With the summer break approaching rapidly, let's take a look at a few tips from My Big Campus staff, as well as trainers, teachers and administrators at schools all over My Big Campus.
Take advantage of free training resources
Create your own adventure with self-guided training modules that help you find and share resources with ease, ditch the thumb drive, spend less time at the copier, and more.
Join veteran teachers-turned-MBC Senior Coaches who offer free one-hour My Big Campus Overview webinars and half-hour training webinars on a variety of subjects, on days and times that should work for nearly everyone.
Find inspiration, lesson plans, professional development in the Bundle Exchange
As a staff user, when you click on Bundles you see the Bundle Exchange where you can search for inspiration, lesson plans, PD, and more by keyword, rating, popularity, state or common core standard, and more. Brooke Wheeler from Benjamin Bosse High School came up with a great idea for a Bundle: My teacher is absent! What should I do?. It's a fun and engaging lesson for her art classes that she can share with a substitute teacher for days when she can't be in class. And it's an easy idea to adapt for your own subject areas -- create your own, or find and adapt bundles by state standard, type (lesson plan / unit / project-based learning, etc.), or keyword.
Check out our Professional Learning Communities
The educator-only newsfeed EduTalk has come into its own as a source of ideas, questions and answers, and shoutouts from users in every corner of the US and abroad. Many teachers have already linked My Big Campus with their Twitter accounts, and tweets propagate automatically to EduTalk. You'll see "hoots" from experts like MBC Senior Coach Matt Kitchens, PBL practicioner Jason Seaver, and virtual education specialist Michele Eaton, among many others.
For PD resources, discussions, and subject-area collaboration, visit our Topics -- they work like Groups, but they're open to educators anywhere in My Big Campus. If you're new to MBC, join the MBC Orientation Center. You'll also find special interest areas for Flipped Classroom, iPad/iPod, and Project Based Learning.
Finally, there's the MBC Trainers group. We created this group originally to host the first MBC Summer Academy, back in 2011, and it's become the go-to place for best practices, collaboration, technical discussions and expert help from certified MBC Coaches, MBC staff, and other MBC power users. You don't need to be an MBC expert to participate -- request to join, and group owner Merleen Johnson will even send you some goodies!
Got tips or feedback of your own?
Let me know in the Comments if you have a question, or would like to share a tip of your own. I always welcome your feedback related to the subject of this blog post.
New to My Big Campus? Or just new to some uses of the site? We offer all kinds of free training options that you can take advantage of whenever it's convenient for you.
We also present free, regularly scheduled, interactive Webinars, where you can learn the basics or get up to speed on specific features.
And, to help those of you who can't fit the live webinars into your schedule, we're going to be recording and posting "best-of" videos of selected topics. You'll find them on this page, in the MBC Trainers group.
Finally, for schools and districts with specific training needs, we also offer on-site or on-line training from our Certified MBC Coaches. Contact us forinformation and pricing.
I want your experience with My Big Campus to be a success for you, your students, and your schools. Let me know in the comments if you have questions or ideas related to the subject of this post.
Recently, I've been seeing an increase in posts from teachers who are getting on My Big Campus for the first time. Teachers are joining the standalone (freemium) version of MBC because they've heard about My Big Campus from their colleagues, and districts using the Lightspeed web filter are getting a head start on implementing My Big Campus over the summer. And, of course, when the next school term starts, we'll have a flood of new students learning their way around.
I just wanted to share a few of the self-help features on My Big Campus, that can transform you from a novice to a power user.
Help
Click Help in the top right corner to find a growing list of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), neatly organized by subject matter. You'll also see a tab for Community help, where you can browse, search, ask, and answer questions. If you don’t find what you’re looking for in the FAQs, see what questions your peers have been asking. Or see if you can help someone out.
Bob's Wall
If you need to ask a quick question, or just say "Hi Bob!", post on my Wall. Bob's Wall is available to everyone on My Big Campus, and I'm on there answering questions just about any time of the day, including weekends.
MBC staff and other MBC users have created and published several comprehensive and very useful training Bundles on the Bundle Exchange. Here are a few to check out:
To find others, search for "training" or "mbc" – you can branch, customize, and share any of these bundles with your own school.
We regularly present webinars (interactive online meetings) for teachers and IT staff, to help get you up to speed on My Big Campus.
- Register for one of our regularly scheduled Teacher Overview webinars, presented by MBC staff and senior MBC Coaches.
- The monthly MBC Trainers Update webinar is a good way to stay caught up on new features and tips. Join the webinar live, or watch the closed-caption recording in MBC Trainers.
You can also request a training webinar for you and your staff at a time that suits you; email engagers@mybigcampus.com to set things up.
