Making Online more F2F...

When I started this course, I thought online schooling was in direct opposition to face-to-face learning.  You could have one or the other.  You were either going with the flow of technology or holding onto the past.  Which side are you on? I see now that this is not the case with strong third-place and blended educational environments that take advantage of the benefits of each mode of learning.  This is wonderful!

In reality though, I still think the extremes, f2f vs. online, are going to be directly compared for budgetary, administrative, and policy reasons.  Is this right?  Probably not, but there is a lot at stake for a lot of people and we are not just talking about for future students.

This realization got me thinking again about some of the problems that I originally had with online learning and the quality of student life and development.  Schooling and development is more than just book smarts.  It extends beyond academic standards to the development of students in other ways.

The OpenCourseWare initiative out of MIT supports this idea as they have made much of the content from their courses available online for free.  As altruistic and egalitarian as this program sounds, I think MIT is comfortable with this move because they know that the real value of an MIT education reaching far beyond lecture notes, readings, and assignments.  

• Athletics
• Clubs - Computers, Chess, Drama, etc...
• Student interaction
• Teacher interaction
• Interships and research
• Socialization
• Physical education
• Cambridge, MA and Boston 
• Other extra curricular activities

I've loved technology my entire life, but I am a skeptic when it comes to application and penetration.  I find that technology is too often portrayed as the much hyped panacea for everything... and I mean EVERYTHING.

This week I will be turning my attention to exploring whether purely online students can really make up for the loss of these extra curricular activities and see what people are currently doing.  I am going to concentrate on athletics and physical education since they are two things that I only have a vague understanding of how you might pull them off remotely.

I thought this was an interesting online fitness program.

“The difference between combat and sport is that in combat you
bury the guy who comes in second.”
Unidentified Navy SEAL on the Discovery Channel’s “U.S. Navy SEALs II” 1999

SEAL FIT Online Coaching Program

" ... Access to our Online Training Platform and Online Journal"

REsearch

Research is Necessary
For online schooling to succeed, research is necessary to find out what works and what doesn't.  I think research should be done both in-house and by third parties for completeness.  I am a HUGE proponent of data transparency and think that the best results will come when data is in the hands of motivated unknowns.  I bet some kid in the middle of nowhere will crunch through endless numbers to find the best high school program just right for her, before dropping out to sell her analysis for millions.... if she ever gets the data that is.

Privacy and Security
Before our heroine can get the data to produce her analysis to make her millions to catch the spider, many privacy and security issues must be overcome.  How much information can be released before infringing on student privacy?   All?  Some? Filtered data?  This question gets tricky pretty quickly when you think about all of the different things that can be captured nowadays in the digital realm.  IP addresses?  Access times? Submission times? Locations?  Video? Audio?  Contact networks? family income?  Lunch program?

From a security stand point, we have to be mindful of what researchers or girls in the middle of nowhere are going to do with potentially sensitive data.  Will they sell it with other identifying information?  Will they be able to protect it if it is not truly public?  Are schools equipped and knowledgeable enough to collect and store raw data effectively?  Technology is a beast that affords people great power without full understanding.

Technology Moves Fast
With technology advancing the way that it does, it will be hard to make apples-to-apples online program comparisons through the years.  Cutting edge technologies will be recycling bin fodder in just a few years.  It was interesting reading some of the articles that spoke about online learning just a few years apart and how different they were.  This trend is most likely going to accelerate as further innovation comes to education.

Who Should Have Access?
One of the questions that I had about research was who should have access to the data?  I say everyone. Should average joes on the street have access?  Should this information be sold like market data on the stock exchanges?  Should students and parents be given incentives to participate?  Maybe for more money for the school?  Would people exchange free cellphone minutes for giving up some personal information? Should people be allowed to individually opt-out?  Should parents have access to all of their student's work?  How much information about teachers and administration can be included with student data?

Can Data be Used Across Domains?
Can an online math class be compared to an online music or humanities class?  Is that fair?  Is all of this research ultimately overly narrow with limited applicability?

These are all questions that are bouncing around my head.  This week was interesting, but not as interesting as it could be since we were mainly reading...  The next couple of sessions should be fun as we are off to explore some of these ideas with our own research!

