Heather Hiebsch, principal at Poudre School District Global Academy, shares four lessons for creating a successful hybrid school

Several of our high schools in Poudre School District ^[1] (PSD), Fort Collins, Colo., serve more than 2,000 students each, and for the vast majority, these are positive places to learn and excel.

But there are also students whose needs are not met in a large, traditional school – students who, for a variety of reasons, need a smaller environment and more individualized attention to succeed. This is the story of a school that was created to serve these non-traditional students and the lessons we learned along the way.

Six years ago, our district created the PSD Global Academy, and I was hired to launch the school. Our charge was to provide students with online learning opportunities. We partnered with personalized learning solutions provider Aventa Learning – now Fuel Education ^[2] (FuelEd) – and started by serving a few high school students, primarily targeting dropout prevention and recovery.

Lesson 1: Students need to feel they belong somewhere
Soon, we saw that our students weren’t succeeding, but we knew they had much more potential than was showing in the data. These students weren’t completing their courses, and almost none of them returned the next year. While there were various reasons that students dropped out, we knew that one of the keys to engaging students in any kind of learning is to provide opportunities for affiliation with their school – something we weren’t doing well in a solely online environment. Learning exclusively online from home, they considered PSD Global Academy a temporary measure to get back on track, rather than “their school.”

To remedy students’ feelings of being unanchored, we secured a small modular building in the second year and hired a local school counselor. At that time, we shifted to a full K-12 school, hired local teachers and implemented a hybrid model of online and classroom learning. The next year, having outgrown our space, we moved into a former elementary school. We then expanded our offerings at PSD Global Academy, attracting a wide range of students, including those seeking accelerated courses. We also saw an influx of elementary students – including former homeschoolers – and secondary students looking for a smaller learning environment.

(Next page: Hybrid lessons 2-4)

Lesson 2: Achievement soars with a winning learning model

As we grew, we gave students the choice of strictly online courses or a hybrid schedule, where they could take online courses from home and attend classes on campus twice a week. In their days on campus, students would be involved in inquiry-based, hands-on projects – learning opportunities that are difficult to do online and/or from home. Our daily schedule also included more opportunities for special electives such as art, PE and music. We knew our hybrid learning format was an effective model, but we were amazed to see that the students who opted for it achieved significantly higher scores on state assessments – seven times higher than those who did not. At that point, we moved to an exclusively hybrid model.

We continue our partnership with FuelEd in providing online curriculum for all of our middle and high school courses, and use FuelEd’s partner, K-12, for our elementary student curriculum. Our own instructors teach the core online courses, so students are interacting with the same teachers whether they are learning at home or on campus. We also offer our secondary students a vast library of online electives, primarily taught by FuelEd instructors.

Lesson 3: A robust orientation paves the way

Along the way, we discovered the importance of a comprehensive orientation to set up students for success. We now spend the entire first week of school with orientation and training activities so students know what to expect and parents are prepared to be teaching partners (our at-home Learning Coaches). We have also taken steps to boost parent participation, including matching each new parent with a veteran parent mentor, and holding parent professional development classes.

Our teachers truly are pioneers (also our school mascot) in finding the best ways to serve our students in a hybrid learning model, and their innovation knows no bounds. For example, our four core high school teachers collaborated to build an advisory course about non-cognitive skills that students will need to succeed in school and in life. Our students benefit greatly from learning about developing grit, motivation, perseverance, a positive mindset and fostering healthy relationships.

Lesson 4: Focusing on your vision helps every student succeed

Today, we serve more than 150 full-time students each semester at PSD Global Academy, and we are seeing the results of our focus on individual student growth. Our school ranked among the highest in the state of Colorado for student growth across all grades for the 2013-14 school year in reading, writing and math. This achievement marks the first time a school using blended and online learning has ranked in the top five percent of all Colorado schools – including traditional brick-and-mortar schools, charter schools and other online schools.

Through our hybrid model, students have the best of both worlds. Online courses offer them flexibility and personalized learning, while the campus setting offers students support, community, and opportunities for hands-on learning.

The solution was in taking a global vision of how best to reach students in a nontraditional learning environment and implementing that vision in a very local way that would meet our students’ needs. Our teachers are poring over data, partnering with parents, and are truly committed to helping every student grow. Our students are engaged in learning and excelling in their classes.