MBC Orientation Center
Staff can navigate to Topics (just to the right of Groups and People), click on More Topics and find the MBC Orientation Center, where users have shared how they are using My Big Campus in short videos and some easy-to-duplicate lessons. In Resources you’ll find Reference Materials and documentation that you can use yourself, or distribute to new users. There are even pages for admin and IT staff.
MBC Release Notes
If you’re waiting for an enhancement, feature, or bug fix to be released, check out the MBC Release Notes topic.
Topics, Topics, Topics
And while you’re navigating to Topics, which are visible to staff users only, peruse the diverse list of topics being discussed by your peers: flipped classrooms, iPad/iPod educational resources, project-based learning, collaborative writing, virtual field trips, cyber classrooms, and more. You may even want to start one yourself. These topics are groups that span district boundaries so you can form professional learning networks and learn from each other.
MBC Trainers
Finally, if you're responsible for training folks, join the MBC Trainers group for IT pre-requisites, awareness building, training agendas, documentation, and more.
So in summary, I’ve got your back! Let me know if there are more ways we can help.
Over the past few months, you may have noticed the orange "MBC Coach" badge on some peoples' posts. Our coaches are a select team of education professionals who've completed the requirements of becoming a certified MBC trainer, including participation in our yearly Summer Academy program, where they receive a full day of intensive training developed by their peers and My Big Campus staff.
As of this week, we've opened the application process for the MBC Coach program, and we're inviting well qualified professional educators to join the ranks of certified MBC Coaches. Review the application process and requirements.
If you have what it takes to be an MBC Coach, here are some of the benefits you can look forward to once you've completed the certification program:
- Online "MBC Coach" badge announcing your elite professional status on My Big Campus
- Participation in feature request and product roadmap discussions, with direct access to the product development team
- Opportunities to represent My Big Campus at conferences and events
- Mentoring your peers during and after MBC deployment in your school or district
- Potential paid consulting and training opportunities
Our MBC Coaches gave us some great feedback from last year's Summer Academy.
This year's Summer Academy happens July 23, 2013, in Indianapolis, Indiana, immediately preceding the first-ever, two-day MBC User Conference. Use the expertise you gain from Summer Academy to network with teachers, tech coordinators, and admins--and share best practices for engaging students, improving learning outcomes, managing online behavior, collaborating on PD, rolling out MBC and 1:1 initiatives, and more.? I'll post more about this conference in a future blog.
Whenever educators get together, whether it's in person at conferences, in their schools, or on MBC in Topics and EduTalk, there's lots of brainstorming going on. Veteran teachers always seem willing to share best practices with those experiencing online learning for the first time, and new teachers bring fresh insights and questions that keep everyone on their toes.
Usually, the collaboration is spontaneous and informal, but lately I've been seeing a push at the district and state level for teachers to work together to develop and share digital curriculum. This is a good thing on many levels:
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Teachers have the best sense of their own students' needs and interests, and can target these needs without being constrained by availability of textbooks and other offline media
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Schools and districts can stay up to date with new curriculum, without having to wait months or years for textbooks to catch up
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Heavy investment in textbooks can be redirected to forward-looking projects, needed infrastructure upgrades, and up-to-date technology
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The environmental footprint is improved by reducing the amount of paper that is used and discarded with every school term.
The state of Indiana is one example of a high-level mandate for online curriculum. Educators there are free to create their own digital curriculum to replace textbooks. To further that effort, many have begun meeting up inside an MBC topic area, Indiana Statewide Collaboration, to form collaboration groups by grade level and subject area. It's a nice model for educators in other states to follow, and My Big Campus has some excellent tools for this type of collaboration.
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Bundles -- create complete courses with text, online resources, videos, files, images, quizzes and assignments, to share with students, your whole school or district, the entire My Big Campus community, or any Internet user via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
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Bundle Exchange -- Find and adapt Bundles created and shared by other My Big Campus educators. Browse by subject area, standard, or keyword, or "subscribe" to a standard to see newly published Bundles
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State and Common Core Standards -- attach standards to Bundles and Schoolwork questions
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Schoolwork -- import the pre-designed ExamView tests supplied with many curriculum tools (or import your own), then assign to groups or individual students
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Academic Reports -- see which classes and students are meeting standards, and who needs extra help
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NROC and NBC Learn content -- standards-based multimedia courseware, either alone or pre-compiled into Bundles, for you to use in your own Bundles and lessons
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Training -- our hands-on, free, full-day Indiana Training Camp sessions have attracted huge demand (they're actually oversubscribed and there is now a waiting list), but we have many other training options for those inside and outside Indiana.
All of these tools work well for individuals and groups, and can easily scale to larger groups, as our Indiana colleagues have demonstrated so well. But why stop at the school, district, or even state level? My Big Campus has the tools and the audience to erase boundaries and bring people together. Digital curriculum equalizes opportunities for small and large, urban and rural, advantaged and disadvantaged schools. And My Big Campus is the perfect place to make it happen.
