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(This message is being sent out to the AEA Chief Administrators, Media Directors, Instructional Service Directors, Special Education Directors, Governance Council Members, and Communication Directors. Please forward to other appropriate personnel within your AEA. While this information is appropriate for LEAs, this information is not intended to be forwarded “as is” to LEAs; please take care to reword when using for external communication).
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Opt-In & Mandatory Trainings: A Review
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I'm starting off the newsletter with a quick review. We mentioned last month our opt-in info for districts for 2021-22 will be going out soon. We also shared an update with districts via our Curriculum Network newsletter that we send out the first Friday of each month.
As is typical, we have received a few questions from individuals at different districts, as the concept of an "opt-in fee" is not really well understood by everyone at the LEA level (and arguably, it shouldn't be, either). The questions are typically around if this is new or not, and some specifics of how the billing is done. For those inquiring, they are typically not aware that they had been opting-in since the start of the program, and they have been put at ease when finding out that is the case.
As mentioned last month, if you feel it would be beneficial for me to visit with LEA personnel to explain further the opt-in, either individually or at a joint meeting of LEAs, I am at your disposal to do so. Just let me know.
Related to that is our effort to provide more mandatory trainings. After our last update, I received some questions about some of the titles of mandatory trainings on the way. Our list of mandatory trainings comes from several locations, but the ones we label as "mandatory trainings" comes from this document developed by the DE. Our goal is to provide all of the trainings on this document, though we know that we will not be able to provide the Bus Driver training.
There are other topics not on that list that are listed as "mandatory" by other sources or in competitor programs, so our list of trainings in this area is much bigger. Here is a full list of trainings done (above the gray line) and in development (below the gray line). Those with a developer's name being assigned are ones we will have completed by August 1.
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School Counselor Professional Learning
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AEA Learning Online has partnered with the Iowa School Counselor Association to offer ASCA U training specialist courses for Iowa relicensure credit. The courses created by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) and requires participants to access the course modules and content through the ASCA web site. The ASCA cost for the course is $99.00 for ASCA members or $249 for nonmembers. There may also be required books to purchase. The trainings take approximately 50 hours to complete ASCA U Specialist Trainings available for relicensure credit include (click to see the ASCA description):
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Just a quick update on our AEA Login development project. We have completed "SAML" development, a term that will mean nothing to most people in the world, but does allow us to improve some issues that we have had recently with our registration system login.
Next up is the ability for users to easily add more than one email address to their account, which will not only allow them to login with any of those email address into the same account, but also save on the number of duplicate accounts and lost passwords we receive. In addition, we will also be setting up trusted email domains, meaning if a student has an account with (say) dmschools.org, she will be added as a student within that district without being required to know the school password.
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We are re-imagining how we offer professional development in how to be an online teacher, and will be rolling out details on the new program at the upcoming Curriculum Network newsletter in May. Briefly, the redesign will help us both meet the needs of schools and help transition away my work as the sole teacher. Educators will have the following options:
1. Our traditional 4-course series will still be available each summer, if an individual wants to take the courses in that format. This provides the best opportunity for teachers to work with other teachers across the state and explore the complex topics of teaching online together.
2. We are looking for other online teachers to offer their own OLLIE courses. That is, they can develop their own course on how to teach online, offer it for teachers, and have that count as part of the Drake Online Teaching Certificate. Those that are interested should contact me.
3. During the school year, we will be offering those courses in an every-two-or-three-week format. This will allow teachers to more flexibly take courses while still teaching, as they have more time to work ahead or catch up.
4. We will be sunsetting our popular Online Learning in Emergency Situations & Planning for Emergencies self-paced courses, and rolling that content into one that is more general in nature. The design of this will remain the same, as an educator can start this at any time and utilize the pieces of the course that are relevant to their needs at the moment.
5. We will also be providing a structured pathway, allowing a participant to peruse any of the 4-course series on their own with a document to help them reflect on the content. This option can work well for IPDPs or for PLCs who want to browse on their own, without the need for credit.
6. And finally, we will also be offering a Microcredential course in online teaching. This will be aligned to competencies in online teaching, and will include example activities that individuals can do to demonstrate their competency. Teachers interested in credit can assemble their own microcredentials to do so. And if other AEAs would like to offer credit for microcredential courses, they can utilize microcredentials earned through AEA Learning Online if they would like.
We will have more details in the next newsletter.
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AEA Learning Online Turns 10
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And our final note, AEA Learning Online opened up our doors officially on May 1, 2011. This means that in 9 days, we turn 10. In that time, we have provided over 2 million trainings and saved districts somewhere around $40 million over purchased solutions elsewhere.
We don't often look back and acknowledge the good work that has gone into the programming choices we make within the AEA system, so I want to do so briefly. The first members of the Governance Council - David King, Joe Crozier, Michelle Dowd, Robert Vittengl, and Jon Wibbels - put in quite a bit of vision to build the structure that we have today, and the Chief administrators took a risk to do something new in a statewide capacity, back before it was a conscious effort of the AEAs to work statewide.
We also have been blessed with excellent staff. If you have not had the opportunity to work with Peggy Steinbronn, Marv Howard, Rob Brookhart, Deborah Cleveland, Denise Krefting, Shelley Christensen, Melissa Wicklund, Craig Mohr, or Laura Williams over the years, I hope you do have that opportunity soon, as they are outstanding in their support to educators throughout the state.
Thank you to all those, named and unnamed, who have had a role in these past 10 years!
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