations) • 7/15-16 - Google SW Summit (possible presentations, booth) • 7/25 - Google Mini-Summit (possible presentations) • 8/6-8 - SAI (presentations, booth, possible recording for Live!)
 * 14. Upcoming Conferences & Presentations**

Items we are missing? Let me know so that we can get it on the calendar. ||
 * **Discussion** || **Current Issues, Input Sought from Council** ||  ||   ||
 * **Closing** || **What needs to be communicated?**
 * Future agenda items?** ||||  ||
 * Agenda items: ||
 * Agenda items: ||