Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Week 1

First of all, I'm sitting in my hotel room in Ottawa, Ont. where I'm attending a Data Management Workshop hosted by the Canadian Council of Learning. I'm here because, we are investigating the potential for Credenda to be a host for our regional data. But I digress.

My name is Vince Hill. I'm the Director/Principal of Credenda Virtual High School. I was invited to Prince Albert Grand Council to create the online solution in response to a 2004 Indicators Report they produced that outlined a shortage of math and science classes being offered in our northern schools in Saskatchewan.

Today, we offer over 30 online, live courses to over 150 high school eStudents from across the province, and 4 post-secondary programs to over 120 eStudents. Our website is www.credenda.net. Currently, we have four of us taking the Wilkes program and another to join us in January. During the last class, Digital Storytelling, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I set up an online group discussion using our ElluminateLive tool. We had 9 - 10 participants join us, included the instructor, where we discussed the assignments and gave feedback to ideas. That really added to my online experience, and I believe to others as well. (We meet on Tuesday evening, 9PM on ElluminateLive. Just enter your name and no password. Better to have a headset with a microphone.)

I'm looking forward to this class, Digital Media in the Classroom, for different reasons than maybe others, because I am an administrator. I don't have a class to teach, but I supervise the eTeachers that are taking this course. I am particularly interested in how I can support them in their online classrooms in using various types of media to teach our eStudents. I want to be versed in what they are doing, so I can assist them and our eStudents.