Virtual High School Meanderings

Only 3 Weeks Left to Register for the Virtual School Symposium!

mkbnl — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:30:57 +0000

Online learning is growing at 30% annually. The Virtual School Symposium (VSS) highlights the best online programs across the United States and internationally-acclaimed programs in Canada, Mexico, the European Union, and abroad. Learn about the latest advancements in K-12 education made available through online learning to expand access to high-quality courses, help improve graduation rates, power school reform efforts and bridge the gaps between the “haves and have nots.” Over one hundred panel sessions will showcase a variety of program models for school districts, states, charter schools and beyond. There is a special focus on many facets of e-learning: digital curriculum, online teacher professional development, program management and leadership, emerging technologies, research, planning, policy and best practices.

Conference Highlights

VSS Monday Night “Jeans and Jerseys” Networking Dinner
Monday, October 27, 2008
6:30 – 9:30 PM

When you are packing, don’t forget to bring jeans and your favorite school, college or professional team’s jersey or t-shirt to wear to the Monday night networking dinner in Cardinals stadium. Come and sport your team colors at VSS on Monday night.

Pre-Conference Sessions
Sunday, October 26, 2008
1:00 - 5:00 PM

See the complete Conference Agenda

Only 3 weeks left until VSS 2008!

The countdown to VSS 2008 has begun! If you haven’t registered yet, now is the time. Now is also the time to be booking your airline reservations. Rates in and out of the Greater Phoenix Area are great right now, so don’t delay!

To ensure proper delivery of our email messages to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders),
add info@nacol.org to your Address Book or Safe Sender List.

Invitation to SAS Open House

mkbnl — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:12:15 +0000

More stuff showing up in my inbox from the Virtual School Symposium 2008 vendors. If you’re interested, you should attend.

Greetings friends,

I would like to invite you to our next SAS® Curriculum Pathways® “Open House” web demo, scheduled for Friday, October 10 at 1:00pm EDT.

To register for this free guided web demo of Curriculum Pathways, please visit our website at: www.sascurriculumpathways.com

A link to the Open House registration will be found in the lower right corner of the page.

Feel free to share this with your colleagues and encourage them to register and attend.

We recently announced the new release of SAS® Curriculum Pathways® at: http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/NewSASCurriculumPathways.html

SAS® Curriculum Pathways® provides interactive, standards-based resources in English, science, math, social studies and Spanish (grades 8-12) for traditional and online schools. We focus on material difficult to convey through conventional methods—topics where doing, seeing, and listening provide information and encourage insights in ways that textbooks cannot.

I hope you can join us for the web demo on 10/10/08.

Sincerely,

Bruce

——————————————————————————————

Bruce Friend
Director, Curriculum Pathways ▪ Education Practice
Tel: 919 531 2247 ▪ Fax: 919 531 9448 ▪
Mobile: 919 802 1030
Bruce.Friend@sas.com
SAS Campus Drive ▪ Cary, North Carolina 27513

www.sascurriculumpathways.com

SAS® … THE POWER TO KNOW®

Speaking Of Blogging

mkbnl — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:30:59 +0000

Darren over at Teaching and Developing Online has posted a number of items recently about the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School that when read together are rather interesting. What do you think?

He has a couple of series that are in progress right now, so I’ll try and post those to when he is done with them (hint to Darren, in your last entry for each of those series, indicate that it is your last entry so I know when to post the summary here).

I also have to apologize to Darren (and I guess Kelli as well, given she was the one who compiled it). I just received an advanced copy of the NACOL Research Committee brief that was completed on mentoring to review and the material that he sent to me was not included in that document. As such, I think that he and I should use that material to put together a manuscript that we send somewhere with a practitioner focus (and this is the first he’s hearing of this I’m sure, as we’re working on another manuscript on a different topic as we speak).

New Virtual School Blogger Found

mkbnl — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 19:20:48 +0000

So, yesterday I came across another person who blogs about virtual schooling - Teach Web 2.0. Don’t get me wrong, she doesn’t blog about virtual schooling full-time - as the name suggests. But she does have a lot of virtual schooling posts. A sample of just the virtual schooling ones include:

Other blogs that I regular watch for K-12 online learning content include:

Note that not all are updated regularly and not all focus upon K-12 online learning - they just tend to be ones where I find the K-12 online learning content moreso than other blogs.

