Charter Schools

http://www.scoop.it/t/charter-school-development

Curriculum Designers for Online Education

There are a few online companies that require you to sign a confidentiality form before they will hire you to teach any courses. Ed2go is one company that requires a contract. They will help you design the course. They don't tell you if the course that you design, will have your copyright.
There is a better way to develop a course, have your cake, and eat it too. Send me an email and I will show you how. 

You should read this about Learn Central

Subject:  LearnCentral Important Announcement

Following the acquisition of Elluminate and Wimba by Blackboard we have been working hard to meet our commitments to our combined user communities including exceptional customer service, a unified team, and a collective product roadmap.  In July, we were excited to deliver to you Blackboard Collaborate 11, a product that inherited the best from both the Elluminate and Wimba platforms but which was simpler, easier to use and truly designed by the educators that use it.  

Over the past year, we have also looked closely at our community networking project, LearnCentral, and have decided to close LearnCentral on December 31, 2011.

While LearnCentral held much promise as a general social networking platform for educators, we recognize that it never became the preferred destination for educators, and we don't believe that continued development would provide significant benefits that aren't available to educators through other services. In addition, we have learned from our clients that they prefer us to focus on the web conferencing, instant messaging, and voice authoring products which are our core capability. 

We are making this announcement at this time to make sure that those of you using LearnCentral have ample time to make plans for using another service, a number of which are listed below and that also offer features similar to LearnCentral. These are free, established social networking projects, and should serve you well.

If you are sharing or delivering instructional content, please take a look at the Blackboard CourseSites platform, where you can create interactive websites to support learning and collaboration. While typically geared toward delivering instruction, it can also be used to share, discuss and develop curriculum and teaching best practices. In addition, CourseSites offers access to a 50-seat Collaborate room.

We know there are likely to be questions about the transition, some of which are answered below.  We have also opened up a discussion thread at http://www.learncentral.org/forums/site-announcements/learncentral-sunset-discussion for you to ask about anything that is not covered here.

vRooms:  The free, 3-person vRoom program will continue, but with a modified entry point. Your existing vRooms will be available until December 31, 2011. Before that date we will send an email to all LearnCentral users with specific information on how to sign up for a new vRoom through the main Blackboard Collaborate site.

Elluminate or Blackboard Collaborate Recordings:  All recordings that you may have added as resource links in LearnCentral will continue to be available, however, the links to access them will change. The recording links on LearnCentral actually point to the native recording files stored elsewhere. If you launch a recording, you’ll notice the true URL in the browser address bar which starts with https://sas.elluminate.com/ - After, 12/31/2011, you will need to access these recordings with the https://sas.elluminate.com/ links, so please ensure you separately save the URLs for those recordings if you have not already done so.

Uploaded Content:  All uploaded content in LearnCentral portfolios will be unavailable after December 31st.  Please make sure that you download any content in your portfolios that is important to you.

Host-Your-Own-Webinar Program:  The host-your-own-webinar program will be discontinued.  Any already-scheduled events can be held up until December 31, 2011, but the regular weekly email promotion will stop this week. If you’d like continued access to recordings of past events, please follow the process listed in the “Elluminate Recordings” section above.  Again, we recommend looking at CourseSites as a free alternative that may serve as a replacement for users of this program by using the free 50-seat Collaborate room in CourseSites.

We want to thank you for choosing to be a valued member of the LearnCentral public community for educators.  We hope you've been able to connect with your colleagues and make new ones, to share and discover valuable relevant resources, and to participate in online discussions and live webinars.  We have enjoyed working alongside you for the past three years, and we appreciate all that you have done to support education.

Sincerely,

Maurice Heiblum

President

Blackboard Collaborate

Free Web Conferencing

If want to attend the Free Web Conferencing for October, then you will need to sign up or send an email to Destination Training.  ( mydestinationtrainer@yahoo.com)

Topics

• Survival Skills for Teachers
• Classroom Management
• How to develop an Online Course.
• Getting Paid for you Online Courses

Select the topics and confirm through an email. I will send you the information as to the date and time.

Course Sites by Blackboard

Course Sites Video

Blackboard has a free LMS for publishing your online course. It it appears to be user friendly and has some unique gadgets that would engage your students and keep them interested in your content. The live classroom incorporates Elluminate Live that can have up to 50 students in the virtual classroom.

Elluminate Live

Take a look at the two videos that are listed.
Questions 

1. Would you like to learn how to create an online course?
2. Would you be interested in a workshop or webinar?
3. What subject area would you concentrate on?

Online Course Syllabus

PROGRAM

Creating your own online course

1 Ga PLU Minimum 10 contact hours (PLU’s or CEU’s available in some states)

GOALS ADDRESSED

Participants will:

·        Examine the similarities and differences between various LMS programs.

·        Design a course outline that can be used within a selected LMS program.

·        Effectively use videos, discussions, wiki’s, power point presentations, and other modalities within the course.

COMPETENCIES

·        Be able to select an LMS program that will be effective for the selected participants in the course.

·        Be able to select videos that present the subject matter clearly and effectively.

·        Be able to develop wikis, power point presentations, and discussions in an effective format.

·        Be able to enroll students into the course.

·        Be able to explain the terminology that is part of the content knowledge for online courses.

PREPARATION PHASE

·        Instructional time for this course will be a minimum of 10 clock hours.

·        Strategies in this course will include lecture, media presentations, and discussions.

MASTERY VERIFICATION

The participants will produce a course that incorporates the following:

·        Syllabus

·        Course Objectives

·        Course standards (if applicable)

·        Includes media, power point, discussions, wikis, and illustrations.

·         Publish the course on line.

New Webinar

http://www.eventbrite.com/org/1086827911?s=4089069