1-27+Notes


 * ** Review of agenda, Updates ** || ** Common understanding, Identification of additional items **** (Questions/Actions are listed below in red) **


 * ** || ** Evan & Others ** || ** 45 ** ||
 * Recording for Today's Meeting: []

Updates include: • Evaluator Training (Evan) Online course being created for Evaluator 2. Content ready, not yet finished. Matt Ludwig at DE mentioned DE is not able to offer registration for the courses - could AEA system do that for evaluator training? Evan will speak with SAI about the future vision of Evaluator training. What would be our policies and procedures if we also partnered with ITEC, state university, professional organizations; SAI, ISEA and others. Evan has invited Tracy and Troyce from SAI to meet with this group next month to discuss this growing partnership opportunity. Need to dicsuss to how to make these partnerships successful for all parties and still make Iowa Online Learning self sustaining. Consider using a couple of willing partners to be our pilot to see what we can charge to not just break even but having a little left over to fund future activities. Consider taking the //Google// approach and add advertising for this organization to our site. Evan proposed that when this group meets in February with SAI we need to determine if these types of partnerships are valuable. If this group decides that they are, Evan would like to take this discussion with the Advisory group. Need to have Evaluator 2 online proposal ready to go before our next meeting. DE sent e-mail to Supts saying that Evaluator 2 training would be available in January. See content of DE e-mail to Superintendents below:

Superintendents:

At a meeting of Fierce Conversations facilitators, we were told the following and was told I could share it. Share with your principals if you wish. This will be coming out, at some point, from the department.

• Joe C has already mentioned to you that for Evaluator III, we will need 4 credit hours (which will meet your licensure renewal, too) • Eval I & II are being rolled into one course and will be available in January as an on-line course. • People still need to take Eval II before III.

I have sent an email to George Maurer, head of BOEE, asking his board to consider allowing the following options for courses to be used for Eval III no matter "When" taken. We'll see. My reasoning was that these courses, taken together as a team, can impact implementation and student learning. But--with administrators at varying places in the evaluator cycle, it isn't possible for all to use the hours when needed.

__**Evaluator III**__ • All must take a 2-credit course called "Assessing Academic Rigor" (based on Bloom's); At the earliest, this would be available 2nd semester. Katie Gavin, head of AEA PD, will set up course offerings once available. Those of us trained to lead this in our AEA are Katie Gavin, myself, Bill Walters, and Gary Benda.

• For the other 2-credits, you can choose from the following: 1) Fierce Conversations - up and going already; several of you have taken it; will be offered again second semester. Those already completed will be grandfathered in. I'm working on getting these lists to SAI who prints the certificates. 2) Developing PD and Individual PD Plans that Impact Teaching and Learning - yet to be developed 3) Employee Discipline/Intensive Assistance Plans - yet to be developed 4) Increasing the Effectiveness of Leadership Teams - being developed 5) Leadership Skills for Beating the Odds - yet to be developed

Once announced from the Department, these courses will cost $275 + materials per person. Any cost for credit is above and beyond this amount.

Anne Morgan

Evan will send an e-mail to the group by the end of next week with the proposal included. Evan wants to discuss this Online Advisory Council on Monday. There will be a fee charged for hosting this class online even though IowaOnlineLearning will not be offering credit.

• OLLIE (Evan) First and second cohorts finished. Third cohort has 51 particpants (LEA teachers and AEA content consultants and members of SS and Math statewide teams) Statewide SPED PD group is also going through this course. Next course starts in February. OLLIE is 5 course sequence, ony 3 have been available. Course 4 is now ready to go. Course 5 on assessment will be developed this spring. Suggestions for future section of a course on blended learning.

• Technology Task Force (Gwen) Gwen presenting to state board today. Vic: Task force has been on hold because of proposal to expand ILO. Task force asked Gwen to determine what would it take to ramp up ILO to the level of a Florida Virtual School? Gwen is sharing what other states are doing with virtual learning and giving cost estimates at the board meeting today. We may need to be creative in how to move this forward without statewide funding. AEAs need to be a part of this discussion to determine what our role is to support PK-20 in the state of Iowa. We will come out of this with more teachers trained, more teachers who can train, and e-content aligned to Iowa Core.

• Google (Andy) Hybrid Google Courses being offered this spring Face-to-face mtg to get people started, rest of sessions will be online. 15 hours, pretty intensive. Discussion followed about whether IowaOnlineLearning will offer hybrid courses in the future. If we didn't host this statewide Google hybrid course, this course would need to be placed on each AEAs registration system. We need to view this Google class as an exception and will watch and monitor this class to see how it goes but we won't offer future hybrid classes until further discussion takes place around whether IowaLearningOnline will host hybrid classes in the future. For those AEA consultants who have gone through the Google Teacher master training - can they teach the Google online class without the face-to-face session?

