Quest Atlantis in Central Florida

Posted by jrdeleon on Sep 20, 2009 in QA Community of Practice, Teacher Voices |

The Quest Atlantis experience is taking over the Central Florida area like a storm. As Central Floridians, we have grown accustomed to all kinds of storms, but Quest Atlantis is “blowing everyones mind”. Starting with the first two schools last year, we now have nine trained schools within the Seminole County area. At the same time as the quantity of participating schools increases, a number of support structures have been designed to insure a strong collaborative network for educators participating in the QA virtual world environment.

One of the initiatives is the Seminole County Schools – Quest Atlantis Support Group, created by Janine McGrath on Ning. It serves as a Web 2.0 tool to facilitate communication and collaboration between QA teachers in Seminole County, Florida.

Collaboration for Florida QA teachers

In addition, a private wiki called Quest Atlantis Educators of Florida provides a secured area for QA Florida educators to collaborate in the alignment of the quests and missions of QA with the latest Florida State Standards. The final product is a current aligned lesson which can be uploaded to the individual teacher’s school or county website to be used by other QA teachers. Florida teachers are invited to request an invitation to join this wiki which is managed by Jesus R. De Leon, one of the Seminole County QA teachers.

Facebook as well as Linked-in groups are also being formed to promote the Quest Atlantis Educators of Florida initiative…if you are a Florida educator or administrator please join our groups to continue to spread the QA news!

Finally, a professional workshop called “3D Virtual Worlds in Education: A Look at the Virtual World Experience of Quest Atlantis as a pedagogical approach to impact 21st Century learners“ is to be presented at the Florida Association of Teacher Educators (FATE) Conference to be held at the Advanced Technology College, Daytona State College in Daytona Beach, on Friday and Saturday, October 9th and 10th . The theme of the conference is The ART of Teaching New Millennium Learners: Access, Resources and Technology and it will explore how teachers, teacher educators, district professional development facilitators, and others work together to make informed decisions which impact student learning in virtual schools and promote collegial dialogue among instructional professionals at all levels regarding distance education.

Video teaser for FATE conference presentation

Quest Atlantis educators presenting in the workshop will include Roxanne De Leon from Full Sail University, Deborah Gordon from St. Mary Magdalen School in Altamonte Springs, Florida and Jesus R. De Leon from Seminole County Public Schools.

It is obvious that the Central Florida Quest Atlantis educators are excited, eager and ready to make a difference with the education of our 21st Century learners!

... other posts by jrdeleon

Tags: collaboration, community, conference, quest atlantis, standards, teacher contribution

3 Comments

Bron Stuckey

Sep 24, 2009 at 5:06 am

Jesus and team,
It is great to see how proactive people in Florida are being in getting behind teachers effectively implementing QA with Florida Standards. Building community and getting QA teachers to recognise and include each other in their personal learning networks (PLNs) is a great step forward. And it is more than just putting QA users together, it makes QA clearly a part of their professional practice as teachers. Florida is taking the lead on this in a model that other states and districts may want to follow. Bravo to Janine McGrath, Jesus De Leon, Roxanne De Leon and Deborah Gordon for your leadership and dedication!

Jan Eade

Sep 24, 2009 at 10:54 am

How great to see such collaboration centred around Quest Atlantis. With a ning support group,
wiki aligned to Florida State Standards and a conference workshop presentation, Quest Atlantis is obviously alive and well in Florida. Congratulations to all involved in this impressive network initiative.