2008 NACOL Board of Directors Election

mkbnl — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:39:14 +0000

For those of you who are members of NACOL, this should have appeared in your inbox yesterday.

2008 NACOL Board of Directors Election

From October 6 through October 10, 2008, NACOL members will have the opportunity to vote for candidates to fill two open seats on NACOL’s Board of Directors. To be eligible to vote, you must be a member in good standing, dues-current, and registered with your current email address.

For this year’s election, we are offering online voting on the NACOL website.

On October 6 each NACOL member will receive an email containing an individualized voting link.

Voting commences on October 6 and will be online through midnight October 10 (ET).

The e-ballots will be counted on October 13.

Candidates will be notified by October 14.

Election results will be announced to NACOL Membership by October 15.

Review the candidates >>

The polls will remain open from
Monday, October 6, through midnight Friday, October 10 (ET).

Please make sure you are current with your membership dues. Visit the NACOL “Join Now” page to renew your membership. There’s even an online payment option to make this process easier.

We appreciate all of your efforts and hope that you will participate in this important process of electing NACOL leadership to the Board of Directors. Your input is critical and your choices will help set the future direction of the North American Council for Online Learning.

Thank you for your involvement and service to our non-profit organization providing leadership, professional development and advocacy for K-12 online learning. If you have any questions, please contact Linda Wood at 703-752-6216 or send a message to Linda.

Respectfully yours,

Susan D. Patrick
President and CEO
NACOL

If you aren’t a member of NACOL and are reading this blog, chances are you should join (and I imagine if you join in the next week you’ll get the opportunity to participate in these elections too).

Virtual Schooling in the News

mkbnl — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:20:07 +0000

Beginning with the ASCD Smart Brief.

All Florida districts to offer virtual classes by fall 2009
Next year, all Florida children will be able to earn their diploma entirely online without ever entering a classroom. Under a new state law, all districts will either be required to create their own online schools or work together with those who do. The Miami Herald/The Palm Beach Post (9/30)

Back to the regular Yahoo! News Alert for virtual school.

Program Could Turn Arkansas’ School Buses Into Classrooms
The Morning News Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:46 PM PDT
LITTLE ROCK -— A pilot program that has transformed school buses into mobile virtual classrooms in one Arkansas school district is worth expanding across the state, coordinators say.

New Florida law creating virtual schools
UPI Mon, 29 Sep 2008 9:14 AM PDT
ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 29 (UPI) — School districts across Florida are in the process of creating virtual schools online as part of a new state law, scholastic officials say.

New Florida law creating virtual schools
Moldova.org Mon, 29 Sep 2008 9:24 AM PDT
School districts across Florida are in the process of creating virtual schools online as part of a new state law, scholastic officials say.Florida Virtual School Chief Executive Officer Julie Young said every school district in the state must have its own virtual school or be affiliated with another online service by the time the next school year begins, The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post said …

Program could turn Arkansas’ school buses into classrooms
Arkansas News Bureau Mon, 29 Sep 2008 6:46 AM PDT
By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A pilot program that has transformed school buses into mobile virtual classrooms in one Arkansas school district is worth expanding across the state, coordinators say.

Florida starts virtual school mandate
Miami Herald Tue, 30 Sep 2008 7:14 AM PDT
Starting next school year, the first generation of Florida students can earn a diploma from their public schools entirely online, without ever setting foot in a classroom from kindergarten through 12th grade.

S.D. Unified to launch virtual high school San Diego Union-Tribune Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:13 PM PDT
A virtual high school will open in San Diego this year to serve a growing number of students who want to get their education online and off campus.

Vanderbilt Virtual School Brings Election to 5th-12th Graders Across the Country
Newswise Thu, 02 Oct 2008 5:26 PM PDT
The 2008 presidential race offers a unique teaching opportunity for students of all ages. To bring this historic election straight into classrooms, the Vanderbilt Virtual School has created an interactive videoconferencing program that gives 5th through 12th grade teachers across the country a curriculum and a slate of expert instructors, including CNN commentator Lou Dobbs, to share with their …

Next the Yahoo! News Alert for cyber school.

