There's been plenty of buzz recently on Twitter and other social networks about Digital Learning Day, which is February 6, 2013. This awareness campaign, organized by the Alliance for Excellent Education, includes big name sponsors such as AT&T, Intel, and Smart Technologies, among many others.
As My Big Campus users, you're already on the forefront of digital learning: Students can use the My Big Campus library to find tutorials, or to research topics and projects. Teachers can assign and assess schoolwork entirely online. IT managers, school administrators, and curriculum directors can feel comfortable that all My Big Campus content is safely filtered and monitored. Most importantly, however, My Big Campus is a digital learning community where students can collaborate inside and outside the classroom, and educators can build professional learning communities with their peers, regardless of location.
Digital Learning Day is a way for you, as educators, to reach out to your peers, and to the community around you, and encourage them to try one new thing. Sign up on the Digital Learning Day web site to find resources to share with parents, libraries, community organizations and after-school programs.
It's also a day to share your success stories and learning experiences. In support of these activities, we've created a Topic on My Big Campus to host your Digital Learning Day ideas, discussions and resources.
What are you doing to celebrate Digital Learning Day? Let me know in the comments.
Whenever educators get together, whether it's in person at conferences, in their schools, or on MBC in Topics and EduTalk, there's lots of brainstorming going on. Veteran teachers always seem willing to share best practices with those experiencing online learning for the first time, and new teachers bring fresh insights and questions that keep everyone on their toes.
Usually, the collaboration is spontaneous and informal, but lately I've been seeing a push at the district and state level for teachers to work together to develop and share digital curriculum. This is a good thing on many levels:
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Teachers have the best sense of their own students' needs and interests, and can target these needs without being constrained by availability of textbooks and other offline media
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Schools and districts can stay up to date with new curriculum, without having to wait months or years for textbooks to catch up
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Heavy investment in textbooks can be redirected to forward-looking projects, needed infrastructure upgrades, and up-to-date technology
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The environmental footprint is improved by reducing the amount of paper that is used and discarded with every school term.
The state of Indiana is one example of a high-level mandate for online curriculum. Educators there are free to create their own digital curriculum to replace textbooks. To further that effort, many have begun meeting up inside an MBC topic area, Indiana Statewide Collaboration, to form collaboration groups by grade level and subject area. It's a nice model for educators in other states to follow, and My Big Campus has some excellent tools for this type of collaboration.
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Bundles -- create complete courses with text, online resources, videos, files, images, quizzes and assignments, to share with students, your whole school or district, the entire My Big Campus community, or any Internet user via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
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Bundle Exchange -- Find and adapt Bundles created and shared by other My Big Campus educators. Browse by subject area, standard, or keyword, or "subscribe" to a standard to see newly published Bundles
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State and Common Core Standards -- attach standards to Bundles and Schoolwork questions
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Schoolwork -- import the pre-designed ExamView tests supplied with many curriculum tools (or import your own), then assign to groups or individual students
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Academic Reports -- see which classes and students are meeting standards, and who needs extra help
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NROC and NBC Learn content -- standards-based multimedia courseware, either alone or pre-compiled into Bundles, for you to use in your own Bundles and lessons
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Training -- our hands-on, free, full-day Indiana Training Camp sessions have attracted huge demand (they're actually oversubscribed and there is now a waiting list), but we have many other training options for those inside and outside Indiana.
All of these tools work well for individuals and groups, and can easily scale to larger groups, as our Indiana colleagues have demonstrated so well. But why stop at the school, district, or even state level? My Big Campus has the tools and the audience to erase boundaries and bring people together. Digital curriculum equalizes opportunities for small and large, urban and rural, advantaged and disadvantaged schools. And My Big Campus is the perfect place to make it happen.
Want to learn more? Got some experiences to share? Let me know in the comments.
How time flies! The new school term isn't far off, and for some of you, it's already started. I've been getting questions from school staff about getting up to speed with My Big Campus, so I thought I'd call in the experts — the MBC Senior Coaches. Our Senior Coaches are on the road constantly, presenting My Big Campus to schools and districts, and training school staff on deployment and best practices, and some of them have offered to share their top Back to School tips.
Before I introduce the coaches, here are my favorite tips:
- Introduce your students to digital citizenship: Show them the My Big Campus Pledge, and have them discuss in their own words what it means. Perhaps their first wall post could be an acknowledgement of your expectations.
