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VDOE

Virtual Virginia & The ActiVAted Learning Podcast

May 1, 2025 by Patrick Hausammann

 

 

Virginia Virtual (VVA) invites all K–12 educators, administrators, and central office personnel in Virginia public schools and divisions to participate in the 2024–2025 weekly VVA Statewide Professional Learning Meetings. These meetings take place every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and serve as a platform to showcase professional learning opportunities provided by VVA and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE).

In June, the focus of the Statewide Professional Learning Meetings will be the Activated Learning Podcast series. This series is produced by Blue Ridge PBS in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Education and the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE). Each episode of the podcast features conversations with leading educators who share their insights on what energizes and excites them about teaching. They discuss innovative ways to use technology to enhance student engagement and learning.

To register for the Virtual Virginia Statewide Weekly Meetings register here. 

To listen to the Podcasts click here.

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Filed Under: Blog, VDOE Tagged With: Activated Learning, Activated Learning Podcast, VDOE, VVA

Activating the ActiVAtED Learning Podcast

April 30, 2024 by Patrick Hausammann

Written by Tom Landon, the Director of Educational Innovation at Blue Ridge PBS

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When I was a kid I thought one day I’d like to be a disk jockey at a radio station, but after graduating with a degree in telecommunications and getting my first job working the console from midnight to six a.m. at KFMU, an album rock station in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I soon realized that the job was a lot less glamorous than I’d envisioned. It was a lot less like being Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati than I hoped (If you know, you know, and if you don’t, find an old episode of the show and watch it!) For one, it was pretty lonely sitting in a small soundproof room every night playing songs for the folks stocking shelves overnight at the Safeway, so I pivoted to video production, moving to Roanoke to work for a TV station and then an independent production company where I got to travel regularly, mostly producing ads and marketing videos for industrial clients, car dealers, and even cosmetic surgeons.

When that  company failed, and with the encouragement of my smart wife, I settled on teaching and went back to school to become a social studies teacher. It was the dawn of the computer age in education, and I quickly realized that my technical background was a huge benefit in the classroom. Since then I’ve had a varied career, working in education and media production. In 2021 I left Virtual Virginia where I’d been the Director of Instruction and returned to Blue Ridge PBS, where I’d had a summer internship in 1985 and been a K-12 Specialist from 2000-2007. My current job is a blend of production and education work, which is a perfect fit.

Last year I was part of a team from VSTE and VDOE that was tasked with creating a new podcast designed to put a spotlight on innovative uses of instructional technology while also elevating the profession of teaching. We spent several months deciding what we wanted the podcast to be, and in early December we recorded the first episode at the annual VSTE conference in Roanoke where we interviewed Blended Learning guru Dr. Catlin Tucker in front of more than a hundred attendees, and spent time recording short interviews with other folks in attendance. I can honestly say it’s been some of the most rewarding work of my career, and I’ve come to love the simplicity and intimacy that podcasts provide versus the complex nature of video production.

I had a lot of fun assembling a mobile podcast kit that holds an audio recorder, 4 microphones, mic stands, cables, and power cords. Because I work for a television station, I was able to source a lot of it from equipment at hand. It’s a little heavier than I’d like, and I’ll be making some modifications before we start on our second season, but overall it worked well.

This morning I edited the last episode of our 12 episode season. To record it I visited Suffolk Public Schools, where they host the SEAL Challenge, a collaboration with Penn State that allows kids to choose between submersible and land based robots and aerial drones to complete a highly complex task. The episode is emblematic of the series, which has featured award winning teachers, librarians who delivered books to students during the COVID summer using drones, a trailer converted to high tech lab in Washington County, and an ITRT who set up two Virtual Reality Labs in Bristol. Each episode is available by video on ECHO, a streaming channel of Blue ridge PBS focused on Education, Community, Health and Opportunity, as well as on the major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify.

So what did I learn this year? For one, that I missed the camaraderie and collaboration that comes with production work. The ActiVAtED Learning team provided great topics and guests and also gave me valuable feedback. I learned a ton of new technical skills. The podcast is recorded using a video camera synchronized to a 6 channel digital audio recorder. I edited the first season using Apple’s Final Cut Pro, but a coworker has convinced me to switch to a new application called Adobe Podcast for next year, so that’ll be another chance to build my technical skills. But probably the most important thing I learned was that I still love getting out of the office and meeting great educators. Now more than ever, teaching is hard, so I hope that ActiVAtED Learning accomplishes our goal of encouraging teachers not to give up - to look for new ways to stretch their brains and build their skillsets.