Pennridge to look at cyber school funding
Perkasie News-Herald Wed, 01 Oct 2008 1:22 AM PDT
At the Sept. 15 Pennridge School Board meeting, Richard Davies, head of the legislative committee, railed against the amount of money the school district is spending on utilizing cyber charter schools.

Pa. cyber schools offer alternative education
The Herald-Mail Thu, 02 Oct 2008 2:23 PM PDT
WAYNESBORO, PA. Back-to-school sales had just gotten under way when the Richardson family received books, supplies and a pair of computers on its doorstep.

Moving on to the Google News Alert for virtual school.

Acton letter campaign
Boston Globe - United States
… the current school year, 25 high school students will have the option of enrolling in an online course for credit at the Virtual High School, govhs.org. …
See all stories on this topic

Virtual Environments and K-12 Education: A Tour of the …
RedOrbit - Dallas,TX,USA
In 1999, a National Science Foundation grant was awarded to create and research a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) for middle and high school students …
See all stories on this topic

OHS sets makeup days
Opelousas Daily World - Opelousas,LA,USA
Semester grades for dual enrollment, Louisiana Virtual School and half-credit courses were also considered when making up the schedule. …
See all stories on this topic

Glass examines American trends, fate of public education
Arizona State University - Tempe,USA
He added that the fastest growing trends in education, virtual school and home schooling, are a lucrative business that have “degraded education and created …
See all stories on this topic

Exeter receives distance learning grant
Cassville Democrat - Cassville,MO,USA
“This grant will allow us to purchase and install equipment that will tie our districts together and tie us to the virtual school at Miss

Finally, the Google News Alert for cyber school.

Cyberschool software well-received by 25 schools
Newsnet - Harare,Zimbabwe
Since the development of cyberschool software it has been well-received by 25 schools in Zimbabwe as an essential tool in teaching science subjects. …
See all stories on this topic

Ligonier Student Earns National Merit Commendation
PR-CANADA.net (press release) - Murino,Montenegro
Anna Hanley, a senior in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, has been named a Commended Student in the 2009 National Merit Scholarship Program. …
See all stories on this topic

Ligonier Student Earns National Merit Commendation
IT News Online - Mumbai,Maharashtra,India
26 /PRNewswire/ — Anna Hanley, a senior in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, has been named a Commended Student in the 2009 National Merit Scholarship …
See all stories on this topic <

Ligonier Student Earns National Merit Commendation
International Business Times - New York,NY,USA
26 /PRNewswire/ — Anna Hanley, a senior in thePennsylvania Cyber Charter School, has been named a Commended Student in the2009 National Merit Scholarship …
See all stories on this topic

Don’t Vote

mkbnl — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:44:04 +0000

While nothing to do with virtual schooling or K-12 online learning, the former political organizer in me says I have to pass this on (thanks to Chris Miller at Unquiet Desperation for the link - see his Don’t Vote).

BTW, for my fellow canucks out there - go to http://www.elections.ca/intro.asp?section=vot&document=index&lang=e .

Saturday Morning Comics

mkbnl — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:37:19 +0000

I was in Toronto yesterday, so I didn’t get the Friday Funnies feature out. So I figured that I’d be like the newspaper and put out the comics on Saturday morning.

As always, courtesy of Darren at Teaching and Developing Online (and there are a few of them this week).

Online Tutoring Session at VSS

mkbnl — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:19:22 +0000

And the vendor contacting begins… This is the first one, of which I expect there will be many leading up to the Virtual School Symposium (and after it for that matter)….

Greetings friends,

I hope that NACOL’s Virtual School Symposium (Oct 26-28) is on your calendar this year. Having been involved in K12 online learning for over a decade now, it is amazing to see the growth of our industry and to see the sharing of best practices that occurs among online programs and educators who are dedicated to providing academic options for students.

If you or your program are interested in learning how online tutoring can effectively support your students and teachers, I welcome you to join me in a session titled: “Online Tutoring: Exploring options that best meet the needs of your K-12 students” on October 28^th (Tuesday) at 9:00am.

