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...