• IACTE (Evan & Kris Crabtree-Groff) Iowa association of teacher prep programs. Move to February agenda. Looking at how do we train teachers in online pedagogy?

Highly Qualified Teacher Initative (Marietta Rives) Met Tuesday with statewide team expressed initial interest in offering some statewide PD online classes.

• Student Introduction to Online Learning (Evan) 4 week course - content that schools were asking for this. Introduction to using Moodle platform, how to be a successful online learner, issues around online education, also gives additional tools to help them be successful. (screencasts, screenshots) If you are working with a school who is interested in offering this, send name to Evan so that he can talk with the school first. What parts of this class can be offered in support of ILO? It is on statewide server. || 1. Transition to a statewide system with centralized offerings available for all educators 2. Gain approval as a license renewal credit provider, setting specific policies and procedures to guide the statewide system. 3. Plan for continuous funding and sustainability of online learning program 4. Establish quality assurance and evaluation procedures for the statewide system offerings 5. Implement an ongoing, comprehensive system of training and support to develop capacity to teach online 6. Implement a systemic plan for communication, marketing, and advocacy 7. Work with statewide partners to create common vision for online learning in Iowa
 * ** Iowa Core PD ** || ** Inform, Discuss ** || ** Evan, Iowa Core PD team members ** || ** 30 ** ||
 * Julie Hukee, Myra Hall, Christine Mangrich Co-chairs for Iowa Core PD Committee:
 * Established a resource repository on Moodle. Haven't had any conversation around using online learning to implement the Iowa Core yet.
 * U of I online course around AfL currently being offered.
 * Evan is working on an orientation module for teachers before they took a course on Moodle. Users could sign up for this module without taking a course.
 * Districts are working on collaborating with other teachers around the state. There is interest in using Moodle for this purpose. How would you structure some of those collaborative conversations? Grade level, content? Moodle does have a discussion board available.
 * Who do teachers contact for initial access, technical issues?
 * How do we wrap the Iowa Core around the context of the work you do, i.e. Algebra 2 online course?
 * Think about creating an Iowa Portal in whatever social networking platform is going to be used in the future.
 * Kevin Fangman at DE is discussing the need for a statewide portal with federated search capabilities. One stop shopping for Iowa teachers.
 * Want 3rd grade math teachers across the state to be able to collaborate online about a concept in Iowa Core Algebra 3rd grade. Who helps them understand the concepts and skills needed. Need skilled facilitators or instructional coaches to lead those conversations.
 * Nancy Movall will try to crystallize what this vision of a PD portal does that the other ARRA work is not doing.
 * How do we take what's in Moodle and get teachers talking to each other?
 * Need to create a flexible yet structured format to get that collaboration started.
 * Evan, Julie, Christine, Myra, and Lynn will meet to get this process started.
 * Meeting on February 2 at Heartland - take next steps to create the collaboration structure in Moodle. ||
 * **2010-11 Goals Mid-year Report** || **Inform, Discuss** || **Evan Abbey** || **45** ||
 * 2010-11 Goals

The final draft of the 28E agreement was given to AEA Chiefs on January 11, and chiefs have begun to share the agreement with their boards (to be approved in February).
 * Goal 1: Transition**

This Wednesday, professional development support will have a walkthrough of the new registration system. The last remaining element for the registration system is the determining of fees for credit (including cancellation). Programmers are finalizing the course proposal location, instructor center, and registration screens.

Also, the statewide Moodle system is up and ready to go. Process is to continue to bring courses over. Evan has added some new features like a tab module, tracking assignments. Need to add this to the upcoming OLLIE trainings. []

The BoEE granted the statewide system approval for 3 years as a license renewal credit provider. The advisory council is close to finishing the policy handbook. Need to look and address having more K-12 teachers on the online advisory council. Questions around requiring an Iowa teachers license. Do we have enough wiggle room if someone from outside the state i.e. Bob Marzano, Margaret Heritage and be able to offer credit.
 * Goal 2: License Renewal Credit Provider**

The governance council has been established and has begun to meet. First priority, to be determined January 31, is the cost of fees for online courses and the reimbursement for instructors (as well as the cancellation fee policy). Second priority, to be determined in Feb-Mar, is the pricing structure for online trainings as well as other funding sources. Third priority, to be determined immediately afterwards, will be to establish the upcoming budget, with the inclusion of additional staff i.e. instructional designers. Next step would be to put together a timeline for when these positions would be posted and when we could expect these folks to join us.
 * Goal 3: Continuous Funding/Sustainability**

The advisory council has looked at the question of quality assurance and evaluation. The current proposal is to look at evaluation through 3 means: 1) An end-of-course evaluation by participants, 2) An annual analysis of courses by instructors, and 3) Periodic walkthroughs of online courses by the license renewal coordinator.
 * Goal 4: Quality Assurance/Evaluation Procedures**

The end-of-course evaluation has been developed and is being programmed into the new system. Protocols for the other two need to be developed.

