Logging in to learn
Times Daily | Florence, AL
For some students, online courses are a luxury, a way to get ahead. For others, they’re a necessity, a path to graduation. Whatever the reason for online or virtual classes, the number of students taking them in recent years has exploded. Online courses are mainly offered at middle and high schools. High (read)
Professors flip the classroom
Technician Online
Most students know the standard order of things in the average classroom. Two or three times a week, they gather to hear a teacher lecture on topics relevant to the course before they are sent home with some amount of reading and homework to complete. For many, this is simply the way the educational (read)
Conference: At Newark ‘blended learning’ school, ‘Nothing here is normal’
MLive.com
“Nothing here is normal.” Joan Massey was joking about the spelling of a faculty member’s name, but the chief academic officer of Merit Prep Academy then smiled and remarked that’s it not a bad description for the fledgling charter school experimenting with blended learning. The school, the flagship of the non (read)
Do students behave better in a digital learning environment?
MLive.com
Do students behave better in a digital environment? People running “blended learning” schools seemed to think there is a link between students engaged in learning and a more disciplined school environment. We heard from a variety of educators from across the country representing traditional districts and charter (read)
5 Skills for Blended-Learning Teachers
THE Journal
As more schools adopt blended-learning models, the role of the teacher is shifting. As a result, teachers need different skills to be successful. Although it is hard to generalize across the landscape of blended learning because of the rapid pace of innovation in the models, the differences between the models (read)
Building open-learning platforms in Canada
Globe and Mail | Toronto, Ontario
Among the tens of thousands of people signed up for the University of Toronto’s online computer science course Learn to Program: The Fundamentals, there are a lot of unconventional students. There are 30-somethings who never went to university and never earned a degree, and are searching for skills that (read)
GOAL online high school seeks transfer to D-49
The Gazette | Colorado Springs, CO
The online high school that began as a part of the Pueblo-based Cesar Chavez School Network is seeking to transfer its charter from the state-run Colorado Charter School Institute to Falcon School District 49. Bringing GOAL Academy charter school under D-49′s wing would increase funding for at-risk (read)
State changed PSSA testing rules for charter schools without federal approval
Morning Call | Allentown, PA
Gov. Tom Corbett’s education chief changed the PSSA testing rules in a way that makes it easier for charter schools to meet federal benchmarks than traditional public schools. Education Secretary Ron Tomalis’ change, made without federal approval, might have skewed the results of the 2011-12 PSSA (read)
Virtual schools
Toledo Blade | Toledo, OH
Nearly 30,000 students in Ohio, from kindergarten through 12th grade, take online classes. Nationally, more than a million students enroll annually in Internet-based courses. But whether the rush to replace teachers with technology is a good idea remains an open question. Net-based education can benefit students (read)
Daniels to promote online college for rest of term
Associated Press (Indiana)
Gov. Mitch Daniels is still promoting the online college known as Western Governors University just months before he becomes Purdue University’s president. The Indiana governor signed an executive order in 2010 creating an Indiana branch of the online college and has appeared in commercials touting the (read)
Students left to their own devices
Canberra Times | Canberra, AUS
It’s writing, just not as we know it. The Boogie Board tablet is a cross between a Magna Doodle pad and Magic Slate, toys that use a special stylus to write on a plastic sheet. About the size of an iPad, it’s an electronic scratchpad that illuminates on-screen markings and scrawls and wipes them out at the (read)
Plan to expand online classes in Florida meets resistance
Miami Herald | Miami, FL
Hundreds of South Florida students are taking classes from Virginia-based K12 Inc., the nation’s largest online education company. Now, the company hopes to establish charter schools across the state. They would not be traditional charter schools, but online schools. Their students would never set foot in a (read)