Want to learn more? Got some experiences to share? Let me know in the comments.
New to My Big Campus? Or just new to some uses of the site? We offer all kinds of free training options that you can take advantage of whenever it's convenient for you.
We also present free, regularly scheduled, interactive Webinars, where you can learn the basics or get up to speed on specific features.
And, to help those of you who can't fit the live webinars into your schedule, we're going to be recording and posting "best-of" videos of selected topics. You'll find them on this page, in the MBC Trainers group.
Finally, for schools and districts with specific training needs, we also offer on-site or on-line training from our Certified MBC Coaches. Contact us for information and pricing.
I want your experience with My Big Campus to be a success for you, your students, and your schools. Let me know in the comments if you have questions or ideas related to the subject of this post.
New to My Big Campus? Or just new to some uses of the site? We offer all kinds of free training options that you can take advantage of whenever it's convenient for you.
We also present free, regularly scheduled, interactive Webinars, where you can learn the basics or get up to speed on specific features.
And, to help those of you who can't fit the live webinars into your schedule, we're going to be recording and posting "best-of" videos of selected topics. You'll find them on this page, in the MBC Trainers group.
Finally, for schools and districts with specific training needs, we also offer on-site or on-line training from our Certified MBC Coaches. Contact us for information and pricing.
I want your experience with My Big Campus to be a success for you, your students, and your schools. Let me know in the comments if you have questions or ideas related to the subject of this post.
Now that the fall term is underway for just about everyone, let's take a look at a few "back to school" tips from My Big Campus staff, as well as trainers, teachers and administrators at schools all over My Big Campus.
Take advantage of free training resources
Create your own adventure with self-guided training modules that help you find and share resources with ease, ditch the thumb drive, spend less time at the copier, and more.
Join veteran teachers-turned-MBC Senior Coaches who offer free one-hour My Big Campus Overview webinars and half-hour training webinars on a variety of subjects, on days and times that should work for nearly everyone.
Introduce your students to digital citizenship and the MBC Pledge
Common core technology standards now require students to learn and master digital citizenship. My Big Campus helps with that by providing a safe, controlled environment where students can learn by experience and example how to conduct themselves online. Robbie Grimes and Merleen Johnson shared tips on choosing appropriate avatars (think of it as an extension of the school's dress code), Jennifer O'Hagan, MBC Senior Coach Chrissie Allen, and Ted Baechtold demonstrated how they handle students who misuse the Report Abuse flag.
Notify parents
While parents usually want their students to take advantage of the school's technology instruction and resources, they may have some concerns about the social aspects of My Big Campus. You can use this sample letter and sample flyer to address those concerns and explain the benefits of safe, monitored social learning.
Parents also like to stay up to date on student activities in My Big Campus. We're working on a Parent Portal, which is scheduled for release later this fall, but in the meantime, check out the tips from teacher Ashleigh Sandifer and others in this MBC Trainers discussion.
Find inspiration, lesson plans, professional development in the Bundle Exchange
As a staff user, when you click on Bundles you see the Bundle Exchange where you can search for inspiration, lesson plans, PD, and more by keyword, rating, popularity, state or common core standard, and more. Brooke Wheeler from Benjamin Bosse High School came up with a great idea for a Bundle: My teacher is absent! What should I do?. It's a fun and engaging lesson for her art classes that she can share with a substitute teacher for days when she can't be in class. And it's an easy idea to adapt for your own subject areas -- create your own, or find and adapt bundles by state standard, type (lesson plan / unit / project-based learning, etc.), or keyword.
Check out our Professional Learning Communities
First introduced last year, the educator-only newsfeed EduTalk is coming into its own as a source of ideas, questions and answers, and shoutouts from users in every corner of the US and abroad. Many teachers have already linked My Big Campus with their Twitter accounts, and tweets propagate automatically to EduTalk. You'll see "hoots" from experts like MBC Senior Coach Matt Kitchens, PBL practicioner Jason Seaver, and virtual education specialist Michele Eaton, among many others.
For PD resources, discussions, and subject-area collaboration, visit our Topics -- they work like Groups, but they're open to educators anywhere in My Big Campus. If you're new to MBC, join the MBC Orientation Center. You'll also find special interest areas for Flipped Classroom, iPad/iPod, Khan Academy, and Project Based Learning.
Finally, there's the MBC Trainers group. We created this group originally to host the first MBC Summer Academy, back in 2011, and it's become the go-to place for best practices, collaboration, technical discussions and expert help from certified MBC Coaches, MBC staff, and other MBC power users. You don't need to be an MBC expert to participate -- request to join, and group owner Merleen Johnson will even send you some goodies!
Got tips or feedback of your own?
Let me know in the Comments if you have a question, or would like to share a tip of your own. I always welcome your feedback related to the subject of this blog post.
