How to maximize the Blog

I wanted to share some things regarding this blog and blogging in general.

• You will notice on the right side of the blog that there are links in which you can easily access. If you have any links you believe would be helpful to our professional development or as a resource, please let me know, and I can get that added in minutes.
• Also on the right side of the blog is something called an RSS Feed. The orange button that says "SUBSCRIBE HERE" is a way that you can have this blog fed into your browser. Most browsers support Feeds (the idea is that the blog and its posts and comments are fed directly to you so you don't have to visit the blog all the time to be updated).
• The other way you can have the blog fed to you is through the email subscription box. By entering your email, the blog posts will automatically go to your email inbox so you will know when something new has been posted. Both ways are considered part of this Web 2.0 movement that has begun to make everything much easier for people to find information on the internet by having it directly sent to them. In the past (which was just a few years ago!) the internet was this massive portal of information that you could spend hours and hours searching for favorites and other information. Now, with Feeds and Tags and Social Networks, information is always available. I encourage you to either sign-up for the RSS Feed or subscribe to the blog and have it sent directly to your email.
• Some of you might have this blog blocked at school, depending on your school policy or your technology department's security set-up. I apologize if this is the case, but most everyone should be able to get to this site from home if you can't see it at work.

Some other sites you may want to check out include:

www.wordpress.com (You can create blogs here)

http://www.revolutiontheme.com/ (If you want to create a professional-looking blog that looks like a website, this site will help you do it.)

www.typepad.com (A business-oriented place to create professional blogs.)

http://www.livejournal.com/ (A cross between a blog and a social network that can be created.)

www.technorati.com (A place where you can find blogs on just about every topic, including marketing and PR and more!)

www.blogpulse.com (A site about everything blogging)

http://www.mabryonline.org/blogs/ (How a Georgia Middle School utilizes blogs)

Once again, everyone is encouraged to add comments or questions on the blog underneath the posts or email me (shaggerty@ohp.k12.oh.us) with questions or posts you want added.

Post submitted by:

Shane Haggerty

Communications Coordinator

Ohio Hi-Point Career Center

Second Life: A new, interactive way of learning

Pat Huston sent me this article today regarding how Second Life was being used academically. Kelly Herzog, the public information coordinator at Miami Valley CTC, shared with us at Capital Conference how they are using this new technology as a recruiting tool to give tours of their campus to students who do not get a chance to visit. I encourage you to visit the Second Life website to at least check it out!

www.secondlife.com

Here is the news article Pat Huston sent today:

Area nursing students work in cyberspace ER
MELISSA SANTOS; The News Tribune Last updated: November 26th, 2007 01:18 AM (PST)

Nursing students might not encounter a patient with heart dysrhythmia in real life before they graduate, but they can in Second Life.
A nursing professor at Tacoma Community College is using the online 3-D world to simulate emergency room environments for his students.
John Miller said his second-year surgery students benefit more from practicing the procedures in Second Life, an online virtual reality network, than they do from hearing about them in lectures. In Second Life, users create their own 3-D environments and navigate them using computer-generated avatars.
For the first time this quarter, Miller is having his students create online avatars that can diagnose and treat virtual patients in Second Life, which has attracted more than 10 million users worldwide since 2003.
“It’s hands-on, and you’re doing it, and you can do it from home,” Miller said. “If you want someone to remember this stuff, you have to get them involved. A paragraph isn’t going to do it.”
Using their 3-D avatars, Second Life users can wander the virtual world much like they do the real one: going shopping, dating other users and even getting jobs.
In the simulation Miller operates, students are presented with a patient lying on an operating table, suffering from a certain condition. They can instruct their avatars to treat the patient using a variety of real-life tools, including oxygen hookups, medication, defibrillation or IVs. Miller has the patient respond realistically to whatever option the students choose. The patient’s vitals are projected on the back wall of the simulated operating room.
Either Miller or another student can control the avatar of the patient and control its symptoms and reactions. The avatars’ actions are compiled into a printable log that Miller can review with the class afterward.
“We’re not going for precise things; we’re going for decision-making,” Miller said. “It’s, ‘Here’s an IV, what do I need to do with it?’”
The online scenarios provide a cheaper alternative to using high-tech practice mannequins, which cost about $70,000 each, Miller said. TCC has about four or five mannequins, which students work with under faculty supervision and share with students in other departments.
Conversely, students can access the hospital simulation from anywhere with Internet access whenever they want. That helps students become more confident about what they’re learning, said second-year nursing student Becky Bean.
“In class, you go over the theory, but you don’t really apply it,” Bean said. “Here, you can choose what medication to give and what to do, and you learn more options for dealing with a situation.”
Nursing students are required to spend some time in hospital settings as part of their coursework, but often they won’t encounter the kinds of situations Miller can simulate on Second Life, Bean said.
“It’s kind of hit-or-miss in the hospital with what you get on the day you’re there,” Bean said. “There are scenarios he can set up here you may not see, like people in life-threatening situations.”
Miller’s work with Second Life is funded through a $10,000 grant from the Distance Learning Council of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. The grant is shared with Centralia Community College, which is exploring similar uses for Second Life.
The money goes mostly toward research and software development, Miller said, but also toward purchasing real estate on Second Life. Miller estimated the costs will be about $2,500 a quarter.
Geoff Cain, an instructional designer in TCC’s distance learning department, said he’s working with Miller to explore more ways to use Second Life in educational settings.
Some groups on Second Life have already begun setting up interactive re-creations of scenes in novels or poems for English classes.
“I think we’re going to take a lot of what John is doing and be able to apply it to other disciplines,” Cain said. “We feel like we still have a lot more to develop.”

