| Issue Number One | In this AVLL Newsletter: | |
| February 1999 | Announcing our next conference | |
| Welcome to new subscribers | ||
| Glynis Bradfield, Editor | Florida Conference Report | |
| Progress to date | ||
| Special thanks | ||
| To be part of the action ... | ||
| Announcing Next AVLL Conference |
September 20-13, 1999 - Orlando, FL
All AVLL members interested in collaborating to provide quality Adventist distributed education into the next millennium, are invited to our next open conference, Friday, September 10 - Monday, September 13, 1999. Our first meeting will be at Celebration Health Hospital Conference Center in Celebration, Florida. Dr. Des Cummings, CEO of Business Development for Florida Hospital Systems, will give our keynote and Friday half-day consultation. Working sessions will follow - as will further details. This will be a great time to bring your institution's financial officers or other people you feel might be able to help us form alliances and partnerships in a business way.
| Welcome to New Subscribers |
To every subscriber, WELCOME - we're all new this month! A special welcome to those who were not able to participate in the Florida Conference, and have since subscribed. Why not share this newsletter with a colleague, and invite them to join AVLL? We're collaborating with a vision for excellence in online Adventist education, to serve students around the globe.
| Florida Conference Report |
In a three day conference, January 20-22, 1999, Seventh-day Adventist educators from across North America voluntarily gathered to openly share their hopes, visions and cautions. "Opportunities now exist", journaled Conference historian Larry Burton, "Primarily because of advanced technology, for collaboration between institutions and mutual support of a common educational mission. Through the creation of a virtual faculty or institution we could achieve benefits of size while maintaining a distributed influence in the world."
From the opening introductions, it was clear that educators had come to Florida with a common sense of urgency in meeting the demand for distributed education, the need to collaborate to share strengths and resources for a common goal. In a conference call late Wednesday, Dick Osborn, Vice-president for Education in the North American Division, expressed his interest in the development of distributed education to better serve students.
Work groups formed Thursday morning to focus on developing 'proposal' ideas in four areas identified through the Conference goals formulated Wednesday. An 'administrators group' discussed barriers and solution for continued operation and development of our vision. The communication work group proposed a model utilizing web resources to facilitate collaborative and continuing communication. The higher education group developed several models for getting started, extending to fully functional distributed education, and renewal thereof. The K-12 group discussed the creation of a voluntary organization that is outside regional or political boundaries to coordinate programs, minimize overlap, share curriculum ideas and technology expertise. As reports were shared with the whole group, a high degree of consensus of thinking was evident, and new ideas sparked as conversations continued beyond the day's conference hours.
A series of concurrent 'poster' sessions sharing some current distance projects (AE21, Reno Junior Academy, Intel-ebration Expeditions, ATIE, Nova Southeastern University, CIRCLE) developed awareness of good work in progress already, and opportunities for expansion and collaboration. Presentations by Florida High School (a virtual high school just completed its first year of operation) and Central Florida University, provided valuable insights into working models of distance education.
On this highpoint, a groundbreaking conference ended. The journey to making it happen has begun. In faith. Virtually. With talented participants. And a sense of community that includes all who wish to be a part of making Adventist education serve its high ideals beyond 2000.
Click here for a more detailed report with photos and group reports.
| Progress to Date |
The COMMUNICATION GROUP set up the website, listservs (URL's below) and newsletter to facilitate collaborative communication. The K-12 GROUP, the Adventist K-12 Alliance, is considering online conferencing about possible Academy distance ed courses to pilot-share next year. The ADMINISTATORS GROUP posted a list of forces affecting SDA education into the 21st century, reasons why we need alliances, and proposed four steps to creating an umbrella for making alliances possible. The HIGHER EDUCATION GROUP currently has a great proposal from Dr George Akers, to oversee a collaborative effort in developing a Philosophy of SDA Education course for distributed education.
RIEVA (Red Iberoamericana de Educaci—n Virtual Adventista) is an international network of Spanish-speaking Adventist Educators created in July 1998 to facilitate collaboration in virtual education. We are pleased that several members of RIEVA from the Inter-American Division were able to join the last day at the Florida Conference. We welcome this working group to the Adventist virtual learning network.
| Special Thanks |
Without the enthusiastic initiative of AVLL coordinators Bill Green, Carole Kilcher, Marilyn Eggers, Gene Brewer and Elaine Plemons, the journey toward the goal of forming alliances in delivering quality Adventist distributed education across present institutional and geographic barriers would not have begun. Thank you for daring to do what you dreamed!
A very big thank you goes to Marilyn Eggers for creating the AVLL website, encouraging communication by setting up the AVLL listservs, and sharing her rich insights and key contacts on distributed education with avll subscribers. Notably, such tools facilitate but do not create the communication needed to move education towards the goals discussed. Your participation is needed to make it happen.
| To Be Part of the Action... |
To learn more about AVLL, visit AVLL main page.
| AVLL WORK GROUPS | GROUP REPORT URL | GROUP LISTSERV |
| Main Discussion Group | index.html | avll@onelist.com |
| Administration Group | index.htmladminrep.html | avlladm@onelist.com |
| Adventist K-12 Alliance | http://www.rja.org/k12 | avllk12@onelist.com |
| Higher Ed Curriculum Group | index.htmlherep.html | avllcur@onelist.com |
| Communication Group | index.htmlcom.html | avllcoaam@onelist.com |
| RIEVA (International Network Spanish-speaking Educators) | http://www.tagnet.org/rieva/ | rieva@onelist.com |
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