Saturday, November 03, 2007
Vision and Leadership 2008
Online learning, especially when part of a blended approach, has made some major impacts on K-12 education. Your technology plan needs to incorporate this key element. Based on Laboratories of Reform by Bill Tucker submit one question to this blog and write a response to at least one question posed by a classmate.
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6 comments:
I thought it was an excellent paper on the current state of online learning in the US. My question would be:
What amount of live video is currently being included in the online classes and how quickly will live video become mainstream in online classes?
I feel when students are enrolled in online classes and can also attend real-time lectures via video conferencing, as well as have one-on-one time with the instructor via video conferencing, this will revolutionize on-line learning to the next level.
In addition to the licensing and certification difficulties mentioned in the article, I was curious about how virtual schools handled the sometimes extreme differences in standards between different states, even in the same disciplines.
For example, some states have testing standards in Science that heavily favor "process skills" (inquiry, experimentation, analysis) at the middle school level, while others largely ignore those standards and focus instead on "domain knowledge" (laws of motion, properties of matter).
With the current importance placed on standardized state assessment by NCLB, it is of the utmost concern (for the school and the student) that the virtual school student can perform well on the state exam. However, a course of instruction that favored one approach over the other could lead to students performing very poorly on the test simply because the targeting of content within the subject was optimal for the teacher's locality but not the student's.
The increased visibility of the difficulties caused by inter-state inconsistency in curriculum is one effect of the virtual school model.
Do virtual schools therefore favor national, unified curriculum by their nature?
The title of the article "Laboratories of Reform" seems to suggest that at least some characteristics of the virtual school model can and should be taken to heart and applied more universally. Should national curriculum be one of them?
Joe,
Thanks for your kind words on the report. I don't have definitive stats on the use of live video, nor am I an expert in this area, but do have a few thoughts.
Interestingly, many states' online learning programs were preceded by large investments in satellite-delivered, broadcast lectures. So, in some ways, that is an older model. I think what you are pointing to, though, is the use of much more sophisticated "presence" video conferencing technology that corporations are beginning to adopt. Look to Alabama's ACCESS program for a state that is investing heavily in video capabilities. A very expensive model, though. More compelling to me is the use of conferencing tools like Elluminate to offer one-to-one shared whiteboards and Internet audio (VOIP). These are pretty widespread. Finally, can't help but get excited about what the next generation of Skype-like tools might bring.
--Bill Tucker, Education Sector
Ross,
You hit on a really important point that I blogged about a little over a year ago. But the issue of standards is not just interstate -- it's intrastate.
"In a number of states, state-led programs are exposing wide gaps in expectations for learning within a state’s many regions. Since virtual schools allow students to more easily take courses outside of not only their home school, but also their city or region, there is greater transparency on inequities and differing interpretations of learning standards. At the most recent North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) conference, virtual school program managers from two different southern states explained privately how students that were at the top of their class in their local schools were overmatched in courses at the statewide virtual school. The virtual school teachers were forced to explain to the pupils and their parents that their star students were woefully under prepared."
I've spoken with at least a half dozen online teachers/program administrators that confirm this issue. You are also right about the scope/sequence/method issues. In some ways, virtual schools can bring light to all of these problems that highly mobile kids face.
I thought a lot about the national standards issue when writing the report. I'm also currently doing research on what I'm calling the "next generation of student assessment" -- looking 5-7 years down the road. We have the capability for much richer, more dynamic competency-based assessments that have some of the same issues of scale, cost, etc. Hard for me to argue for state-by-state. Perhaps national, but not in the top down regulatory fashion that us DC policy wonks like to discuss, but in the collaborative, iterative, Wikipedia fashion? I've got to get my head around how this could happen for this next report, so, let's discuss...
--Bill Tucker, Education Sector
Regarding real-time online communication, I know that at least some of the current generation of students are quite proficient at the use of VoIP-based tools, as they make extensive use of them in games.
Technologies such as TeamSpeak (http://www.goteamspeak.com) and Ventrilo (http://www.ventrilo.com) have been around for years, and long ago gained a foothold among online gamers. Services such as XBox Live go so far as to include a microphone and headset with their retail signup packages.
One of the readings mentioned that we should have students use the technological tools that they are already accustomed to. If the pervasive use of voice chat in cooperative and competitive online games is any indicator, then perhaps "talking during class" is something we should start going out of our way to encourage!
The article states that the costs for the virtual school are about the same as a brick-and-mortar school. It also mentions that the school hires only part-time teachers who are looking for the flexibility offered in this setup. What will happen to costs of the virtual school if it must compete with brick-and-mortar schools for faculty?
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