Virtual Schooling Presentations at SITE

The annual that Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) conference is coming up at the end of March.  As the proceedings documents are due today, I thought it would be a good time to highlight the presentations in the first ever Virtual Schooling special interest group program.

Tue, Mar. 30
Time	Room	Title	Type	Topic	Proceedings Starting Page #
2:45 PM	9	The Chester Area Cyber School: How Distance Learning Technology Successfully Transformed High School Completion for Hutterite Students Allen Whitlatch, South Dakota State University, USA; Maren Fischer, Chester Area Cyber School, USA View Details	Brief Paper	Virtual Schooling
Wed, Mar. 31
Time	Room	Title	Type	Topic	Proceedings Starting Page #
4:00 PM	8	The Challenges of Improving Synchronous Web-based High School Course Delivery in Isolated Aboriginal Community Settings Dennis Sharpe, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada; David Philpott, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada View Details	Full Paper	Virtual Schooling
4:00 PM	9	The Impact of the Virtual Schooling Curriculum on Preparing In-Service Teachers for the Roles as Virtual School Facilitators Michael Barbour, Wayne State University, USA; Kelly Unger, Wayne State University, USA View Details	Full Paper	Virtual Schooling
6:00 PM	15	Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School On-line PD and Learning Communities, Connecting Us All! Kelli Boklaschuk, Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School, Canada; Ryan Hauber, Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School, Canada View Details	Poster/Demo	Virtual Schooling
6:00 PM	15	Virtual Education: Preparation of Teachers for Virtual School Practices Nicole Horn, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, USA View Details	Poster/Demo	Virtual Schooling
6:00 PM	15	Is Online Teaching for You? How to be a great teacher online. Robyn MacKillop, RTG, LCC, USA View Details	Poster/Demo	Virtual Schooling
Thu, Apr. 1
Time	Room	Title	Type	Topic	Proceedings Starting Page #
10:15 AM	8	Correlations between teacher-student interaction and student academic performance in a large virtual high school Abigail Hawkins, Brigham Young University, USA; Charles Graham, Brigham Young University, USA View Details	Full Paper	Virtual Schooling
10:15 AM	8	Course completion and participation patterns at Utah’s Electronic High School Abigail Hawkins, Brigham Young University, USA; Charles Graham, Brigham Young University, USA View Details	Full Paper	Virtual Schooling
2:45 PM	16	The One-Two Step: How Pre-Service Teacher Teams Transformed Theory Learning into Empowerment in Second Life Leticia De Leon, University of Texas Pan American, USA; Carmen Pena, University of Texas Pan American, USA View Details	Roundtable	Virtual Schooling
Fri, Apr. 2
Time	Room	Title	Type	Topic	Proceedings Starting Page #
11:30 AM	14	Teacher professional development and outcomes: The case of the Quebec remote networked schools initiative Christine Hamel, Laval University, Canada; Thérèse Laferrière, Laval University, Canada View Details	Brief Paper	Virtual Schooling
11:30 AM	14	Online Synchronous Delivery Model proves to be a successful Format for High School Students Margaret Dupuis, Learn Quebec, Canada View Details	Brief Paper	Virtual Schooling
11:30 AM	14	A comparison study of how teachers with high and low completion rates interact with virtual high school students Abigail Hawkins, Brigham Young University, USA; Charles Graham, Brigham Young University, USA View Details	Brief Paper	Virtual Schooling

In addition to the presentations and posters, there is also a SIG meeting:

Wednesday, March 31 Theme: New Media, New Possibilities for Teaching & Learning
SIG Meetings: Virtual Schooling	8 AM – 9 AM

I’ll try and re-post this the weekend before the conference starts.

POLYCOM WEBINAR: Feb. 10th On Using The RUS DLT Grant To Fund Video For Distance Learning And Telemedicine

Okay, so it has been one of those days in the office and I won’t get a chance to write the review of Lisa’s book prior to her webinar, but I promise to attend to it tomorrow.  Speaking of tomorrow, notice of a webinar tomorrow that showed up in my inbox earlier today.

Using the RUS DLT Grant to Fund Video for Distance Learning and Telemedicine Date & Time: Date: Wed, Feb 10, 2010 Time: 12:00 PM CST Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes Host: Andrew Knox Meeting Description: This webinar will brief Polycom customers and channels on the RUS Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant Program. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding the objective scoring criteria for rurality, poverty and leveraging (match). We will also discuss the steps required to prepare for a successful and complete application. Finally we’ll connect you with the resources and staff of the Polycom Grant Assistance Team to help you through our trademarked 7 Step Grant Assistance Process to give you a leg up on the grant application process. Presenter Information: Andrew Knox has been involved in distance education for over 17 years. He began his service with Texas A&M’s Center for Distance Learning Research in 1994, as he pursued his secondary science teaching certificate.  In 1997, Andrew left Texas A&M to coordinate technical training and education marketing for VTEL Corp. Andrew then completed a master’s degree in Adult Education and serves as Sr. Area Grant Manager for Polycom’s Grant Assistance Program. He is an active member of the Texas Distance Learning Association, United States Distance Learning Association, and ISTE. Register Today: https://cc.callinfo.com/cc/schedule/display.do?udc=17ocl7p7tcgtp

Reminder – Lisa Gillis On Online High Schools

A reminder of this event later today.