- If you're a teacher using My Big Campus for the first time, or if you have questions, join one of our regularly scheduled, free Teacher webinars or review the self-guided training modules bundle.
- If you're an IT Admin, we have free training webinars for you as well. Click here to register.
Now let's hear from some of our experts.
Matt comes to us from Ennis, Texas, where he taught ELA and Reading.
- Take faculty information gathering online – Each year, schools pass out questionnaire forms to staff for contact information, birthdays, etc. Save money and paper by assigning the questionnaires as Schoolwork within MBC. Add your staff to a Faculty group at your school, then create and assign the questionnaire as an attached MBC Document. MBC stores the submissions online, where admins can access the information wherever they have Internet access.
- Get to know your students through group discussions – One of my favorite discussion prompts is "If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be and why?" Or, ask students to list their interests and hobbies. It’s a great way for class members to get acquainted.
Stephanie Lennon hails from Powhatan, Virginia, and brings fifteen years in public education teaching Spanish to all grades from Pre-K through high school.
- Set up a Quiz to assess your students' knowledge of MBC. Do they know where to find schoolwork that has been graded? How to add a Quick Link? How to find Bob Campus?
- Check out the Bundle Exchange for ready-made lessons/units you can use as-is or "branch" to alter it to fit your needs.
- Connect with other educators through Topics. Learn from other MBC users about iPads, flipped classrooms, PBL, and my personal favorite, The World Languages Corner. And check out EduTalk, a news feed created by your fellow educators.
Chrissie Allen, from Atlanta, Texas, has taught just about every subject, at every level, over the last 25 years.
- Take it in stages. For the first few weeks on MBC, use Policies to block student-to-student messaging, while still allowing student-to-teacher conversations, while you teach "Netiquette" and focus on schoolwork. Once the school year gets rolling, let students earn access to the social features.
- Host a parents' meeting to explain the safety features with MBC, your expectations of students to complete schoolwork work on MBC, and your school's Acceptable Use and Social Media Policies.
- Remind teachers how they can save time using My Big Campus: group cloning and maintenance, auto-graded schoolwork, MBC documents, discussions, announcements, and resources.
Thanks, Coaches, for these great tips. I hope you all find them useful, and as always, I encourage you to share your own tips and ideas in the comments.
Sharing means many things on My Big Campus.
- There's social sharing: your wall, your blog, groups, and your conversations with students and teachers. Show people what you're working on, ask a question, or answer a question.
- There's also professional sharing: through Bundles, EduTalk, and staff-only Topics. No matter what your location, subject area or grade level interest, you can connect with and learn from your fellow professionals.
- Then there's content sharing: the My Big Campus Library, MBC Documents, Bundles, Pictures, Videos, and Your Stuff. My Big Campus can be your single source for everything you need in school, including lessons, educational videos, your personal files, and favorite pictures.
Most importantly, My Big Campus is a place for people to get together and share. Every day, I hear from people who offered help, asked for help, taught someone, and learned from someone. And people aren't just sharing with their close friends, classmates, and others within their school. A lot of the sharing happens between people who haven't even met each other yet. Someone's life just got a little easier, because someone else decided to share.
What will you share with My Big Campus today? Let me know in the comments.
You know how some teachers let you resubmit assignments to earn a higher grade? That's a bit like what we're doing behind the scenes here at My Big Campus.
The Schoolwork interface got a major overhaul early this year, and we're fine-tuning it again as a result of teacher and student feedback. You'll see the changes after I update the site on Friday evening. In the meantime, here's a quick preview:
Teachers can grade assignments with another teacher
One question I'm asked very often is, "I share my classroom with another teacher. How do we share assignments with each other?" This started out as a complex problem, but turned out to have an easy solution. Friday's update will add a check box on the Edit Assignment page so you can allow group administrators, as well as yourself, to view and grade submissions. Just make your colleague a group administrator, and they'll see shared assignments on the Needs Grading tab. Don't worry, we've built in some safeguards to prevent two teachers from working on the same assignment submission: To prevent edit conflicts, only one user at a time can open a submission for grading.
Teachers can grade assignment submissions more quickly
We've also streamlined the interface for teachers so it will take fewer steps to grade batches of assignments. Select an assignment for grading, click Quick List, then enter your scores and bonus points directly on the page.
