Visual from EET - PD Meeting last week

Thanks Darcie and Heather for taking the visual notes from our EET meeting on PD last Thursday. Wonderful visual representation of our discussion!

Update on the EET Lightbulb . . . It's been moving . . .

Thanks to Liz and her sleuthing, we have an update on where the EET Recognition Lightbulb has been over the last few months. Congrats to everyone who has had this perched on their desks!

• Adam - for doing perfect media work on RSP151, no changes needed
• Amber – for all her work on the RSP courses
• Mark – for his work on the eLearning Café
• Stacey – for her work on the Badlands project
• Brenda – for formatting work on Wind Turbine
• Diana – for getting straight A’s on her exams and completing her Masters in Distance Ed through Athabasca U
• Shirley – for formatting the Police Recruit and Training Program
• Stella – getting accepted into the Bachelor of Nursing Program at the university
• Donna – for being the amazing person she is and taking care of EET

For those of you who are new to EET, we pass this around as people do amazing things! The goal is to keep it only a week or so and then pass it on to someone else who has done something deserving. Let's keep it moving!

PD and Goal Setting for EET Staff

Thanks to everyone who submitted their PD goals in prep for our EET meeting on August 18. The Google Doc lists the general categories and topics that you identified. Here is the plan:

The end goal of this first time frame is to present a “GIFT” type session at the November EET meeting. We’ll divide the group in half, with one group being presenters and the other group listening and learning. More details will be provided on this later. What you need to know now, however, is that you will need to share what you have done and learned with the other EET staff at this time.

How will you do this? Your groups can decide what you will do and when you do it over the next two months. One group, for example, might decide to meet once a week at lunch time. Another group may decide to find a facilitator to come in and teach them a specific skill. It depends on your topic and your goal.

I would encourage each group to set their own SMART goals for November. Have fun on this journey!

PD Schedule for August and September

This is mostly an FYI for all of you related to PD for instructors. Below you will find the message that I sent to all faculty this morning. We have a variety of PD activities planned for the next few weeks. This takes a strong team effort to choose and schedule the information and then prep for and facilitate each session. Thanks to all of you who are playing an active role in making this happen. This is a very important role that EET plays in supporting instructors in all learning environments at Lethbridge College.

Hi everyone, and welcome back! You'll find a variety of PD sessions have been scheduled for the next few weeks in prep for the fall semester.

Please visit the PD calendar on the EET website for descriptions and specific dates for the following sessions:

• Angel (basic and advanced, including Angel 7.4)

• Smartboards

• Teaching Online / Orientation to DL

• Survival Skills for New Instructors

• Peer Evaluation

• Teaching through Video Conferencing

• Facilitating webinars using Elluminate

Please register as soon as possible for the sessions by clicking on the registration links on the PD calendar. If you have questions or have requests for additional sessions, please contact Donna Blanchard at 3327.

Sketchbook Project

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the deadline for joining the EET Sketchbook Project. This is part of a world wide project where people pick a theme, fill in their sketchbooks, and then send it in for cataloging. A few of us are ready to join already. I'm doing this as part of my PD on creativity. Yikes!

For more information, visit the Sketchbook Project site or talk to Jackie. Remember the deadline for joining as part of our group is tomorrow (Wednesday).

New coffee machine and social fund

1. Is anyone interested in contributing to the purchase of a Keurig coffee machine. We have $80 in our coffee fund to contribute but we would have to raise another $100 to buy the machine, along with the coffee packs, at Costco. We estimate that a cup of coffee would cost about 50 cents each.

Who is interested? If we have more than 10 people willing to participate it will cost less than $10 per person. We would like to propose this option before we go to some sort of fundraiser.

Here is a link to all the coffee that is available from Keurig. Please let Donna know this week.


2. Social Fund: It would be very very helpful if everyone could contribute $10 to the social fund for this year. This covers the cost of cards, cakes, and such for events we have throughout the year. Donna is the keeper of the social fund, so please help us out with this one.

As you all know by now, our budgets are pretty much non-existent for college functions this year, so we'll need to be creative when planning our celebrations.

Great day in the mountains

Slightly off topic - here's a photo of Waterton from the top of Vimy Ridge. We hiked this on Sunday - even got chased by mama grizzly!

YouTube Video on Strengths

Tyler found this link to a YouTube video that reinforces how important it is to focus on our strengths. It's a quick one - 3 minutes.

We didn't take time yesterday during our discussions on PD topics for this year to integrate the Strengths Finder concepts. As you reflect on the goals you have set for this next year, think about how your top 5 strengths influence your ability to achieve these goals. In what ways are you enhancing your talent areas?

Here's an interesting finding: In follow up to the initial Strengths Finder research, Gallup continued on to interview more than 20,000 senior leaders and more than one million work teams. Three key findings emerged:
1. The most effective leaders are always investing in employee strengths.
2. The most effective leaders surround themselves with the right people and then maximize their team. While the best leaders are not well-rounded, the best teams are.
3. The most effective leaders understand their follower' needs, which tend to be related to trust, compassion, stability, and hope.

This information is from a boot written by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie titled "Strengths Based Leadership", and you are welcome to borrow it from my office if you are interested. Just thought you might find this interesting.

Name Tag Reminder :)

Over the summer, how many of us have worn our name tags on a regular basis? Not me - it's been safely hiding in my drawer. Time are changing . . . With instructors and students starting to appear on campus again next week, please remember to put wear your name tags all the time you are at work.

Notes from our EET spring planning session

Here are the notes from our EET spring planning session. Just to remind you, we worked with the following topics during our session:

- Significant achievements in the last year (we had many!)
- Things we should start and stop doing
- Things we should change

I'll be working in this document over the next couple of weeks grouping content and priorizing initiatives. This information will then be integrated into our processes and practices on a daily basis as well as in the department planning for 2011 / 12.

Much of our work into the next year will be related to the DL Strategy implementation, which includes requests from various schools / programs. We have completed year 1 of this implementation and will be moving into year 2. Watch for more info over the next month, as we will be working with this at the next EET meeing.

Info Graphic with lots of info on Digital Education

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media