Greetings from Robyn!

Hello, everyone! I am happy to find you all here, as I have an eager interest in online education. I currently teach language arts for Insight School of Oregon, which is a new online alternative school. I am a semi-recent GTEP graduate (spring 07), and I also have my M.A. in Theater Arts from PSU. I have taken several online courses myself, and love teaching online.

I see online teaching opening up a vast number of new possibilities, both in a traditional school environment and for continuing education purposes in all kinds of industries. In a high school environment, I was initially worried about student contact and interaction. But in reality, I have so much more time to really talk to students one-on-one as an online teacher. However, there are drawbacks! Getting students to really engage with the curriculum and take initiative to complete their assignments can be a challenge.

I am enjoying every minute of this balancing act, and I'm eager to learn more about how I can best help my students. I am also interested in corporate consulting, as I have been approached by friends and relatives for ways to help their businesses incorporate more technology for training purposes.

Computers and I have always had a good relationship. My fiance likes to tell people that I can "field strip" a computer, which is pretty much the case! I have built desktop computers for both him and myself, in addition to a 4.5 TB home server, as well as a media center computer in our living room. I also dabble in web design, and have started learning the python programming language in my "spare" time (ha!). I am also in the final stages of planning a wedding, which is coming right up on August 2nd. This should be an eventful summer!

One assignment in Module 3 and one in Module 4 require some group work. Since our time is short it has seemed to work better if I make up the groups and then give you all a little time to get to know each other and figure out how best you will work together. Some groups have exchanged documents through e-mail, others have used Google Docs, and one group created a Wiki for sharing work. Another option is to use the Web Conference software to have your own audio work session.

If you want to use Horizon Wimba (Web Conference) I have had a student administrator account set up that will give you control of more of the tools. One of you can be the administrator (Presentor Login) and the other can Login as Participants.

login: 510guest
p/w: elearner

Select the link
E-Learning Instructional Strategies Webconference


Here are the group parings. Please note that Diane Brooke has just been added to the class.

• Diane Brooke
• Judith Champion
• RT

• Jeff Michaels
• Sandi Miles
• Julie Sheldon

• Kelsie Cronen
• Robyn McCreath
• Lenny Reisberg

• Lester Brown
• Lynn Gitlow
• Irene (Lucy) Willard

Hi! I am Julie Sheldon

I am learning and performance solutions consultant in Philadelphia. I collaborate with organizations that are committed to the continuous advancement of their employees, processes, and procedures to maximize present and future growth.
I started my career at UBS Financial Services as a Training Specialist while attaining my Masters of Science in Education, Training, and Development at Fordham University in New York. Since that time I have held various positions in the Learning and Development field including; Project Manager of E-Learning Design, Manager of Training and Professional Development and Instructional Designer. Today, I am the sole proprietor of JFS Consulting where I provide instructional design, project, and performance management consulting to various Fortune 1000 industries.
I am a life long learner. In fact, if I could I would always be taking a class or participating in some other professional or personal development activity. My focus is on Instructional Design in the eLearning environment, which is what brought me to PSU.

eBio for Lucy W

Lucy Willard (aka Irene) has been a secondary school teacher for 25 years. For most of those years she has taught Spanish, with a detour into ESL for a few years. Currently she teaches at Lincoln High School in Portland, having just completed her 15th year at that school. Lucy is not a techie wizard by any means, but she has used technology resources in various ways over the past few years, with mostly satisfactory results. Her school district is not exactly on the cutting edge in terms of up to date tech tools. In spite of this, thanks to grants, PTA funds, generous parents, and the increasing availability of free material on the web, she's been able to enhance her instruction using technology. In this course she hopes to learn some basics for creating an accessible and useful on line course for her intermediate students.

Lucy is a native Oregonian and a graduate of PSU. Recent projects include creating a website to post assignments and grades for parent and student access, producing a podcast each week for her church, and maintaining half a dozen blogs for various purposes. Some of her goals include getting more proficient at podcasting and applying those skills to classroom projects, working up a webpage for school that looks a bit more elegant than the current extremely basic one, getting an electronic keyboard and working with music via Garage Band, and scanning slides from various trips to Spanish speaking countries so that those good old pictures can be put to use.

Dennis - Biosketch continued

Dennis added the role of COOLSchool principal to his duties in 2004. For more than a decade, Dennis was a research assistant in geophysics in OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. In 1990, he earned his certification in elementary education. He was a classroom teacher in Newberg School District, and was later hired as their technology coordinator. Since December of 1996, he served as the OPEN Clearinghouse OPENC coordinator where he was responsible for overseeing development of online resources for Oregon teachers. At the height of development the site was averaging over 600 daily user sessions. State funding for the project ended in 2004. In 2001, he was also appointed development coordinator for COOLSchool. Dennis holds a master's degree in information technology and completed his Initial Administrative License in 2000.