Students can save and continue working before submitting assignments
When a student opens an assignment, students will see a new option on the submission form to open an MBC Document. This way, students can save their work in progress and continue working until they are ready to submit the assignment to the teacher.
Everyone's Schoolwork will be easier to find
Students and teachers both reported they sometimes had trouble finding all their schoolwork, because old assignments were hidden unless you changed the View options on the page. We've added a Show All link so students and teachers can see all their current and past schoolwork. And it will soon be possible to search for an assignment from the Schoolwork page.
Students can mark assignments "Dismissed"
Students will also be able to mark assignments as "Dismissed" to remove them from the counter in the left navigation menu.
We're still at work on some other requested improvements to Schoolwork and other new features; you'll see those later this summer. Visit the What's Next for My Big Campus? page in the MBC Orientation Center to stay up to date on development plans for the coming weeks, and find information about updates in the MBC Release Notes topic.
I appreciate the opportunity to learn from you, our customers, about how you want to use My Big Campus, and I hope the work we do gives everyone high marks. Please share your questions, ideas, and suggestions with me in the Comments.
Part of my vision for My Big Campus was to make it possible for professional educators to connect with their peers beyond school and district boundaries. This is especially important for teachers whose schools have limited access to technology and resources. I searched My Big Campus while researching this blog, and was pleased to see the creative ways educators are using MBC to reach out to their fellow professionals:
- Groups: There are groups within just about every school and district for professional development of some type: book studies, conference tie-ins, inservice events, local and district issues, technical resources, and much more. You'll find groups at your school and district here, with search tools to find publicly accessible groups anywhere on My Big Campus.
- Topics: For just about every professional issue, there's a Topic on My Big Campus, where you can share ideas in a discussion or chat, upload or download resources, set up events, and browse the member list for like-minded educators. Check out the list of available topics here, or create your own (and remember to promote it on EduTalk!).
- Library: The Reference Tools category is the go-to place in the MBC Library for professional development videos, web sites, and documents, all contributed by My Big Campus educators for you to enjoy.
- Bundles: You'll find a growing collection of Professional Development Bundles in the Bundle Exchange. Training tools, lesson planning tips, and so much more. Borrow and adapt what's there, or publish your own Bundles for others to use.
- EduTalk: We fine-tuned this Educator-only feed to improve the relevance and focus of posts, and made it possible to share Bundles directly with your EduTalk feed.
There's more to come, however. Tonight's update to My Big Campus adds collaborative editing for Bundles. You'll be able to share editing tasks with individual users, or with an entire group. Students can collaborate on Bundles too -- you'll be able to choose collaborators in any of your groups, as well as people who are following you. Here's a peek at what you'll see when you're editing a Bundle:
Click Collaborators, then search for users and groups. Click [+] to add them as editors for your Bundle. They'll be able to see and edit the Bundle from the Your Bundles page.
The other addition to Bundles is Bundle Type. Staff users will be able to assign a bundle to a category such as Lesson plans, Lessons, Units-Modules, Digital Books, Project Based Learning, and Professional Development. This will make it easier for other educators to browse the Bundle Exchange to find exactly what they're looking for.
We have more updates on the schedule or in testing. Check the What's Next for My Big Campus? page in the MBC Orientation Center to see what we're working on over the next few weeks.
Have a great weekend, everyone, and let me know in the comments if you have questions or suggestions for new My Big Campus features.
We've got an exciting new feature to talk about this week that my developers and I think will make it easier for teachers to create and share self-contained, standards-based lessons. We're calling this new feature "Bundles," and it's currently being tested by a hand-picked group of MBC educators. Here's some of what you'll see once testing is complete:
- A new way to collect videos, group content, documents and text into self-contained online lessons
- Alignment with State and Common Core Standards
- Reusable content objects from the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC)
- Sharing: with your own students, your school, district, or the entire My Big Campus educator community
- A Bundle Exchange, where educators can search for Bundles to use and adapt in their own curriculum
- User ratings and comments, and links to "like" your favorite bundles on MBC, Twitter, Facebook, and G+
- Branches: Take an existing Bundle and make it your own: adapt and remix, and share it again
What to expect
We're making some changes to the MBC user interface to replace Collections. Here’s what to expect:
- A new name: Bundles
- A new link: Direct access to Bundles (formerly Collections) in the left navigation bar
- New functionality: Bundles can include Group pages, State and Common Core standards, NROC content objects, and freeform text
- Sharing options: Publish your Bundles to the Bundle Market to share with other educators; adapt and remix Bundles shared by others
- Redesigned Your Stuff page: Collections will no longer appear on the Your Stuff page. You’ll now find them in Your Bundles
Get up to speed
We're hosting live Webinars this week for all interested educators, to walk them through the new features and explain some of the changes we're making to the My Big Campus interface. To register for a webinar, click the link for the day and time that works best for you.
