Click here for the full story

Click here for the full story

Sunnyside’s GradLink is the latest online education program to reach out to high school dropouts in an effort to boost graduation rates.

Arizona’s Sunnyside Unified School District has become the latest K-12 school system to turn to online instruction to help high school dropouts earn their diplomas.

Tucson, Ariz., mayor Jonathan Rothschild is teaming up with the Sunnyside Unified School District to recruit high school dropouts into an online education program to get their degrees.

Rothschild and Sunnyside Superintendent Manuel L. Isquierdo, a 2010 winner of the Tech-Savvy Superintendent Awards from eSchool Media, on Jan. 3 announced GradLink, an online education program that aims to enroll 100 recent Tucson-area dropouts into online classes.

GradLink meets a goal of the Mayor’s Education Task Force, which is to improve high school graduation rates, said Rothschild at a news conference at his office.

“A high school diploma is a necessity in today’s job market,” Rothschild said. “Without one, it’s hard to get hired at a job that can support a family. The bottom line is that the way out of poverty is through education.”

(Next page: How the program works—and how it will be launched without any startup costs)

A number of considerations are necessary for success with online learning.

Progress monitoring tools and proper training in online teaching are critical factors in supporting and sustaining successful online education programs, according to a survey of school leaders.

The survey, released by K12 Inc. and conducted by MDR’s EdNET Insight, included responses from superintendents, assistant superintendents, curriculum directors, principals, and special-education directors who are experienced in implementing online education programs. The 220-plus respondents identified and ranked a number of key success factors.

Four factors were ranked by at least 80 percent of respondents as “extremely important” to the success of full-time online education programs, individual online courses, and credit recovery programs.

(Next page: The four factors in particular that contribute to successful online education programs)

Coursera, one of the largest online education providers, has announced its decision to evaluate several of its courses to determine whether they should be made available for college credit—raising the stakes all the higher.

None of the major online providers have found technology that is completely foolproof, but technology blog GigaOM suggests some tools that can certainly make cheating more difficult. Among these are remote live proctoring, remote web proctoring, browser lockdowns, keystroke pattern recognition, and plagiarism detection technology…

To read the full story, click here.

“We created this from scratch, so we’re pioneers in that respect,” says Craig Wilson, headmaster of UM Global Academy (UMGA), the online high school based out of the University of Miami’s Division of Continuing and International Education. “We recognized a need to help high school students prepare for college, and we wanted to use the MOOC model to give them that opportunity without having to worry about going through a pay-for-preparation aspect.”

About 200 high school students, some as far away as China, were enrolled as of press time to take UMGA’s “MOOC SAT BIO” course via Skype and an electronic classroom platform. The class will air live, allowing students to pose questions in real time—a rarity for a MOOC, according to Wilson.

Taught by UMGA lead science instructor Jennifer Taylor, the course will be offered once a semester and will prepare students for the SAT subject test in biology administered by the College Board. Depending on the success of the course, UMGA might offer other MOOC test prep courses in the near future, Wilson said.

The inaugural version of the course began Nov. 26 and ends Dec. 14. Sessions also be recorded for students who have missed any session, officials said.

For more information or to register, go to http://www.umga.miami.edu/mooc.

“We have to think of students differently,” Brooks said—“as creators, researchers, investigators, and even designers.”

As blended learning programs grow in popularity, proponents of the approach—which involves a combination of computer-based learning and face-to-face instruction—say there are a few key considerations school leaders should keep in mind as they set up blended learning models.

Alabama’s Mountain Brook Schools is in its third year of a blended learning program.

“Education is really changing, and we’ve got to change with it—and in order to do that, we’ve really been working hard to … customize the learning of each one of our students,” said Missy Brooks, the district’s director of instruction, during a Consortium for School Networking webinar.

“Blended learning is not all about the technology—it really is a blend of technology and instruction, so that the two work hand-in-hand so that we can meet the needs of our students,” she said. The district’s leaders bear in mind that blended learning is facilitated by an effective and intentional combination of face-to-face classroom methods and computer-based activities.

For blended learning to be successful, Brooks said, teachers must be mindful of their intentions and should be purposeful about the work they design for students: They should be able to articulate exactly why they are using blended learning in a particular instance. And the more teachers come to know their students, the better they are able to tailor instruction to students’ needs and interests.

“In essence, we lost about $115,000 in one swoop with losing class-size-reduction funding,” said Mr. Kerr. He added that additional cuts resulting from the ongoing financial crisis had cost the school an additional $85,000 for a total of $200,000, roughly the equivalent of three teacher salaries. “We discussed whether blended learning could be a vehicle to allow us to first and foremost preserve the small-group instruction and see how we could make that happen.”