I almost forgot my picture!

In college, I would always flip through REsearch magazine while waiting in line at Tower Records... always an interesting read.

Meta this, meta that...

Studies related to technology are somewhat frozen in time.  By the time that they are produced, they are already dated.

Metaanalysis is a wonderful stop gap technique, but should not take the place of actual first-hand studies.  I hadn't read papers using effect sizes in forever, so I had to review my stats to make sure that the methods that I was familiar with were the ones that they were using in the studies.

I still find it interesting that there aren't baseline academic metrics yet.... like they would emerge in the weeks since I last noted this.  It seems like someone should market an "online education rating" service to do this.  Anyone want in?  The more schools that get involved, the more necessary it becomes for others to publish specific and timely academic metrics.  Kind of like a Moody's rating service, but for schools... and without the conflict of interest that throws the world into financial peril.  Paying a profit making establishment to rate you provides too many incentives that can lead to doom.  We don't need an educational crisis of financial proportions.  Can this be done efficiently by a third-party?  I would think so.

There was a lot of talk of meta this week, but I would like to see a meta-recommation that creates a consolidated data and practice recommendation based on the recommendations from all of these studies.  I am sure that I'm losing some great ones from week to week.

The reports this week were interesting, but I felt like I was reading, and reading, and reading, etc...  I still want to know who gets their hands on them?  Who reads the THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION?  Can parents find these reports?  Can teachers?  Can students?  We know it is out there, but who else is reading?

The Hughes paper touched on the subject of cheating... "support" as she called it...  I have been ignoring this aspect of online learning entirely, making the assumption that people are learning for the sake of learning, but this is naive.  Maybe for a college student.... Just maybe, but for K-12?  I think I need to think about this some more.  We discussed this for a second in our group, but thought that it was outside the scope our our project.  Should curriculum designers overly concern themselves with this?  Should an online teacher?

From an assessment standpoint, it should be a hassle to cheat for the majority of students. With digital rights management for example, a level of protection that thwarts the majority of "casual" pirates is good enough because they know they can't do anything about "motivated" pirates.

To what lengths must teachers and writers ultimately go in light of the fact that we are moving into technologies that are abstracted and obscured from all but techies?  This is like the analogy that I made previously about people no longer being able to DYI tinker on their cars anymore because of all of the computer assistance.

... but they didn't.

There was no chem regents that year because of "motivated" pirates.

My final grade was my regents grade and that was fine with me.

Should teachers and unit designers plan for this case?

Project Work Shouldn't Stop Spring Training Play

I was really nervous going into this curriculum unit because I had never actually written a formal unit before, but it turned out to be a really fun and rewarding experience.  I learned a lot from both the process and from my partner who has more real-world teaching experience than I do.  What more could you ask for?  My partner and I started out by brainstorming ideas individually.  We drafted ideas and noted useful and interesting resources in a wiki we created for our course before coming together over a skype call.  It is always good to put a voice and face to a username that you have been "talking" to for the duration of the course.  I still don't love wiki's because of their loose structure and organization, but it worked well in our case because there were just two of us.  I am sure we would have run into more problems if we had had four people in our group.  Using a new wiki platform got me thinking about how many different "free" services there are out there for the same need.

Out of this call, we were able to take our loose ideas and develop a coherent action plan that we used to divide the work.  Sometimes we would divide work on clear boundaries, while other times we would provide support for work that the other was working on.  For example, I might write some prose, but leave a place holder where an appropriate reference or example should be.  My partner would insert the missing element whenever he could.  What was interesting about this approach was that it worked without explicit direction.  I didn't have to tell him to fill in the blank, it was just part of our workflow.  If I couldn't fill it in off the bat, he would take a shot at it, before I returned to it and invested more time in filling it in.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many is the spoken word worth?  I think we spoke synchronously three or four times.  We used these times to power through outstanding questions and comments.  There are definite efficiencies gained through synchronous work.  While we emailed a few times for the purpose of coordinating our synchronous talks, most of our asynchronous communication actually happened directly in the wiki.  We had a list of comments and questions that would expand and contract as the project moved forward.

