A coalition of the willing: Online Learning in Colorado

One of the biggest things that I learned from CoLearning 2009, was that if the conversations about change in education are easier to have with people around the world than they are to have with people around the state, there is something intensely wrong about that. It also challenged me to think up new ways to connect with those immediately around me and to break down all of the barriers to those connections as possible.

One of the easiest barriers I see that needs to be broken down, is simply not knowing who the other people are who are working similar projects around my state. As much as I would like to think of myself as holding a unique position and looking for unique answers about online learning, I don’t know this to be the case at all because I have only talked with a few of the people that could possibly be a part of the process.

In an effort to rectify this, I have gone ahead and created a Google Spreadsheet of all of the Online Learning programs that were registered with CDE this year. I have populated it with all of the information that I could find on each program’s “change agent”. Now, I don’t necccesarily want to talk to the directors or chief academic officers of these organizations. What I really want are the people who would be most interested in sharing trade secrets and opening up the lines of communication within the group of people. I have highlighted red all of the people that I believe are already change agents within their organizations.

My hope is that by leaving this spreadsheet open to any editing (go ahead, edit it and add your own information), we will be able to get enough people together to have a good conversation about the best way to do Online Learning in Colorado. I have also put a second sheet in the spreadsheet to examine the timeline of all of the Colorado online programs. I don’t have everything in there, but I think it is a good start. Feel free to change the contact information, website, or even the name of a program. I have claimed no monopoly on truth here. I am simply asking for the network’s best effort. Have at it.