If you haven’t yet listened to ActiVAtED Learning,  give it a listen and if you like it, please follow and review at least one episode. You can find all of the shows by going on our website at https://www.blueridgepbs.org/educational-resources/activated-learning/

If you’ve got an idea for an episode for season 2 or questions about the production process, drop me a line at activatedlearning@blueridgepbs.org. Happy listening!

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Filed Under: Blog, VDOE, VSTE Partners Tagged With: Activated Learning, Blue Ridge PBS, podcast, VDOE

ActiVAtED Learning Podcast is LIVE!

January 18, 2024 by Patrick Hausammann

The VSTE Education Committee is excited to share the new ActiVAtED Learning, a new Podcast produced by Blue Ridge PBS in partnership with the Virginia Department of Education and in collaboration with the Virginia Society for Technology in Education. In each episode, host Tom Landon, Director of Educational Innovation for Blue Ridge PBS, talks to leading educators about what gets them energized and excited as we tell stories of using technology to inspire student engagement.

The inaugural season will feature conversations with national leaders in blended learning, award winning teachers, librarians, and guests from the Virginia Department of Education and VSTE. Recorded on location around the Commonwealth and in the Blue Ridge PBS podcast studio, the season kicks off with a conversation recorded live at the 2023 VSTE Conference with Dr. Catlin Tucker, noted educator, author, and nationally recognized expert on blended learning and proponent of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the classroom.

The 12-episode season launched January 17 with new episodes adding every two weeks.   To learn more about the podcast, click here. You can subscribe to the podcast here or on ECHO.

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Filed Under: Blog, VDOE Tagged With: Activated Learning, Education Committee, podcast, VDOE

Incident Response is a Team Sport: A Cybersecurity Event

January 31, 2023 by Rod Carnill

According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), when it comes to cybersecurity, K-12 school divisions are “particularly lucrative targets due to the amount of sensitive student data accessible through school systems.”

Incident Response is a Team Sport is an event designed to provide participants with the opportunity to experience how a cybersecurity incident may unfold and how an Incident Response Plan can help minimize loss of information and disruption of services.  K-12 division-level leadership including superintendents, assistant superintendents, technology directors, network admins, and other critical staff who would be involved in incident response decisions should attend. The objective for the day is for schools to leave with a draft of an IRP if they do not already have one, or to refine the one they already have as a result of interacting with cybersecurity and legal experts throughout the day.

We will start the day with district teams engaging in a tabletop exercise to provide an opportunity for school division leaders to strengthen their cybersecurity program awareness, plans, decision-making process, and capabilities.  We will also use the tabletop exercise to determine key considerations for the core components of your division’s IRP.  During the time together, you will have an opportunity to review and update your Incident Response Plan with feedback from colleagues from other divisions as well as agency and organization cybersecurity experts.  It is recommended you register with your division team to get the most out of the tabletop exercise.  The afternoon sessions will provide breakout sessions geared toward the specific operational, legal, communications, and technical concerns of those in the crucial division-level leadership roles mentioned above.

To accommodate divisions in different geographical regions, the event will be offered twice once on March 14th at Richard Bland College of William and Mary in South Prince George, and again with the same agenda on March 30th at the New College Institute in Martinsville.  It is strongly recommended that you register with a team from your division.  Lunch will be provided.

Register your team for the Richard Bland College event on March 14th or the New College Institute event on March 30th by pointing your browser to bit.ly/incident-response-23.

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Filed Under: Blog, Events, Live Events, VDOE, VSTE News

Join Us for Supporting Educators’ EdTech Selection and Implementation Webinar

January 19, 2023 by Brian Thomas

If you are interested in using evidence in your technology decisions, this is the webinar for you! Join us for the Thursday, January 26th at 4:00 webinar Supporting Educators' EdTech Selection and Implementation.

The EdTech Evidence Exchange will go over information on gathering timely evidence from your educators. In 30 minutes you will hear about a partnership between the VDOE Office of STEM and the EdTech Evidence Exchange that pays Virginia mathematics-involved educators to offer their insights into how technology is working (or not working) for them. Your data are available instantly in an online platform, in time for budget justifications and decisions, and will support ongoing implementation decisions.

Register to attend!

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Filed Under: Blog, Events, Online Events, VDOE

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