Working remotely was great!  We got our work done over great distance without having to sacrifice other activities for face-to-face interactions that I don't think would have made us any more efficient. In fact, the biggest con of working remotely was that it gave us the ability to work on our project while on vacation!!!!  Is this good or bad?  It depends on whom you ask.  I think we worked on our project from a total of four states and were physically closer on vacation than we are when "in class."  You've got to love technology when the biggest issue is having to schedule work around spring training baseball, family beach time, and TC vacations.

I also think who you work with makes a big difference when collaborating remotely and I didn't have any issues there.  I only have great things to say about my project partner and am happy with what we produced together.

Side notes:

• The transition to the new moodle server is still puzzling me.  Am I on it?  I am not getting any notifications from test posts and I don't see anyone else on yet.
• If you have iTunes, it is interesting to see how Florida Virtual School is using it - http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/inFlorida.edu

I am a die hard yankee fan, but my son loves Wally the Green Monster...

Fearing and loathing in curriculum...

We are going to be starting the development portion of our course where we will have to take what we have learned from the consumer side of online schooling and apply it on the production side.  Fun!

...except for the fact that I don't really know how to formally write curriculum for a f2f course!  One of the requirements that I had for a good online teacher was that they would have experience with f2f courses to draw upon.  The same goes for curriculum writing as well.  I guess I'm failing my own criterion...

Since I have never formally taught in a school system, I have always had the freedom to alter instruction, lesson plans, and style as radically and immediately as needed as long as there were net gains.  With formal curriculum writing however, there's a sense of finality to it that slightly scares me.

Things that keep jumping into my mind include:

• How can you clearly define goals, but keep them open ended enough, so that you can adapt to the strengths, weaknesses, and interests of the students?
• Should courses be finalized or living and breathing works-in-progress?
• How can you keep the pace flexible yet realistically bound?
• How can you keep students motivated?
• How can you keep technology inconspicuous and in the periphery?  
• How can you better involve parents?
• How do you deal with the divergence in thinking between what kids should learn and what and how the governing bodies want the kids to learn?
• How do you make the course inexpensive to both create and maintain?
• How do you avoid reinventing the wheel and NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome?
• How do you decide on the target audience?
• How do you decide on the target platform and requirements?  Will the course work on a decade old computer?
• How applicable will one curriculum model be toward other subjects or courses?  Can things be reused? 
• How do you balance synchronous/asynchronous communication?
• etc...

Fortunately for me, my partner for this segment of the course is a real f2f teacher, so I look forward to learning a lot from him about the realities in the trenches.  This should be an interesting learning experience.

Does the course have to run on this?

Marketing 101

My views of my schools have been pretty consistent throughout despite having to dig and dig and dig for information in and around the schools' sites.  Over the weeks, I have learned a great deal specifically about my chosen schools and online learning in general, but there were no major breakthroughs or revelations about the actual schools.  Much was actually touched on in the initial "What are the basics for your school?" research.

One minor thing that I noticed that falls outside of most schooling critiques (outside of our group of course!) is how my feelings have changed on their approach to marketing.  At first, I believed that they were taking a hands-off approach where they had what students needed to succeed and if you wanted it, they would be there for you.  Using a slightly caustic analogy - a dealer rather than a pusher.... BUT, after reading closely between the lines over the weeks, it sounds more like they just couldn't execute.  Their poor job marketing shines a very different light on the schools.  If they want to market themselves, then they need to commit to marketing themselves.  It doesn't take endless resources to address many of the short comings of their strategy.  Listening to and incorporating feedback would be a great place to start.

I am comfortable with my school placements given the level of information that was available except for the question about who generates content.  The standard line on the sites is that most content is generated locally by local teachers, but I would find hints, not proof, of content being created elsewhere buried deep within the sites.  This was confusing, but I ultimately went with the most official, highest level value.