In our hybrid setting, students are receiving the benefits of personalized online learning, academic interventions that connect school and home, and also enjoying the affiliation that comes with being part of a school community. Our kids are joining clubs, participating in student council, creating a yearbook, competing for spirit weeks and attending movie nights on campus. Students, staff and parents have worked hard to create an innovative learning community – and now PSD Global Academy is “our school.”

Heather Hiebsch is principal at Poudre School District Global Academy.

Trends point to a handful of major ed-tech focus areas that grab educators’ attention

A few years ago the education world found itself entranced by the iPad, a powerful tablet that promised to revolutionize one-to-one programs and revitalize teacher engagement with technology in the wake of sweeping mobile device adoptions. For years, the iPad seemed to dominate educators’ discussions. Now, that storm seems to have passed, as educators and ed-tech enthusiasts are broadening their horizons and looking to the future.

Last week, a group of educators from California and across the U.S. converged on a Napa Valley high school for the Fall CUE 2014 Conference ^[3], centered around a theme of next-generation learning.

Here are 5 takeaways from the sessions, tweets, and conversations that came up time and again during the conference, and which offer a revealing glimpse into the types of technology and interventions educators are turning to now.

(Next page: The five ed-tech conversations dominating educators’ conversations)

1. Google is everywhere. Glancing at the conference schedule, observers might be forgiven for wondering whether Google is now the new Apple. Although that claim may be tenuous at best, given that Google, in one way or another, has always been a classroom mainstay, there were an uncanny number of sessions devoted to Chromebooks, Google Classroom, Apps for Education, and deep dives into niche tools (think Google Drawing or the social studies godsend, Google Tours). More than a few hours were devoted to picking apart every facet of Google Apps for every conceivable classroom environment. Simply put, a solid integration framework across a range of platforms seems to be pushing Google into more classrooms and onto more educators’ lips than ever before.

2. But the iPad isn’t going anywhere. Given that, at last count, schools have invested more than $400 million ^[4] getting iPads into student hands, it would be rash to expect them to drop of the radar so precipitously. Now that the initial gold rush has died down, educators are looking at more intentional uses. Some speakers hailed from districts with renowned iPad success stories and were eager to share their stories; others promoted sessions that went “beyond giving you a shopping list” for apps. These days, educators appear likely to embrace the iPad’s strengths, accept its weaknesses, and engage in thoughtful discussions on finances and the merits of sharing devices.

3. Games have arrived—-in a big way. Gaming and gamification have bubbled just under the ed-tech surface for years, even cropping up on the New Media Consortium’s trendsetting Horizon Report ^[5] from time to time. The snowball growth of Minecraft in the classroom, however, may finally be helping to tip the scales. While Minecraft was on many educators’ minds at the conference, attendees also listened raptly to a teacher speaking in a large auditorium who described infusing her middle-school classroom with “XP” and level-ups—-terms closely associated with role playing games. Indeed, GameDesk’s Lucien Vattel, a conference keynote speaker, built his talk around the benefits of experiential learning, the brain science behind fun and lasting memories, and gaming’s facility for teaching difficult concepts to students while removing what he called the “fear of failure.”

4. Reaching students outside class. Curricular shifts—-such as the Common Core and a greater emphasis on STEM skills—-have made learn-by-doing technology a relatively easy sell for educators, and much was made of novel ways to reach students through after-school clubs and passion projects. Trendy tech and buzzworthy terms-—think maker spaces and 3D printing—-certainly commanded their share of airtime, but educators also discussed coding clubs, robotics competitions, and ways to engage girls in STEM subjects. Adapting famous concepts from tech behemoths was also a hit, and educators learned how to apply Google’s 20 percent time idea in the classroom, and training students to staff school Genius Bars, as a way to teach students valuable skills and relieve beleaguered IT departments.

5. The focus is still on students. At a time when so much technology and potential for learning is at students’ fingertips, speakers and attendees kept consistently focused on how technology can best benefit students. Keynoter and educator Diana Laufenberg pushed her audience to think creatively and critically about their strengths as educators and how they can use those strengths to best reach students through inquiry-driven, project-based classrooms. Elsewhere, educators discussed how best to engage students in learning in ways that were both authentic and relevant to students, and which taught them how to apply the skills they were learning to real-world situations. That last point was an idea later echoed by Laufenberg in her closing keynote. “It’s not what you know,” she told attendees, “but what you can do with what you know.”