To how many professional organizations do you have membership? How many professional conferences do you attend each year? Ever sat in a  workshop and thought, "I could have taught this?" Have you ever asked your supervisor for permission to attend a confererence and hear, "Not this year?"

If you have a conference you attend on a regular basis, maybe you should consider volunteering to be more than just a conference attendee. Your organization needs you to be the best it can be. There are usually many opportunites to volunteer for a variety of positions. You can volunteer to answer questions, hand out conference materials, prepare for a social event, facilitate a workshop for a presenter or present a workshop of your own.

We regularly take teachers to TCEA. The first time, they get to go without volunteering, but if they want to go the next year, they are required to submit a proposal to present.

Next time you go to a conference and leave thinking it could have been better, ask yourself what...

Notes from session #TXDLA-133 Spanning the Distance Learning Divide - Hybrids and Pure Virtual Models

Houston has an Advanced Virtual Academy Advanced Virtual Academy . Students must apply for a transfer to attend the Advanced Virtual Academy. Students must be interviewed before acceptance to Advanced Virtual Academy. They also have a Virtual School that uses the blended model of instruction and students select from the time options where they must come to school.

They use vendors to provide the online courses and do not create their own courses. APEX, PLATO, The teacher of record modifies the courses for individual students and for the course.

Teachers are paid differently for different courses depending on the amount of work involved and they are paid by the student.

One thing I did not realize. A student cannot graduate in Texas from a virtual school without getting some credit from a face to face school PE credit cannot be earned online.

All virtual courses give the same weight and credit as the face-to-face equivalent.

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Are the needs of an online learner really any different from a F2F learner? I'm not sure they are. Do most classrooms teachers know and understand the needs of the students in their classroom? When I hear, "They (the students) won't do their work!" I wonder if the teacher understands the students' needs. According to reading from an online staff development course I'm taking, students need: 1. Relationships 2. Cooperation 3. Active learning 4. Timely feedback 5. Time on task 6. High expectations 7. Celebration of diversity of talents Isn't that what face to face students need? The last time I checked, face-to-face students also needed all those things. So what's the difference? I believe that the real difference is the challenge of how to provide those things in the online course. There are so many ways to provide them in face-to-face classes or online courses and it takes real effort to provide them in both situations. There is such an emphasis on providing them in online courses and perhaps it is...

Aviary is a suite of simple, and yet, powerful web based editing tools to create and edit images and audio. There are 6 tools.

Phoenix the image editor Peacock the effects editor Toucan the color editor Raven the vector editor Myna the audio editor Falcon the image markup Their Mission: "Aviary is on a mission to make creation accessible to artists of all genres, from graphic design to audio editing."

And they seem to be well on their way to accomplishing their goal. Their tools are incredibly easy to use and have many of the same features as the costly proprietary products. Aviary can be used from any computer with an Internet connection. With the added benefit of combining Aviary with Google Apps for Domains, any one can produce and access their files from any Internet connected computer, making cloud computing a greater reality. By using Aviary from within Google, you can also share your creations with all your other Google Docs.

Aviary is an incredible...

Earlier this week I attended a meeting where Project Share was discussed and demonstrated. If TEA delivers the goods, as introduced, it may solve many technology problems for Texas school districts. Project Share is supposed to be a free eLearning portal for Texas school teachers, administrators and students. It is portrayed as a portal to free resources that include the entire New York Times archives, secure wikis, ePortfolios for students and teachers, social networking application that resembles a Ning for creating Personal Learning Communities with resources for all content areas, including Career and Technical Education and College and Career Readiness Standards. It is supposed to have an area where teachers can participate in online staff development and create online courses for their students. Teachers and students will be able to access 21st Century digital content, collaborate and learn together. I'm not sure how long TEA has been working on this, but it is supposed to be available, to some extent in...