Observations:

• Delta Cyber School (DCS) targets the nascent connected home schooling market.  Home schooling isn't just for "end of the worlders" and child actors.  Genius market to go after.
• Hawaii Virtual Learning Network's E-School is meant as an extension to traditional f2f schooling.  It was the second Virtual School in the U.S.
• DCS allows students to participate in all f2f student, social, and athletic events.
• Elementary school kids at DCS use home schooling kits (Calvert Kits).  I didn't know anything about Calvert and would like to look at them in more depth in the future.  The Calvert kits made me wonder why the middle and high school content was produced locally, but Elementary content was purchased?  What does that say about educational techniques at different ages? 
• The sites were underwhelming.  I expected more from both sites.  I feel like redoing their sites as a project!
• Both schools lend/lease computers and other equipment to students working from home.  Corporate sponsors help out here.  This is neat, but I found conflicting information on the sites stating that students are required to have the technology in place before enrolling.
• You can't take the information on the sites as definitive - they said that their courses were made by local teachers, but as you read more and more and deeper and deeper, you find out that a lot of the courses might have been based on content from other sources.  I say might because it was vague whether the content was purchased or just based on external resources.
• Numbers were shaky at best. I found conflicting numbers as I did more research.  Out of context "state authorized" numbers wouldn't align with any of the other numbers on the site.
• Physical education credits can be done at home.  I was wondering how this would work.
• Credit recovery is a huge part of both schools.
• Fee structure is different for each school.
• How do schools make a choice between CMS?  Moodle is open source, but is it free?
• The schools were more structured and not as personalized as I thought they would be.  I don't like how you can't take courses at literally your own speed.  Why shouldn't I be able to mull over a point for weeks until I "get it?"  Sometime little details at random locations in a course can throw you off track.  If you can weather that stormy period however long it takes, the rest of the class might fall into line.
• I noticed that both schools focused on the learning experience with the teacher over the s2s aspects online.  They both have real in person contact, but they did not speak to the point of s2s interactivity online directly.  Why?

A side note that I keep coming back to:
DCS peaked my interest in home schooling, so I started to dig around.


I wanted to know if this one superstar athlete was home schooled with the help of FLVS.  I am not a college football fan, but I knew his name and it struck me as interesting that he has impacted the home schooling movement and peripherally online education in the south.

"Home schooling is definitely reaching a tipping a point in terms of popularity," said Lips. "As more families do it, I think we can expect to see even more families follow that path." 

More families also are learning that teaching their kids at home is easier these days, thanks to the ever-growing network of support groups and the increasing availability of high-tech programs such as Florida Virtual School, which allows public- and private-school students and home-schoolers to take classes or complete an entire school year online.

News of star football quarterback Tim Tebow's experience with home schooling has shined a spotlight on the option. Tebow, who recently graduated from University of Florida, learned at home but played football with a public high-school team in the Jacksonville area.

"Since Florida is friendly to home-schoolers who want to participate in extracurricular activities, and Tim Tebow shows what can be achieved through a home education, he may be giving parents the confidence to home-school," said Ian Slatter, a director for the Home School Legal Defense Association, a nonprofit advocacy group with headquarters in Virginia.

- From the Palm Beach Post

Another snippet on Tebow's effect on the home schooling movement:

On January 7, 2007, Tebow was featured prominently in an ESPN “Outside The Lines” feature on homeschooled athletes seeking equal access to high school athletics in other states. Because a homeschooler’s access to public and private school athletic functions vary by state, Tebow and Washington Redskins defensive end Jason Taylor (who was allowed to play at his local high school in Pennsylvania) argue in favor of extending the right to play for local teams to more states.

Upon becoming the first home-schooled athlete to be nominated for the Heisman Trophy, Tebow remarked, “That’s really cool. A lot of times people have this stereotype of homeschoolers as not very athletic – it’s like, go win a spelling bee or something like that – it’s an honor for me to be the first one to do that.”

Tebow’s example inspired equal access supporters in Alabama to name their bill in the Alabama Legislature “The Tim Tebow Bill”. The bill, which is pending in the Alabama Legislature, will allow Alabama homeschool athletes to play for their local high school teams just as Tebow did in Florida.

In January 2009, the “Tebow bill” was introduced in the Kentucky General Assembly. This bill, which is still pending, is also modeled after Florida state law, allowing homeschool athletes to play for their local sports teams.

Tim Tebow received the 2008 Quaqua Protégé Award as an outstanding home-education graduate.

From http://www.tebowzone.com/about

I never did find out if he took courses at FLVS...

