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.