Mark Radcliffe's Blog (25)

Are you letting others take a turn?

Like many people, during my career I’ve had my primary job, the odd secondary job and then have donated my time to several organizations both educational and non-educational. As I look back at the organizations I’ve donated time to, I can easily identify the ones I enjoyed working with and those I found more of a chore. The ones I found more of a chore were the ones that had one or more person who felt he or she needed to do everything.

Maybe you’ve had the same experience…

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Added by Mark Radcliffe on February 7, 2013 at 9:00am — No Comments

Do you think about quality everyday?

If you haven’t taken a look already it’s worth spending some time reading the Keeping Pace with K-12 Online and Blended Learning document that is published by the Evergreen Education Group, find it here:

http://kpk12.com/reports/

It’s probably one of the few physical paper documents I have floating around on my desk. I like it because it actually has a section on quality.

At blendedschools.net I am tasked with…

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Added by Mark Radcliffe on January 11, 2013 at 3:46pm — No Comments

Tell us, ask us, assail us!

Did you know that blendedschools.net turns 10 this year? I mean we’re like totally ready to go into middle school, it’s gonna be awesome.

Unlike children though we intend to spend our teenage years changing schools for the better rather than not realizing the benefits of deodorant.

BUT (FYI I like big buts) BSN is not the only thing getting old. Mark and Mark are about to turn 70. No I’m not talking about Mark G’s advanced age, I’m talking about the fact that we…

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Added by Mark Radcliffe on April 5, 2012 at 7:30pm — 1 Comment

9.1 approach...eth

Just in case you weren't already aware the end of the school year is rapidly approaching :-)

As the summer comes in blendedschools.net will be starting in on its regular, yearly software upgrades. The most important one being the upgrade to Blackboard 9.1. We have been testing 9.1 for several weeks now and will be upgrading on the weekend of June 19th.

Thinking about our upgrade to 9.0 last year, I would say the greatest struggle teachers had was what I ended up referring to… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on April 30, 2010 at 2:19pm — No Comments

Safe Assign Stories

Hi All,

I have a district that is currently looking to start using SafeAssign a their high school and are looking for teacher experiences of using the tool.

Does anyone have any stories they would like to share?

Thanks!

Added by Mark Radcliffe on April 8, 2010 at 9:44am — No Comments

Days go by

Time passes too quickly. I suddenly realized that it's been two months since I posted an entry.

There are three things I have attended recently that I thought were of note.

The first was pete&c the state wide tech conference. One of the nice things about pete&c is that there is a lot of cross over across all the subject areas. You see everyone from school board members to music teachers to students. What I noticed most frequently this year though was the age of the… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on March 4, 2010 at 10:45am — No Comments

2010 Looking Back - Is Change Really Happening? (Spoiler - I think it is)

As I look back at 2010 I wonder about change. A quick skim over my calendar reveals that I've trained almost 1,000 teachers this year. I'm willing to guess that between all the BSN crew we have probably had around 2,500 face-to-face training contacts this year. Which is about 1/4 of our entire teacher population.

1/4 of our teaching population is an amazing number, I had no idea it was that high. Trainees fall broadly into two categories, those that get it and those that don't :-)… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on December 31, 2009 at 12:58pm — No Comments

Global Living and Learning is Upon Us

Conference time is approaching again, which means things are catastrophically busy. Remember this year you can attende onsite or online for FREE! no cost at all.

Online attendance is a subset of the conference featuring the concurrent sessions in Chairman's A and B as well as the lunch time and closing Keynote.

I've setup a BSNConnect group for the conference and also feel free to use the #globallivingandlearning twitter tag should you feel the urge to tweet…

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Added by Mark Radcliffe on October 26, 2009 at 11:58am — No Comments

Just Having The Time

I spent the last two days at Mohawk School district working with about 8 or 9 teachers on their online courses.

There were two things that were great about this training:

#1 I got to stay in OH. Poland OH is just 10 miles from Mohawk High School, for some reason staying in another state feels like an adventure.. OOOoo I went to Ohio today... Exciting Ohio!

#2 The Mohawk teachers are always willing to experiment, they truly get the idea of letting me show them a… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on September 24, 2009 at 11:30pm — No Comments

Turn on, tune in ... and shout out!

If you don't watch Mark&Mark in the Morning then:

#1 You should

#2 What's wrong with you!?

Mark G. and I have been busy filming this season's episodes and I just posted episode one yesterday which is a welcome back episode, find it here and find it now:

http://www.blendedschools.net/professionaldevelopment/podcasts.php#markandmark

or… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on September 10, 2009 at 10:30pm — No Comments

Lost in Music

Wow, what a crazy start to the school year. Blackboard 9 is really hitting home with a lot of teachers. We are getting a lot of "Where is this now" questions.

