I’ve been planning my professional development for the year in the last few weeks. Today I finished up by putting all the details online for my districts.
- My online classes are scheduled and registration is open if you want to join an international (usually) learning community for a few weeks. Read more details here: Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections starts September 10 and runs four weeks. Kid2Kid Videoconference Connections starts October 8 and runs for six weeks.
- I have a new series of sessions meeting the requirement for a “long” course that I required of my distance learning coordinators in the RUS grant. We’re calling it Supporting Videoconferences and we’ll focus on using the new document cameras, etc., scheduling on their own (new procedures here), and troubleshooting.
- My “short” courses that also meet our RUS grant requirements have expanded greatly due to collaborations based on the Jazz workshop.
I noticed an interesting trend or pattern as I put these online today. The beginning of the year is heavy with PD sessions, and then it fades out towards the end of the year as we get busy with lots of VCs (ASK, MysteryQuest, Read Around the Planet, Michigan Week, etc.). Hopefully by starting with more PD we can help everyone prepare for their videoconferences throughout the year.
Are you making your calendar for 2007-2008? What trends or patterns do you notice?
About Janine Lim
Janine Lim, PhD, currently serves as associate dean for online higher education in the School of Distance Education at Andrews University, in Berrien Springs, MI. She and her team support over 200 online courses, provide training for faculty teaching online, and work with the campus infrastructure support of online learning. Her department also provides educational technology and Moodle support for faculty and students. In addition, Janine is responsible for the faculty and courses of the Consortium of Adventist Colleges and Universities. Janine has taught over 15 unique graduate educational technology classes online numerous times over the past 15 years, with some classes attracting participants from all over the world. Her undergraduate teaching includes social media courses for communication and digital media majors. Janine has served on the board of the United States Distance Learning Association since April 2015.
Prior to her work at Andrews University, Janine coordinated distance education for 22 K12 school districts in southwest Michigan for 14 years. In that position, as one of the co-founders of TWICE, Michigan’s K12 Videoconferencing Organization, Janine has spearheaded popular international K12 videoconference projects such as Read Around the Planet and MysteryQuest. While still serving on the board of TWICE, she was instrumental in designing and implementing the CAPspace website for collaborative videoconference projects. Janine also served on a team of Michigan educational technology trainers providing a workshop called ATA Technology Academy.
Her current online learning research interests include successful teacher behaviors, quality online discussions, and student activity patterns in self-paced courses.
Videoconferencing Out on a Lim 