Teacher, Teacher...

This week we reviewed the impact and development of online teachers.

I was turned off by the concept of "teacher-proofing" virtual courses.  I don't see how taking creative input and course guidance out of the hands of teachers positively affects the course.  Even in a recent thought exercise where I had actors teaching courses, they still could respond to their audience and potentially change their performance based on how things are evolving.  Being able to inject class and even student-relevant information, context, and application into courses is important to me.

I thought it was interesting that the near elimination of classroom management provides teachers with more time to connect with their students.  Eliminate having to lord over the room and that time can be better used.  But once again, we are dealing with motivated students.  How much classroom management issues would there be with a room full of highly motivated students?

Both HVLN's E-school and Delta Cyber School provided teachers with courses in the Course Management package of choice, but I had a hard time finding out how else the teachers were trained for the online environment.  If the bulk of time needed to train teachers is concentrated on learning technology, does that mean that younger, more technology adept, online teachers will make up the majority?  In addition to generalized technology literacy, I am talking about usage of the Course Management packages themselves.  I am sure there are young people at TC right now that can build on their prior usage in high school, college, and grad school and learn the producer side of the Course Management systems over lunch.

What will this mean to have younger teachers potentially with little or no f2f experience?  I would like to see current demographic information on online teachers beyond those of the "Going Virtual" sample.  Actual ages are of interest to me because I can get a sense of exposure to technology.

I ran across the growth of home schoolers who take advantage of online schooling.  This segment intrigues me more and more because of my myopic view of what and who home schoolers were.

I didn't see teacher development to the extent demonstrated by the Louisiana Virtual School.  It seemed like my schools were all one phase programs - learn the software and you are off the the races.  I did like the LVS's phases and their coverage.

I love the concept of teachers helping other teachers to excel and grow in the online environment. I find it funny that much is being made of this since it seems like the only way to go! I guess it is being mentioned because the schools should make this intercommunication as fluid as possible.

I didn't like what seemed like a push to get kids to take virtual courses before graduating.  I love love love technology, but I am not one of those people who believes in technology just for technology's sake.  If there isn't a need, don't use it.  The shift to required courses may reduce the number of "motivated students" and expose a very different side of online schooling.  I don't think f2f is going anywhere anytime soon, so students should take courses in the format that is most beneficial to them.  

As with the VS NACOL survey, I found that the teacher survey was a lot of common sense mixed with oddity.

"Facilitates and monitors appropriate interaction among students."

This was interesting because students can always have out-of-band conversations.  Is it the responsibility of the teacher to keep conversations through proper channels?

"Demonstrates the ability to effectively use word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software."

This is always tricky because, which package you use can impact how well these skills come across.  I have difficulty... mostly frustration.... with Google Docs.  Things that I do easily in Excel aren't as easy for me to do in Docs. I wouldn't want to be penalized because of my choice of package.  I would almost abstract this a bit to capture the skills and not project it onto actual software. 

"Assesses each student’s background and content knowledge and uses these data to plan instruction."

I think this is great, but how individualized can these classes be?  I have yet to see an example of an individualized course at either of my schools.  I can think of how it works, but I haven't seen one yet.  Speaking to my earlier point,  I fear that "teacher-proofing" will creep in as more and more schools grow reliant on external content making this point hard to satisfy.... and not because of the teacher. 

"Meets the state’s professional teaching standards or has academic credentials in the field in which he or she is teaching."

Does this open the door to people in industry teaching?  Very interesting and up my alley because none of the people that I want to volunteer will jump through hoops to get state certification or give up hours to take other forms of standardized tests when they have demonstrated their subject knowledge through work and prior academics.

On the matter of Teacher ratios, I was disappointed that the information was not more readily available.  Class and school stats like these should be upfront and center on all of these sites.  I also had a hard time with scale.  I didn't really know if my values were high or low because I didn't have a good reference point. What are we comparing it against? F2F? Other online programs?  Does that metric even make sense?  The funny thing is that I wouldn't care how many students were being served if my experience is a good one. All of these schools should take advantage of economies of scale!  Technology can help increase the ratio in a non-destructive manner.