Just a reminder that we posted some resources for Bb 9 right on the blendedschools.net tab. There is a module called "Blackboard Version 9 Resources". Remember too that you can also hit the help button at the top of Blackboard to get help from the highly skilled Chris Davis our local Blackboard expert.

My last… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on September 2, 2009 at 8:39pm — No Comments

Taking Your Pic from the Buffet

Today I did a training that I've not done for a while - What I call a "taster" training.

These trainings have the participants spend a day going through all the blendedschools.net tools seeing just the student experience. The day is designed to show the participants a little bit of everything BSN has to offer. Starting with the curriculum, running through all the technology and then onto the professional development, network, conference and Language Institute.

I have the… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on August 21, 2009 at 11:22pm — 1 Comment

New Respondus Tutorials Added

Today I posted a few new tutorials for the Respondus tools. Remember that you can download some authoring software for free on the faculty tab. We have three authoring tools available, Wimba Create, Respondus and StudyMate.

Here is the link directly to the download page:

You will have to be logged into Blackboard for the above link to… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on August 12, 2009 at 8:12pm — No Comments

Crazy Busy

Wow, I just realized I've not posted an entry for a while. Been extremely busy, it's been over a month, my how time flies.

In the last month:

Chambersburg

Developer Conference

Chambersburg (i was there twice!)

Blackboard World

Northern Tioga

IU19

Tomorrow is our annual blendedschools.net board retreat, where we bring our board of directors together for an annual face to face meeting and presentations. Myself and Mark G are doing a… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on July 28, 2009 at 9:02pm — No Comments

Yes, the digital drop box is gone, the time to weep is over.

Wow, what an interesting day. The Bb 9 upgrade has gone well considering we upgraded a system with 65,000 users and 12,000 courses in a little under 48 hours. I'm pretty happy with that.

I am grateful to the people from the districts who pointed out some little quirks to us here and there over the weekend. We were able to start Monday pretty cleanly with their help, despite the fact that many of them chose words to the effect of "Thanks for this great new version that you forced upon… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on June 22, 2009 at 3:30pm — 1 Comment

Bb Basics V9 Finally Posted

I just added Blackboard Basics for Version 9 to the course Catalogue PD.20.BBBASICSV9.BNET4COPY.

Glad to have it finished, although, it's not 100% finished. On our testing server I currently can't run tracking reports, Pulse or studyMate. I have place holders for those videos and I'll complete them the second the upgrade is done this weekend.

My next two courses are Fast Track Bb Basics for people who are already familiar with online learning tools and Blackboard for BSN… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on June 16, 2009 at 9:17am — 1 Comment

Ephrata - Bigger, Better, Faster, More!

This week I had my longest booking to date. Four full days in Ephrata. I spent 3 days at "WEC" there alternative school and one day at the high school.

I feel like we made a lot of progress at WEC. The teachers there were charged with creating 30 hour courses for their students. The course ranged everything from basic math through to Business Law and Creative Writing. Most of the teachers had not used Blackboard or blendedschools.net courses before. We spent the first two days… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on June 11, 2009 at 10:45pm — No Comments

Quakertown, New Bb 9 Class, New StudyMate Feature, Bugs and Data Integration

On Tuesday I provided the first training day for Quakertown Community School District. They are a new district so are just getting started. It was just a single day training, I always find those very difficult as there is so much to fit into one day. Thankfully the Quakertown teachers were great to work with and picked the tools up very quickly. I didn't get time to show them StudyMate which I agonized over all the way home because teachers always love that tool.

Speaking of… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on June 4, 2009 at 10:19pm — 1 Comment

Bb 9 and Quakertown

Today is the first of our Bb 9 online trainings, it starts at 3:30PM and people can register here:

http://www.solutionwhere.com/blendedschools/cw/showsession.asp?12103570212/18/200811:31:33+AM

I've also just about finished up the Bb9 online course and am currently converting a video that demos how to change from the digital drop box to the assignment tool. The… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on June 1, 2009 at 11:44am — No Comments

Playing Catch-Up

Today is my first full day in the office in almost three weeks. I've managed to get my email down to just 73 messages left. Today I joined a group at Blackboard that is setup to vote on what "fixes" will be prioritized in Blackboard for the coming development year, hopefully it will give BSN a little bit a voice in the process. Jed already has a strong voice at Blackboard, but I figure a little more can't hurt :-).

If you have a fix you feel needs to be completed ASAP let me… Continue

Added by Mark Radcliffe on May 22, 2009 at 3:47pm — No Comments