Edina Digital Age Learning

Over the past few months, I have been working with a small group of educators in Minnesota, exploring the possibility of creating a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for teachers in Minnesota this summer. It started with Byron, Minnesota Tech Director, Jen Hegna tweeting out the idea, and I jumped on board, attending a both virtual and face to face planning meetings. @ jenlegatt @ rlcox74 @ micwalker If you get a chance - Please visit our MOOC google doc.I think we are going to try to connect at Ties — Jen Hegna (@jenhegna) November 29, 2012 We're still in the initial stages, but our hope is to combine the efforts of many people who are conducting online professional development for staff, crowd-source it a bit, combine the best ideas and create a learning experience that will provide teachers with good content and learning, as well as connect them to a broader community. Here is our planning document . I attempted a MOOC last fall, participating in a course through Sta...

This fall, 29 teachers from Edina embarked on a Teaching and Technology Certificate program through Hamline University . Funded through a grant from the Edina Education Fund , the teachers started the program in a course called, Creating Community for All Learners . Through the course, they worked to form their own community, gained understanding of the importance of sharing , and how technology can be used to connect and collaborate. We created a hashtag on Twitter ( #edinatt ), and invited participants to share with one another. The course was delivered in a "blended" format of face to face and online, and the participants described their learning experience as: One of the activities involved creating their own metaphor for educational technology. The examples cohort members came up with ranged from a steamroller, an 8th grade boy and running a marathon to a rainbow, rain on a farmers field and a tapestry! A definite highlight was the final face to face session, where gro...