I didn't understand the social reform component of the TPI.  It felt like they threw it in as a counter weight to other values.  Are there many people in the social reform camp?  It felt like the social change that they were promoting had a specific trajectory.

Random chuckle:  When I do my reading, I put all of my files in a single folder, identify them by their filenames for note taking, and then chug through them.  I had to laugh how midway through "Chap10.pdf", I thought the author's definitions and tone sounded very much like that of Prof. Lowes.  Ha!  In a paper environment, I would refer to the printout by the author.  In an electronic setting, I refer to the reading by its filename.  I wonder if people print out notes or do electronic reading?

I know Apple and Adobe are not on the greatest of terms right now, but I am surprised that they did not demonstrate and play up a dedicated Apple PDF viewer (like preview) for the iPad.  It can display pdf's emailed to the device, so why not make a dedicated viewer especially since files can now be moved over USB directly to the device?

Also, PDF's are wonderful, but true PDF's are even better.  I really like to be able to copy and paste, highlight, and annotate directly in my documents.  Are there any studies that compare the effectiveness of online note taking with written note taking?  I would think that the process of writing out notes in my own words would be more involved, active, and beneficial for retention?  I will have to check on this...  

Another good week!

Step Right Up...

The charter and for-profit schools generally presented themselves better than the state schools.  Better content. Better information design.  Better graphics design.  This is most likely due to the fact that they are competing directly for student dollars.  If state schools do not care about the competition, then everything is fine, but I noticed wording and dead links on their sites to the contrary.  Development funds are always an important resource that larger institutions are fortunate to have, but a strong web initiative can be developed completely and inexpensively with better planning, organization, and a little bit of creative drive.

The NACOL check list seemed to be mostly common sense sprinkled with odd and often vague requirements.

For example, "The course intentionally emphasizes 21st century skills in the course, including using 21st century skills in the core subjects, 21st century content, learning and thinking skills, ICT literacy, self-directed learning, global awareness, and includes 21st century assessments, as identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills."

What are 21st century skills?  Do we really want to focus on these 21st century skills in the online domain?  I was part of a cultural exchange program to Cuba a number of years ago and attended a lecture about their career planning at the university level.  The government assigned students to careers that they believed would be important in the coming century.  I chuckled at their planning then as I do about the partnership's now.  We should be very careful here.  I don't think we need radical shifts as much as we need better execution on what we do now.

Another checkbox that I had problems with was, "The course reflects multicultural education and is accurate, current and free of bias."

Is that possible?  How would Alpha Omega Academy score on that one?  How about coursework on wars or global warming?

The NACOL list did not speak to me about online coursework as much as it did about coursework in general.  There is nothing wrong with that, but it feels like it misses the mark coming from the NACOL.

I was disappointed to find more externally sourced content at my schools than their press, FAQs, and course descriptions led me to believe.  Is there greater value in internally produced content?  Do students care?  Do parents care?

I'm surprised how many minor contraints there are on the online learning environment: class pacing,  content sourcing, platforms, tools, etc...  For example, it looks to me like most courses still originate from a single source as opposed to being composed of the best content for each topic regardless of where it comes from.  

Isn't this truly the wave of the future?

TM™

I originally wanted to review the Alaska Virtual School™ (AKVS™) for my for-profit/charter research, but after closer inspection, it was not recognized by the NACOL clearing house.  AKVS™ has a nice public facing appearance, ample content, AND something that I'm always happy to see, nice DEMOs of their experience!

The AKVS™ platform is based around The Learning Center™ from an outfit called Illuminated Learning™.  I had not heard of either before.  Curriculum for The Learning Center™ is provided by a number of different providers from McGrawHill™ and Rosetta Stone™ to National Geographic™ and HippoCampus™.  It is interesting to note that Alaska Virtual School™ has very little to do with Alaska at all.  In fact, other than a quick mention of Alaska being a state of home schoolers, there isn't anything.  I will have to research some of the other schools run by Illuminated Learning™ to see if there is much difference in presentation or if they just use templates.  The Illuminated Learning™ site has many of the same stock photographs.

