Educational Technology at IU13

A hot topic in today’s 21^st century districts continues to be the learning management system and how it is being used in and out of the classroom. In alignment with the current trend of districts moving to 1:1 and BYOD environments, districts are taking a look at their Course and Learning Management Systems to determine if they are meeting the necessary learning objectives for their teachers and students promoting 21^st century teaching and learning. Throughout these conversations, I have noticed that most educators are using the term Learning Management Systems (LMS) when they are referring to Course Management Systems (CMS). This is an easy mistake to make that I have made myself when referring to systems like Moodle, Google Classrooms, Schoology, Canvas, Desire2Learn, etc. Are these systems really Learning Management Systems or are they indeed a Course Management System – or even do some bridge the divide between the two?

Let’s take a moment to define some particular differences between an LMS and a CMS. At first glance, I think the easiest distinction between the two is that a Course Management System is used as a repository of learning documents and files, discussion forums, assessment tasks, assignments, etc. Students log on to the teacher’s CMS in order to access their class files and submit homework and assessments. The way the CMS is set up may look differently from one teacher to another as well as the learning outcomes and expectations of student use. An LMS can do much of what a CMS can do, but also can take the e-learning even further to a more personalized approach. Instead of all students accessing the same document or files, students might pre-assess and due to their deficiencies and/or proficiencies they may receive a different learning path from one another.

We invite you to join us for the EdTechTeam Pennsylvania Summit featuring Google for Education in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to be held at the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 on April 28 & 29, 2015. This high intensity two day event focuses on deploying, integrating, and using Google Apps for Education and other Google Tools to promote student learning in K-12 and higher education. The program features Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers, practicing administrators, solution providers, Google engineers, and representatives from the Google education teams.

Register now to send teachers, administrators, tech directors, library media specialists, tech support staff, CTOs, and anyone who is interested in finding out more about leveraging Google Apps for Education to support student learning.

Some Suggested Topics and Strands

• Technical
• Beginner- Getting Going with Google
• Intermediate- Gear Up with Google Apps
• Advanced- Getting Geeky with Google
• Administrators
• Higher Ed

Happy New Year!  We have some great events planned to help us usher in the New Year this January and February!  Check out the following line up:

Our migration to Google Apps for Education at IU13 is occurring in phases.  The first phase was some initial testing in Tech Services.  The second phase was to begin rolling out the migration and setup process with all the other departments in IU13.  In this second phase, all IU13 employees were to disassociate their personal Google accounts from the iu13.org email address as was outlined in this blog post (IU13 is moving to Google Apps for Education (Part 1)).

We are very excited to begin the process of migrating to Google Apps for Education for all Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 employees.  You might ask, What is Google Apps for Education?  Click here for some published Q&A about Google Apps for Education. There are some great benefits that all IU13 employees will experience once this migration is complete.