As most of you teachers have noticed by now, we released the Schoolwork update over the weekend. And we've been working non-stop to fix a few minor issues that surfaced after the release. On the whole, however, I'm very pleased with the work our team did to get this update to you.
While some of you are comfortable exploring the new interface on your own, I know there are many more of you who would like a more structured introduction to the new Schoolwork. If you have 30 to 60 minutes free, I encourage you to sign up for one of our free training webinars.
You'll get a walkthrough of the new features, a look at the workflow, and a chance to get your questions answered by one of our Senior MBC Coaches. It's a quick way to build your confidence and start using these powerful new features right away.
Here's the schedule for the next few weeks. Find the day and time that works best for you, then click the link to register:
- Tuesday, Sept 11, 2012 - 1:30pm PST (4:30pm EST)
- Wednesday, Sept 12, 2012 - 4:00pm PST (7:00pm EST)
- Thursday, Sept 13, 2012 - 10:00am PST (1:00pm EST)
- Monday, Sept 17, 2012 - 3:30pm PST (6:30pm EST)
- Tuesday, Sept 18, 2012 - 1:30pm PST (4:30pm EST)
- Wednesday, Sept 19, 2012 - 4:00pm PST (7:00pm EST)
- Thursday, Sept 20, 2012 - 10:00am PST (1:00pm EST)
- Monday, Sept 24, 2012 - 3:30pm PST (6:30pm EST)
- Tuesday, Sept 25, 2012 - 1:30pm PST (4:30pm EST)
- Wednesday, Sept 26, 2012 - 4:00pm PST (7:00pm EST)
- Thusday, Sept 27, 2012 - 10:00am PST (1:00pm EST)
Need an introduction, or a refresher, on other My Big Campus features? We offer free webinars on Bundles, e-Portfolios, Groups, and more. Visit this page in the public MBC Trainers group for dates, times, and signup information.
As always, I welcome comments and questions related to the subject of this blog post.
Recently, I've been seeing an increase in posts from teachers who are getting on My Big Campus for the first time. Teachers are joining the standalone (freemium) version of MBC because they've heard about My Big Campus from their colleagues, and districts using the Lightspeed web filter are getting a head start on implementing My Big Campus over the summer. And, of course, when school starts again in the fall, we'll have a flood of new students learning their way around.
I just wanted to share a few of the self-help features on My Big Campus, that can transform you from a novice to a power user.
Help
Click Help in the top right corner to find a growing list of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), neatly organized by subject matter. You'll also see a tab for Community help, where you can browse, search, ask, and answer questions. If you don’t find what you’re looking for in the FAQs, see what questions your peers have been asking. Or see if you can help someone out.
You’ll also find video tutorials for specific functions. If you’ve made some and are willing to share, I’ll add them to our collection. Send them to me via support@mybigcampus.com.
If you need to ask a quick question, or just say "Hi Bob!", post on my Wall. Bob's Wall is available to everyone on My Big Campus, and I'm on there answering questions most hours of the day, including weekends.
MBC staff and other MBC users have created and published several comprehensive and very useful training Bundles on the Bundle Exchange. Here are a few to check out:
To find others, search for "training" or "mbc" – you can branch, customize, and share any of these bundles with your own school.
We regularly present webinars (interactive online meetings) for teachers and IT staff, to help get you up to speed on My Big Campus.
- Register for one of our regularly scheduled Teacher Overview webinars, presented by MBC staff and senior MBC Coaches.
- The monthly MBC Trainers Update webinar is a good way to stay caught up on new features and tips. Join the webinar live, or watch the closed-caption recording in MBC Trainers.
You can also request a training webinar for you and your staff at a time that suits you; email engagers@mybigcampus.com to set things up.
MBC Orientation Center
Staff can navigate to Topics (just to the right of Groups and People), click on More Topics and find the MBC Orientation Center, where users have shared how they are using My Big Campus in short videos and some easy-to-duplicate lessons. In Resources you’ll find Reference Materials and documentation that you can distribute to new users, and reference yourself. There are even pages for admin and IT staff.
MBC Release Notes
If you’re waiting for an enhancement, feature, or bug fix to be released, check out the MBC Release Notes topic.
Topics, Topics, Topics
And while you’re navigating to Topics, which are visible to staff users only, peruse the diverse list of topics being discussed by your peers: flipped classrooms, iPad/iPod educational resources, project-based learning, collaborative writing, virtual field trips, cyber classrooms, and more. You may even want to start one yourself. These topics are groups that span district boundaries so you can form professional learning networks and learn from each other.
MBC Trainers
Finally, if you're responsible for training folks, join the MBC Trainers group for IT pre-requisites, awareness building, training agendas, documentation, and more.
So in summary, I’ve got your back! Let me know if there are more ways we can help.