I half jokingly included all of those ™ symbols, but I also wanted to draw attention to how quickly you realize that you are no longer looking at the site of a public institution.  Instead of AKVS™, I decided to look for a more suitable program based out of Alaska to see how they addressed weather and distance related issues with online schooling.

My choice was the Delta Cyber School, a charter school based out of the Delta/Greely school district.

Things that I learned:

Delta Cyber School services diverse needs, but they also actively target home schoolers!  Unlike our current debate about whether the online schools that we have examined thus far are positioning themselves as alternatives to or extensions of f2f programs, DCS is positioning itself as a pure alternative to home schooling.  Neat!  Alaska is a very home school friendly state, so this make a lot of sense.  I hadn't really thought about that specific need before.  The school is free if you are not attending any other schools and fee-based for everyone else.  Who absorbs the costs?  Parent or school?

"DCS is a great alternative to homeschooling for parents who don’t feel comfortable teaching high-level courses (Chemistry, Calculus, British Literature, Alaska History) or subjects that require specialized skills (Spanish, Photoshop, Desktop Publishing)."

I had never really spent time thinking about the details of homeschooling and what would make the segment better.  DCS has.

There are four labs / third-places around the state where students can go to get their DCS work done.  This is one of the first examples of third places that I have come across.

Alaska has a corporate hardware donation/loaner program that provides students with loaner technology for their online classes.   OK, but who pays for connectivity?

Exit exams are requirements for graduation.  I wondered how Physical Education classes would be dealt with in an online schooling environment and they apparently deal with them the same way that they deal with any exit exam - you keep taking the exit test over and over again until you pass it.  I believe that all students should be required to play a sport every season instead of going to gym class.  Gym serves too narrow a purpose in my mind...

DCS uses the blackboard educational platform for their classes.  How did they decide on that?  How much of it was marketing?

The school was first chartered in 1997 and renewed for a 10 year charter in 2002.  Will it be renewed again in 2012?  I didn't get a feel for that other than from a statement in a school report card saying that the school was fully supported and fostered by the local school district.

There wasn't as much of a difference between the charter and the state school as I had expected.  You can immediately tell when you are on a for-profit educational site with the appearance of all of the trademarks, buzz words, and stock photos, but the differences between charter and state were more subtle.

Without the profit motive of the commercial providers, public sites tend to be as sexy as they can afford to be.  The better funded ones are better looking.

Why don't more programs allow for reduced speed courses?  Why can't I work on my foreign language a bit slower, so that I can get the nuances of pronunciation down. It seems like the schools only allow for up shifting.

I was impressed that the school allows for instant conferencing with teachers during traditional school day hours.  I believe immediacy of feedback and contacts is a huge selling point.

I was disappointed with the timeliness, quality, and quantity of data on the site.

Looking at my online charter school has been interesting and eye opening as I have begun to think about traditional home schooling environments and the problems associated with them.  I have been ignoring current home schooling environments as a fringe segment, when I really shouldn't.

Despite my interest in weather and distance related inefficiencies, I was surprised that these subjects were given only a couple of references under the general banner of "barriers" and Delta Cyber School can combat them all.

Second thoughts...

What an informative document!

I felt time pressure to pick an interesting school before reading all of the documents.  I am still trying to organize my online schedule!  There is a lot to love/hate about online learning, but I haven't gotten into a flow yet, so shouldn't offer a full opinion.

Doing a quick search for schools online led me to the Hopkins Online Academy in MN which I misread as being part of the Minnesota Virtual Academy, which it turns out is not a state school at all, but rather a private K12inc. school endorsed by a local school district.  I called the school directly to find out more, but there wasn't anyone there that could help.  I asked if they were part of the Minnesota Virtual Academy system and they said that they "thought so", but they thought incorrectly.  They also told me that they were public and part of the state initiative?  This snafu made me realize that virtual schools can be confusing to parents, students, and most importantly ME!  I wondered if it would be easier if I were an actual motivated parent/student in MN and wanted to investigate options.  Would this information be known to me through mailings and school conferences or would I have to seek it out myself?  My phone conversation with a human at the school did not leave me with confidence.

I wanted to find schools in locations that lent themselves to geographic isolation (the various Hawaiian islands) or environmental burdens (weather) that would impact a student's desire for online learning.  I briefly considered looking at the Louisiana Virtual School because of the hardships that they have gone through particularly recently, but decided on Hawaii instead.  Aloha!

