NACOL Item - Online Learning Institute, Co-Sponsored By ISTE, SREB & ETLO

And a final one…

Join us for the Fourth Annual Online Learning Institute: Creating New Models for Learning! The 2008 Institute will be held in conjunction with the National Education Computing Conference (NECC) in San Antonio, Texas, on Wednesday, July 2, from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. This event is jointly sponsored by EDC’s EdTech Leaders Online (ETLO), the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

Keynote speaker will be Rovy Branon, executive director of the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Co-Lab at the University of Wisconsin, who will discuss Emerging Technologies and Online Learning.

The Online Learning Institute offers:
• Networking with other practitioners from online professional development and virtual school programs and with leading national experts in online learning.
• Opportunities to share strategies and lessons about implementing successful online learning programs in states, districts, organizations, schools and universities.
• A choice of panel presentations, one on virtual schools and the other on online professional development, with specific resources and discussions for online specialists focused on each area.
• A series of roundtable discussions around key topics facilitated by state and organization leaders and practitioners, such as online options for leadership development, building virtual learning communities, development of high-quality and dynamic online content, effective facilitation strategies for online professional development courses, instructional practices for virtual school students, open source and commercial course management systems, identifying and engaging online learning stakeholders, incorporating Web 2.0 technologies, using data to improve programs and practices, addressing learning gaps through targeted OPD programs, starting and scaling up virtual programs, researching and evaluating online programs.

Breakfast and lunch are included, providing additional networking opportunities for participants.

Details:
Date and Location: Wednesday, July 2nd 8:00 am – 3:00 pm — Grand Hyatt Hotel
Registration fee: $125.00 - includes all panels, presentations, and round tables as well as breakfast and lunch.
Early Bird Deadline: Register before May 1, 2008, to receive the early bird special rate of $99.00

For more information, please contact Leinda Peterman at LPeterman@edc.org or Barbara Treacy at btreacy@edc.org. To register online, go to http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2008/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=42155680&selection_id=42370255&rownumber=1&max=1&gopage.
Please join us for this exciting event!

NACOL Item - Virtual Virginia On NPR This Morning

A second one…

INNOVATIVE TRENDS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Public Schools Expand Curriculum Online
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p…9070946&sc=emaf

(You can listen as well at the link above)

by Larry Abramson

Morning Edition, March 26, 2008 · When senior Zack Jackson wanted to take a class in mythology, he wasn’t out of luck just because his small high school in rural Virginia didn’t offer it. Instead, he headed online.

The course comes courtesy of Virtual Virginia, a state program that offers dozens of online classes to middle and high school students. The program allows children to take classes that aren’t offered at their schools. Nationwide, programs like Virtual Virginia help hundreds of thousands of students take the kinds of unusual courses that make colleges sit up and take notice.

Most of the 3,000 students in the Virtual Virginia program enroll in online advanced placement courses. And thanks to the program, Zack’s school, Rappahannock County High, can offer more AP classes, allowing it to compete with local private schools, which often use AP courses as a selling point.

Principal Robyn Puryear says students have to be self-directed to succeed in an online class. Since online courses are self-paced, there’s a temptation to procrastinate — and that leads to trouble.

“Life interferes. Sports interfere. Just regular social life interferes, because they could put it off until the evening. But in the evening they may not be free,” Puryear says.

Connecting Online

In an apartment in Alexandria, Va., online instructor Susan Cox is teaching a subject she has long wanted to teach: Mandarin Chinese. Cox has a master’s degree in Chinese and literature, but she could not find a position in her field at a regular school. So when Virtual Virginia offered her a job teaching Chinese online, she jumped at the chance.

Cox meets occasionally with her students through live online sessions. Students enrolled from around the state plug headsets into their computers and gather for the classes. A lot of the teacher’s work is conducted through e-mail and phone calls. Students can e-mail videos of themselves to Cox — or Kong Liaoshi, as she’s known to her students.

And that’s often where she gets the warm feeling she used to get from classroom interaction.

“Oh, this is interesting!” she says, calling up a video from one particularly resourceful student originally from Barbados. “She went and found on the Internet … how to say, ‘I’m from Barbados,’” Cox says. Cox plays a video of the student speaking Mandarin. She grins when she hears that the girl’s “tones” are correct.

Cox taught history in a school until last fall. She’s delighted to be teaching a subject she loves, but she says she did think long and hard about giving up her classroom.

“I’m a very social person. I did a lot of stuff at my school,” Cox says. “And I love the kids.”

Cox says she now feels the same connection to her online students. She says she can tell from their e-mails and their phone calls when they’re distracted by personal problems and when they need special attention.

Online education for high school students is gaining popularity, but it may not realize one of the original promises of distance education: saving money. The start-up costs can be substantial, and it’s tough to compare the costs of a virtual school with those of a brick-and-mortar one.

Online educators say the real payoff is that these virtual schools can help liven up traditional schools.

NACOL Item - Oversight & Management of Online Programs, Seeking Ideas and Examples

Well, I am just back from AERA and I’ll post some comments on a few sessions and some other AERA-related topics tomorrow.  In the meantime, here are some items from the NACOL forums.

Throughout 2008 NACOL will be publishing a six-part white paper series on “Promising Practices in Online Learning.” An upcoming topic in this series will cover oversight and management of online programs. The success of growing online programs depends in large part on the people, systems, and evaluation practices established to insure quality in all aspects of program operations. This paper looks at the complexity and operational challenges faced by online programs and the innovative solutions developed to address those challenges.

We would appreciate any ideas and examples you have on program oversight and management, including but not limited to the following questions.

• What are the most important aspects of student support, and what new strategies are being implemented to enhance student support?
• What are your greatest challenges in teacher evaluation and management? How does your program address issues of recruiting, training and professional development, and the evaluation of online teachers?
• As the online curriculum expands, how does your program approach both new course development and the improvement of existing online courses?

We welcome your ideas and examples, posted to this forum or by email to Butch Gemin and John Watson and at rgemin@evergreenassoc.com and johnw@evergreenassoc.com.

As I’ve mentioned before with this series, if you have something that would be useful to John please send it his way.