Post submitted by:
Shane Haggerty (shaggerty@ohp.k12.oh.us)
Communications Coordinator
Ohio Hi-Point Career Center

Article submitted by:
Pat Huston (pat.huston-holm@ode.state.oh.us)
Manager, Products & Customer Services
Office of Career-Technical and Adult Education
Ohio Department of Education

OAJVS name is officially changed

Please note that the Ohio Association of Joint Vocation School Superintendents (OAJVS) officially changed its name at its business meeting on November 13, 2007. The new name for the Association, effective immediately, is the Ohio Association of Career-Technical Superintendents.



Post submitted by Pat Huston from:
Thomas N. Applegate, Executive Director
Ohio Association of Career-Technical Superintendents

Monday morning thoughts

Add my thanks for this blog. My Monday morning thoughts are fresh from last week's eighth annual school improvement institute. There were more than 700 middle and high school teachers and administrators at this two-day event in Columbus. Just a few thoughts for communicator sharing:
Technology -- I attended an awesome session called "Eight Things That Your Students Know in Cyberspace that You May Not." It was conducted by Professor Gerry Davis at Bowling Green University (gdavis@nwoet.org). His topics ranged from wikis to second life, which is a virtual (online) community operated by people known as avatars in their virtual second life. He suggested that marketers should do more "crowd sourcing" by using wikis to put out and to obtain product knowledge. I admit this is pretty much all I know about it, but I am interested in knowing more if any of you can share. I also understand that Miami Valley may be launching the first high school/career center second life site soon and would love to know more about that. If you want to check out anything at Bowling Green, the URL is www.nwoet.org. I understand the campus has a "second life" site in which students can virutally "fly" (haven't we all wanted to do that?) to classes and where art students are virtually posting their work.
From the Governor's Office -- A new term to add is "positive deviant." Frances Strickland spoke at the Institute and said it is a term that she and the Governor are using to describe educators who aren't afraid to try new things. The First Lady and Governor Ted Strickland are "trying to change the public view" of education and to remove restrictions that keep teachers from using new strategies to help students learn. This is a previous switch, she said, from "scaring the public" into action.
From higher education -- Chancellor Fingerhut -- He reminded us that Google was created by two students in a dorm...and that the limits of our students have no ceiling. He was using a positive spin with colleges and universities. This may be a turn from our previous state "reality check" of emphasizing the hard-to-swallow facts. Stay tuned...

Post submitted by:
Pat Huston
Ohio Department of Education
pat.huston@ode.state.oh.us

Join the Ohio ACTE PR Academy

The Ohio ACTE Public Relations/Communicators Academy provides a forum for career technical and adult education communication professionals. This is a new group, and members are needed! If you are interested in joining the PR/Communicators Academy, please contact Ohio ACTE at 614/890-2283 or email Christine Gardner at christine@ohioacte.org and asked to be added to the PR Academy.
The direct link to the Ohio ACTE PR Academy is http://ohioacte.org/PR.html

-Information provided by Christine Gardner, Ohio ACTE Executive Director

Why a Blog?

I love blogs! I started my blog a couple of months into my new position at Ohio Hi-Point Career Center as a way to communicate with staff and other interested parties and let them know what I was doing in my office. Our staff needed educated and brought to an understanding about marketing, communications, branding and other items. They needed to understand why we run all print materials that go out through one office, why we speak with one voice, why we use standardized fonts and graphics, and on and on. For years the staff at OHP had been doing their own thing, and I was hired to change that culture. A blog was a perfect way to reach the staff. It is a place they can read about what I am up to, view ads I have put out there to the public, read about success stories, view photo galleries and provide feedback. The feedback part is the most important part. Blogs are meant to be places where a dialogue is created and on-going.
So that is why those of us who met during the OSBA Capital Conference this week agreed that a blog would be a great forum for those of us who work in Career-Tech Education, and more specifically, those of us who handle the PR, marketing, recruiting, and image for our districts.
My name is Shane Haggerty, the communications coordinator at Ohio Hi-Point Career Center in Bellefontaine, Ohio, and I welcome you to this blog, which hopefully will become a forum for sharing ideas, asking questions, learning from one another and more! I for some reason volunteered myself to start the blog and moderate it (one more thing to do!!), but I believe in this technology and feel strongly about its use in marketing and communications. I invite those of you who work in this field to post comments on the blog or email me topics you want to discuss. You can also write a blog entry via email, send it to me at shaggerty@ohp.k12.oh.us and I will post as soon as I can. Eventually, we will figure out how to best use this blog, but for now, feel free to let me know what you would like to talk about, questions you want asked of our colleagues, etc.
Finally, I attended a conference in Chicago this past September. It was all about social media (YouTube, MySpace, blogs, Wikis, RSS Feeds, etc.), and I attended a session about blogging. Here are some great tips on blogging and how blogs can work:
*Blogs are never-ending town hall meeting
*Blogs are different from articles. They should be written in "real speak."
*We need to use blogs in marketing and PR because the younger generation reads them and writes on them, and if we don't join the conversation, the conversation will continue without us and our message will be lost.
*Blogs should be written in first-person.
*Blogs can be personal anecdotes, involve telling stories, and follow-ups based on comments posted, feedback and conversations.
*Blogs should inspire comments, invite conversation, acknowledge contributions from others, encourage others to speak up.

You can visit my internal work blog at:
http://ohpcommunications.blogspot.com

You can also visit my superintendent's blog at:
http://ohiohipointsupt.blogspot.com

I will continue to educate about blogging on here and provide more links that are useful. Please let me know what you want to talk about or seek out by using this blog!