Click here for the full story

The proposals are part of an education reform agenda pushed by Mayor Ted Gatsas following an outcry over crowded classrooms.

Could technology help solve the problem of crowded classrooms?

The Manchester, N.H., school district is poised to find out as soon as next semester, when it plans to offer virtual classes that students at the three high schools would be able to take without physically being in the same room as a teacher.

Superintendent Thomas Brennan has presented the plan to the school committee in the form of a report titled “Maximizing Educational Opportunities.”

The plan calls for the creation of “blended classrooms,” in which students could take courses through the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (known as V-LACS), the state’s first virtual charter school, and “remote classrooms,” which would allow students at any of the high schools to participate, through an interactive computer monitor, in courses being taught at one of the schools.

Under Brennan’s plan, students also would be able to take college-level courses through the University of New Hampshire-Manchester. In addition, Brennan said he hopes to establish a “Principal’s Academy” in the summer through Southern New Hampshire University, to foster and train future principals from within the district.

The proposals are part of an education reform agenda pushed by Mayor Ted Gatsas following an outcry over crowded classrooms and other problems in the early weeks of the school year. The problems have prompted Hooksett and Candia to reconsider sending their students to Manchester high schools. Auburn already has notified the district it will be withdrawing to send its students to Pinkerton Academy in Derry.

For more news about blended learning, see:

New program prepares educators for blended learning

Four keys to creating successful eLearning programs

Blending the Best of Online and Face-to-Face Learning to Improve Achievement

Brennan said he wasn’t prepared to present a redistricting plan, a key component of the education reform agenda, because he needs to confirm enrollment figures at all the schools.

“I think we are headed in the right direction,” Brennan told the school board, referring to the technology initiatives.

Gatsas wholeheartedly agreed. “I want to congratulate you,” he told Brennan. “This is a concise report that provides a direction to take this district in.”

Brennan acknowledged that there were funding challenges in implementing the plan, which he estimated would cost close to $80,000, at the least.

The superintendent said he would look to the mayor to help raise outside funding for the program.

Gatsas said in an interview that he would do his best, and he noted that businesses already had contributed to support the district’s search for a new superintendent. He said he was hopeful he could get a computer company or store to donate some of the necessary equipment.

“We can do advertising now,” Gatsas said, referring to the new policy adopted by the school board allowing ads on campus. “Maybe [a business] can hang a poster up.”

Brennan estimated the cost for the three “blended learning labs” at $30,000 for hardware and $43,500 per semester for three lab facilitators.

The rule would have required every Idaho student to take at least two online classes before graduating from high school.

Idaho students won’t have to take any online classes before graduating, at least for now, after the state education board voted to repeal the online-learning requirement. The move comes after voters in the state rejected other technology-related school reform efforts, such as a measure that would have given every high school student a laptop.

It was Idaho Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna himself who proposed Nov. 19 that the state Board of Education repeal the rule requiring that every Idaho student take at least two online classes to graduate from high school.

Voters rejected Luna’s tech-heavy “Students Come First” school reform laws during the Nov. 6 elections.

Luna said repeatedly during the campaign that even if Proposition 3 was rejected, the online graduation requirement would stand, because it was in state board rules.

Luna’s motion to repeal the rule passed on a 7-1 vote, with just board member Emma Atchley, of Ashton, objecting.

For more news and opinion about school reform, see:

Ed-tech firms shaping education policy

Education chief wants textbooks to go digital

Beyond ‘Superman’: Leading Responsible School Reform

Atchley said she worried that the board might spend another year considering the issue and then decide to reimpose the same rule. “I understand the political reality,” she said, “but I think it’s very important that we do not in the end say that we shouldn’t have at least some online learning.”

Board member Bill Goesling, of Moscow, said, “Since the defeat of the propositions, in my discussions with various stakeholders, people agree that there should be some technology requirement. It’s just the type and the numbers that would be in question at this point.”

Board member Rod Lewis of Boise, said, “I hope that we do have the opportunity to talk further about this issue. If you really look at what’s happening in post-secondary institutions and the change that is occurring there, I think it is going to be increasingly important that we have students at the end of the day know how to take classes online effectively. That will be an increasing component of their post-secondary education and our goal is to prepare students for that time.”

But board member Richard Westerberg of Preston, responded, “All that being said, and I agree with all of that, the vote was not equivocal. It was a pretty strong vote from the populace, and it was very specific the way it was listed on the ballot. … We need to reaffirm what the voters told us.”