Why Didn't I Think of This?: Student Teachers in Virtual High School

There's needs to be a new word like maybe jealyspired to describe how one feels when they read about something so good and so cool that they actually feel totally inspired but also jealous about not being The One to think of it. That's how I feel about what University of Central Florida and Florida Virtual High School are doing. UCF's student teachers will spend seven weeks of their student teaching in the online classroom. The implications are really big on this one, and to be honest, this isn't the first time I've been jealyspired by UCF or FVHS.

DLA Word of the Week: Academic Analytics

This one is closely related to my posting Wednesday about data mining and new products such as Starfish. Academic Analytics is an emerging field that allows us to take ginormous amounts existing data (presently sitting quietly and often unused on our IT servers), and make it incredibly useful to us in decision making. Decision making might include predicting which students are most likely to succeed, what next fall's enrollment is going to be, or in the case of online learning, which students presently need or will need (predictive) certain types of support. Educause Review had a pretty good introductory article on the topic last year. I've posted some fun weekly words on this blog, but this is one you need to remember. I'm thinking this is going to be the new super hot conference topic for 2009, particularly when we're thinking about retention and online education.

DLA Weekly Word: Leaky Reply

This could be (or maybe has been) your worse nightmare. A Leaky Reply occurs when you hit "reply all" and send your electronic message to a bunch of people (like your boss, your students, or an entire listserv) and you only meant to send it to one. The term implies that the content of your email had some sort of embarrassing content which will cause you to panic and wish to disappear into your dark virtual cave. This certainly doesn't just apply to DL Adminers, but might be a cool term to use in student orientations or faculty training. Sally meant to tell only her online instructor about her embarrassing medical problem which would prevent her from completing her quiz on time, but was mortified when she inadvertently had a leaky reply to the entire class.

DLA Word of the Week: Lagfest

When you are using your course management system to input grades, copy courses, upload files, or whatever, and everything starts going very, very slowly, you are in a lagfest. Simply put, a lagfest is that ridiculously long time that you spend waiting for something online to process. Often a lagfest is applied to computer gaming, but I think that DLA administrators may spend even more time in the lagfest zone.

DLA Word (phrase) of the Week: Mouse Potato

This one is almost self-explanatory, and I think anybody involved in any way in online learning, teaching, or administration is in grave danger of becoming a mouse potato. If almost all of your waking life is spent with a mouse within a close proximity of your hand, then you are a mouse potato. A true mouse potato tends to work, play, shop, and communicate on the computer, often in blocks of five or more hours. Is this better than being a couch potato? I think so...I hope so.

DLA Weekly Word: Unconference

An unconference is a relatively new concept that we can apply not only to professional conferences, but also to training sessions. An unconference is different in that the topics and discussions develop during the conference, and are produced by the attendees rather than the organizers. Generally, unconferences do focus on a particular theme. Kaliya Hamlin has an entire blog devoted to the topic on unconferences. What I like about using these for training sessions is that the discussions and learning are rarely stale, and tend to address the most timely, burning issues. In my 4-month Distance Education Certified Trainer Program, we have an unweek, where activities and discussions are extremely unplanned. It's the ultimate in peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.

DLA Weekly Word: Technoplegic

I just adore new words, and I think they can come in handy for anyone looking for a new and interesting way to impart DL (or other) wisdom or opinions. This week's work is technoloplegic. Closely related to the more-oft used word technophobic, a technoplegic is a person who seems to be well below average in their ability to use technology, perhaps because of fear or unwillingness (there can be other reasons). Most recently in the news, we've heard stories of John McCain's self professed internet illiteracy, which probably makes him the most likely of the presidential/vice-presidential candidates to be technoloplegic. Note: Whether or not I believe that technoplegia is a hamper to being president is outside the scope of this blog!... And, of course, in our daily work, we deal with would-be outstanding online faculty who never venture out of the comfort of the face-to-face classroom because of their technoloplegia. Hmmm....this is giving me an idea for a workshop....Online Teaching for Technoplegics.