Keeping Pace broke down the various dimensions of online learning nicely and explained them in clear and concise terms.  I like how it touched on the resource allocation, quality - assessment and measurement, political, motivational, and pedagogical aspects of online learning. Who would have thought that there would be so much legislation and debate over seat time requirements for virtual learners?  Isn't learning learning?

As a parent, how would I have found Keeping Pace?  I'm not the intended audience, but it is still a valuable read to a wider population.

I didn't get the concept of a district school.  It seems like it would just create pockets of privilege.  If costs can be shared elsewhere, why not demand at the state level that all EDU resources be shared?  Maybe district specific content would not make sense in the context of another district, but why not share the AP courses?  Content generated in one district should be made available to others.

"You're not required to use it, but if you are interested, district X will share."

I also got the sense that there is a lot of redundancy.  In the early part of any movement it is better not to standardize too early and try out myriad ideas, but from briefly reading over some of the other school sites, it seems that all of them are touting their efforts as revolutionary.  How many revolutions can we have?

Interesting things that I learned this week:

• Hawaii claims they were they had the second State Virtual School in the Nation.
• Some students take online courses for credit recovery.
• Some kids take online courses that are also offered at their school f2f, but conflict with classes that they would rather take f2f.  For example, a student took english online instead of f2f, to make room in her schedule for an AP class at her school with a great teacher.
• Parents are involved in the registration process for online classes to make sure that they are involved.
• Students have to take a computer literacy test before registering for class to make sure that they are ready online learning.  If they do not pass, they must take a remedial prep course. 
• The smallest schools in the state love the system and feel connected.
• Students connect from school during a specially designated E-School period.
• There's a consensus that Online Learning is not for everyone and that it should be one of many options for improving how students learn.

Next week, we'll go to the opposite weather extreme and take a look at a virtual charter school in the 49th state!

First thoughts

My mental model of online schooling had been somewhat narrow with students mainly connecting to resources from home. Our intro reading has broadened my view. I've learned that there are many models for online schools and schooling to explore. I really like the concept of online schools within traditional schools and third places. Third places were always in the back of my mind, as much of my volunteer work has been based out of libraries, but the idea of going to school to connect elsewhere never really made sense to me. I have always made the assumption that if you have to go to school to connect elsewhere, the school probably wouldn't have the resources to do so. I hope I get hit in the head with little things like this every class.

I find it frustrating that there is not a standard set of tools for online coursework. I am not alone in this, as several other students have mentioned this as well. Maybe this will only be the case until TC migrates over to moodle.... but then again, what happens if I take courses at a different university or even another school at Columbia? Will I need yet another new registration?

About Me

Hi!

My name is Alejandro Heyworth and I am in the Computing in Education program. My undergrad degree is in EECS from MIT and I have spent my years since school successfully developing and applying technology in fields that I have passion for including interactive entertainment, education, and finance. I would like to compliment my tutoring and volunteer teaching experience with formal training here at TC to improve teacher (especially volunteer teacher) efficiency through innovation. I have encountered a ton of people with strong and diverse skill sets with neither the time nor energy for a full time commitment, but who are still eager to contribute. Given these human resources, I am looking to explore ways to maximize their efforts. While I am a born and bred New Yorker, I am currently living in Cambridge, MA and telecommute to work and school back in NY!

This course is my first experience with formalized bidirectional "virtual learning." I have watched and listened to many lectures, run managed simulations, read journals, publications, source code, and other resources online and have learned a great deal, but those experiences were not interactive in the way that I think this class will be. While those experiences were very technology interactive through multimedia and simulation, they were not socially so... Socially static. No participation. No human feedback.

It was only me and the machine learning things that I was already interested in and committed to learning. If I had questions, I would search for my answers elsewhere online. These efforts were successful because I learned what I wanted and needed to learn, but I don't know if the same process would work when trying to learn something that you're not interested or invested in.

I am eager to explore how virtual schooling can be used to combat distance, resource, closed thought, and scaling limitations of conventional learning environments without suffering from technoisolationism.