For those who can't make it to either presentation, we'll be recording and posting a "highlights" video in the MBC Orientation Center topic.
Interested in a sneak preview?
We've opened up testing to all current MBC Coaches, and they're already busy developing their own Bundles for the Exchange. In time for launch, we need more testers, and more content. If you're an educator, and you're interested in helping us with this project, send a Conversation to our lead developers Ryan Bond or Carson McMillan..
There's been plenty of buzz recently on Twitter and other social networks about Digital Learning Day, which is February 1, 2012. This awareness campaign, organized by the Alliance for Excellent Education, includes big name sponsors such as Google, Intel, and Smart Technologies, among many others.
As My Big Campus users, you're already on the forefront of digital learning: Students can use the My Big Campus library to find tutorials, or to research topics and projects. Teachers can assign and assess schoolwork entirely online. IT managers, school administrators, and curriculum directors can feel comfortable that all My Big Campus content is safely filtered and monitored. Most importantly, however, My Big Campus is a digital learning community where students can collaborate inside and outside the classroom, and educators can build professional learning communities with their peers, regardless of location.
Digital Learning Day is a way for you, as educators, to reach out to your peers, and to the community around you, and encourage them to try one new thing. Sign up on the Digital Learning Day web site to find resources to share with parents, libraries, community organizations and after-school programs.
It's also a day to share your success stories and learning experiences. In support of these activities, we've created a Topic on My Big Campus to host your Digital Learning Day ideas, discussions and resources.
What are you doing to celebrate Digital Learning Day? Let me know in the comments.
Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed my Holiday Video, Being Bob Campus.The My Big Campus team had a lot of fun putting it together. Besides all the fun, though, the MBC development team has been working hard on new features that should make it easier for teachers and students to edit and store documents right inside My Big Campus.
MBC Documents give you the features of a word processor, with storage in the "cloud." Teachers and students will be able to create and edit documents anywhere, without having to upload files or use thumb drives. And, because the documents are part of My Big Campus, they are scanned automatically for profanity and other suspicious activity.
MBC Documents are fully shareable. You can attach them to assignments, conversations, wall posts, and group discussions. Document owners can choose view and edit options by user, group, school, and district, making this a great way to publish course materials or school bulletins, or to collaborate on projects.
MBC Documents support will be coming soon to the mobile apps for iOS and Android. Meanwhile, iPad users with iOS 5 can use the My Big Campus web site to edit MBC Documents.
Ready to get started? Click MBC Documents in the left navigation bar, then start exploring, writing, and sharing. Need more info? Visit the Help section for frequently asked questions, or download our Technical Note.
There's even more to come. Watch my blog for exciting updates!
This past weekend saw the rollout of our newest My Big Campus feature: EduTalk. EduTalk is a separate feed within My Big Campus for educators, consisting of status updates from non-student users. We created EduTalk to make it easier for educators to create Personal Learning Communities for collaboration and learning, outside their local school and district boundaries.
Already, I’m seeing educators sharing tips and links on EduTalk, getting practical answers from their peers, and arranging meet-ups at HECC, CETPA, and other important events going on this week. They’re using laptops, tablets and smartphones to post on EduTalk, and they’re hooking up EduTalk with their Twitter accounts to post updates.
It’s always a gamble to launch a new feature like this. Will people notice? Will they use it? Will it truly take off, and become an important part of their professional lives? Will it allow educators to “work smarter,” and apply state of the art pedagogy in their own classrooms and office?
I think the answer’s obvious. In just the first full school day, EduTalk has racked up hundreds of quality posts. Educators are reaching out to their colleagues and attracting both comments and new followers. EduTalk is a soapbox, and a peek into the everyday lives of teachers everywhere.
Come check it out. Click EduTalk on the left navigation bar. Watch and learn from your peers. Follow the ones who interest you to see them in Your Feed. And, when you’re ready to reach out, start posting!