As of right now, a process has not been developed for quality assurance of statewide content (such as INTEL, OLLIE, or Google).

We have established a preliminary common course template in the Moodle system. Policies around other consistency measures need to be established.

Currently the OLLIE PD sequence has trained 2 cohorts in technology, instructional design, and facilitation. We will be adding an introduction course and a course on assessment, feedback, and evaluation this spring. Cohort 3, with participants from curricular statewide teams, has started this spring.
 * Goal 5: Ongoing, Comprehensive System of Training and Support**

Cohort 2 trained 25 consultants to teach the OLLIE courses. This spring, we will be offering several OLLIE courses by these consultants to teachers across the state on the statewide system.

We have begun training phone support staff to become more versed with Moodle-related issues. We also have offered Moodle System Administration training for AEA personnel.

We have not added the additional instructional designers that we have planned for. That step is still awaiting a finalized funding structure from the Governance Council.

We have not explored additional means of support for online teachers past initial brainstorming stages. Some suggestions include a mentorship program, an online community, and creation of an ongoing resource of information on teaching online. Jason Glass, Nancy Movall, and others will be receiving a proposal for a social network platform to host an online community and communities of practice for online facilitators from a third party (Rita King) that might address this idea. Need for this platform is bubbling up from districts.

We have begun to build an orientation to the new Moodle system for participants

This is arguably the goal we have made the least amount of progress on. There are plans to develop a statewide website, but the AEA site might be undergoing a change in platforms this spring. Additionally, Evan has begun to use the AEA Twitter account to announce upcoming courses, which will become more directed once courses are offered through the statewide system. Sunsetting for now IowaLearns to advertise upcoming courses.
 * Goal 6: Systemic Plan of Communication, Marketing, and Advocacy**

Evan will be meeting with the AEA communication directors to determine protocol for delivering information about upcoming courses. Evan does have the marketing plan from this group but it isn't as clear as we had hoped. Who sets the tone for communications from our group? Who's making the final decisions?

Evan is also working with AEA personnel to develop a short 1 minute promotional web video for the new system, to be finished in February.

We have identified several partners to work with in the state, including the DE, ILO, IPTV, SAI, ISEA, IASB, IACTE, and other statewide organizations (ICTE, ITEC, etc.). We need clarity in how we can develop partnerships, including what would be beneficial to the AEAs as opposed to what would not.
 * Goal 7: Work with Statewide Partners**

Evan has visited with representatives from the groups above, and each (while at different stages) is eager to form a partnership to deliver online learning for educators. He has established ongoing communication procedures with the representative groups.

In addition, Nancy Movall has worked with different groups in an effort to establish a common K-12 vision for online learning. This has been aided by our ARRA grant. Nancy has also examined what other states are doing in the efforts of K-12 online learning. || PD Goal: Working with Evan to build a network of facilitators who can offer OLLIE courses. Pilot groups assembled around content in Math, Science, ELA and possible SS who are creating prerequisite courses which have the Iowa Core wrapped around them and these can go out to schools. Meeting with vendor today and hoping to make a decision today about Credit recovery - purchased 7 courses which have been distributed to UENs. Vic asked for a Google Docs with the names of people who have completed the OLLIE facilitator course There are a number of 1:1 districts who are looking for OLLIE facilitators who also have knowledge and expertise within a specific content area. Nancy is looking to identify 40 facilitators to pilot these content specific courses next summer. || Report from group looking at Teacherline courses Report from Gwen on state board decision Update from Kristen Crabtree-Groff Followup with what's happened with Iowa Core team Update on Governance work Update on license renewal work Update on Online Advisory Council meeting ||
 * **ARRA Update** || **Inform, Discuss, Next Steps** || **Nancy, Vic** || **30** ||
 * Nancy Movall, Vic Jaras
 * ** Closing ** || ** What needs to be communicated? **
 * Future agenda items? ** || ** Evan ** || ** 5 ** ||
 * Items on the next agenda include: