This article is no longer available.
Podcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Online tutoring, speech therapy among new eLearning solutions
New options for online tutoring and speech therapy are among the latest eLearning solutions introduced during recent ed-tech trade shows.
For example, the Florida Virtual School (FLVS)—a pioneer in online instruction—announced new online tutoring and professional development offerings at the Florida Educational Technology Conference in January.
FLVS is now offering online tutoring for math and science for any student, not just those taking an FLVS course. FLVS online tutoring is available whenever students need it, the school says: any time, any place, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All students need to participate is a computer, smart phone, or other mobile device and access to the internet.…Read More
Speech therapy moves online
Offering speech therapy to students can be a challenge for school districts: Speech therapists are in short supply; it can be expensive to hire a speech therapist, particularly if a district uses a contractor who must drive from school to school and charges for driving time; and rural schools might have a hard time finding a speech therapist in their area, while urban schools might struggle with retaining speech therapists.
Connections Academy, a provider of nationally certified K-12 online curriculum, is addressing these problems by offering an online speech therapy option for school districts. The program, beginning in the 2011-12 school year, will let students—equipped with a computer with high-speed internet access, along with a webcam and headset—interact online with state and nationally certified speech therapists via web conferencing software.
The conferencing software, Live Lesson, lets the therapist and child work together in real time online. The program also uses a variety of other tools. Traditional worksheets are available from a number of publishers in PDF form for the student and therapist to complete together.…Read More