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.