• Tuesday, February 9th, 5pm Pacific Time (US) / 1am (next day) GMT/UTC (international times): Join me for a live and interactive interview of Lisa Gillis, co-author of Virtual Schooling: A Guide to Optimizing Your Child’s Education. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/node/55267

As I have been promising to review this book for some time, I’ll try to post my review later today, before the event (as I had a chance to finish the book over the Christmas holidays and have been waiting to find some time to compose my thoughts on the book itself).  In the meantime, and in preparation for this evening’s event, let me inform folks about an earlier event – from a couple of months ago – that The Future of Education hosted with one of the other authors of this book:

Elizabeth Kanna on “Virtual Schooling”

Visit the link to view the recording of that event.

USDLA 2010 National Conference Virtual Classroom!

This is from my Facebook inbox.

USDLA 2010 Virtual Classroom!
Can’t join us in St. Louis?

This year, USDLA is excited to announce that it will offer a portion of its 2010 National Conference virtually!

By registering as a Virtual Classroom attendee, you will have complete live access to our Opening and Closing Keynote speakers, a pre-conference workshop, 11 select virtual sessions, and our International Distance Learning Awards Ceremony.

All sessions will be available live using Elluminate Live!

Please note that as a registered USDLA Virtual Classroom attendee, you will also have access to the archived live sessions for later viewing! The fee to attend the USDLA virtual classroom is $150 for USDLA Members and $200 for non-USDLA Members. Register today!

Registration Link: http://www.usdla.org/virtual_classroom_reg.php

2010 USDLA National Conference: http://www.usdla.org/2010_national_conference/home.html

Dissertation Advice: Gaming And Student Retention

To begin the week this week, I thought it would be useful to post an e-mail I received from a doctoral student about ten days ago.

I am a school counselor for an online high school program in a suburban county. I have around 1000 students each year. I have records on student achievement and reasons for taking onlie classes and persistence and grades going back about five years.

I am also in the dissertation proposal stage in my doctoral program at the university of Virginia and am interested in developing a game that would serve as an orientation module into online learning. I saw Clovis school’s orientation workshop and wanted to expand that concept into a game. Currently, my program does not have any type of orientation module. I would like to research the change student persistency after implementing the game at my school and possibly others. My theoretical construct is that the gaming environment might have a slightly stronger influence on changing behaviors resulting in higher persistency. Do you have any reactions or suggestions? I read with great interest your comments on Rob Darrow’s search for his dissertation project. Is this even a valuable research idea?

For those unfamiliar with Rob’s journey (see Defining A Dissertation Topic – Which Aspect Of K-12 Online Learning?, Rob’s Continuing Dissertation Journey and Final Stages of Rob’s Dissertation Topic Journey). In terms of this student, I suggested that if she were interested in student orientations, I would focus on the work done by Margaret Roblyer and her “Educational Success Prediction Instrument” and recommended the following readings:

Roblyer, M. D., & Marshall, J. C. (2002-2003). Predicting success of virtual high school students: Preliminary results from an educational success prediction instrument. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 35 (2), 241-255.

Roblyer, M. D. (2005). Who plays well in the virtual sandbox? Characteristics of successful online students and teachers. SIGTel Bulletin, (2).

Roblyer, M. D. (2006). Virtually successful: Defeating the dropout problem through online school programs. Phi Delta Kappan. Bloomington, 88(1),  31-36.

Roblyer, M. D., Davis, L., Mills, S. C., Marshall, J., & Pape, L. (2008) Toward practical procedures for predicting and promoting success in virtual school students. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(2), 90–109.

I mentioned there were a number of tools developed for higher education, that may be useful as resources (such as the Student Online Readiness Tool), but that whatever she developed would need to focus on the K-12 learner.

In terms of the gaming aspect, I cautioned that much of the literature on gaming in education has been theoretical or conceptual in nature, and the actual body of research on the topic – particularly at the K-12 level – was small.  I also cautioned that the gaming in K-12 education research was often descriptive, sometimes with methodological flaws, and in many instances came to the conclusion that the demands placed on classroom teachers made the use of gaming impractical.  I did suggest the work of Michele Dickey, who has published several articles in Educational Technology: Research and Development and the British Journal of Educational Technology (including in the most recent edition, see Murder on Grimm Isle: The impact of game narrative design in an educational game-based learning environment).

I also suggested that instead of the time and effort involved in developing and then evaluating a student orientation, that maybe another dissertation topic lay in the five years worth of data that she has access to already.  I indicated that, personally, I would be curious to know if there was any relationship between the reason students take an online course, persistence, and grades; and if there were relationships exploring what those relationships meant to how the courses were designed, delivered and supported.

But that’s just me…  What about you kind readers?  There are enough folks out there involved in the research of K-12 online learning that would have advice or questions for this doctoral student.  Please share them in the comments section, as she will be monitoring this entry.