We invite you to join the more than 350,000 students and thousands of educators participating in the Alliance for Excellent Education’s (Alliance’s) first-ever Digital Learning Day on Wednesday, February 1, 2012. Visit http://www.digitallearningday.org/sign-up to stay connected, get updates, and receive exclusive information on what you can do to support this effort by taking less than five minutes to sign up and join the wave of innovation and momentum that is building for this groundbreaking event.

This national awareness campaign is designed to celebrate innovative teachers and highlight instructional practices that strengthen and personalize learning for all students. The Digital Learning Day campaign explores how digital learning can provide teachers and students with the opportunities they deserve in an effort to build or become part of a workforce that is ready to succeed in college, a career, and life.

We recently introduced Training Spotlight pages which showcase a collection of existing training specifically related to emerging topics. Each Spotlight organizes training initiatives for users to best achieve results to impact student achievement and professional development efforts.

The structured training path allows teachers to quickly build their understanding of a topic, practice the topic through projects, and after directly integrating the concepts and practices in their classroom. Educators can then reflect on how to apply the concepts in their classroom to get all students actively engaged in learning.

Training Spotlights help show teachers that technology is not a completely new thing they need to learn and use but that it can be a part of their everyday curriculum that brings new energy to teaching and learning.

Take a look at the Effective Online Teaching and Learning Spotlight here.

Atomic Learning users can now find a collection of existing training specifically related to effective online teaching and learning in one location through a new series of spotlights on technology professional development topics. As online and blended learning courses have become more prevalent, the differences between online and face-to-face instruction have come to the forefront. Effective online teaching and learning requires building knowledge of online tools and becoming comfortable with technology—whether participating in training, integration in the classroom, or providing feedback.