During this session I will share my personal experiences in using online tutoring services; everything from why and how they can be effective, challenges for successful implementation, and what criteria to consider when implementing online tutoring. We will explore best practices at the elementary and secondary school level. A case study of how online tutoring has been effectively implemented for elementary aged students will also be presented by Rahul Gupta of Ed2Net Learning.

Best wishes to you and your program and safe travels to AZ for VSS 2008.

Sincerely,

Bruce Friend

—————————————————————————————————————–

Bruce Friend
Director, Curriculum Pathways ▪ Education Practice
Tel: 919 531 2247 ▪ Fax: 919 531 9448 ▪
Mobile: 919 802 1030
Bruce.Friend@sas.com
SAS Campus Drive ▪ Cary, North Carolina 27513

www.sascurriculumpathways.com

SAS® … THE POWER TO KNOW®

LearnNowBC Learners News

mkbnl — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:23:51 +0000

This is the first one of these I have received (hopefully not the last).

Stay Informed

As announced at our 2008 Annual Spring Conference, the VSS is committed to providing you with programs to enhance your ability to teach through distributed learning. So you can expect weekly broadcasts which we renamed the VSS Educator eBulletin containing announcements and information about professional learning opportunities as well as tools and resources you can use to effectively access technology to assist learning and teaching online.

To ensure we reach as many teachers as possible, please share The VSS Educator eBulletin with your colleagues!

And to have continuous, easy access to what’s available, make sure to list LearnNowBC as one of your favourites in your web browser!

Career and Academic Advising

“Ask the Advisor” Common Knowledge Base & Academic Advising

On September 2, the Virtual School Society implemented the “Ask the Advisor” Common Knowledge Base tool on LearnNowBC. Ask the Advisor provides users with answers to commonly asked questions in plain language. It will eventually replace the FAQs, currently on the site but both will remain until this new tool becomes familiar.

Ask the Advisor has two main elements:

Question Box
An Ask the Advisor question box form is located in the header of every page on LearnNowBC. You enter a question in the text field and then click the “Ask!” button.

Response Page
An Answer Page pops up the “best” response to the question based on how the question matches various responses that are contained in the Knowledge Base.

Other Functions

• View the top 10 questions asked in the previous 15 days, by clicking the “Top 10 Questions” button

• View a summary of your questions and responses asked in the current session, by clicking the “Your Recent Questions” button
• Rate a response by selecting your rating (from “Bad” to “Perfect!”), then clicking “Submit”
• View a related question by selecting one from the drop-down menu under the “You May Be Interested In” heading
• Contact Academic or Career Advisor or the LearnNowBC Support Desk by phone or email
For more information about Ask the Advisor please contact Chris Lynch at LearnNowBC at 250 940-1140 x2007 or send him an email.

2008 VSS Needs Assessment

In conjunction with our mandate of providing programs to teachers to enhance their ability to teach through distributed learning, the VSS is already hard at work conducting a needs assessment of the professional learning needs of educators in BC.

To date, phase 1 which involves reviewing historical, academic and research records and interviewing key individuals in the MoE, has been completed. Phase 2 will be completed in October. It includes regional focus group sessions with educators throughout the province as well as surveys of administrators and rural educators to ensure that the study represents a true cross section of BC’s education community. Phase 3 will involve analyzing all the data collected and making recommendations for next steps by the middle of December.

Ultimately, the VSS would like to provide a comprehensive, integrated, yet flexible professional learning program which addresses the needs of BC educators interested and involved in using technology to assist learning and teaching online.

Updates will be provided in future broadcasts of the VSS Educator eBulletin.

The Advising Centre

The Academic Advising section of the LearnNowBC has been significantly updated:

New name - The Advising Centre - to reflect the expanded scope of advising services offered

Career and Trades advising services have been added with phone and email. Career & Trades advising services at career_advising@learnnowbc.ca

Academic Advising at academic_advising@learnnowbc.ca

New courses will be added to the Course Finder:

Intro to Work Experience
Work Experience 12a & 12b
Apprenticeship 11a & 11b
Apprenticeship 12a & 12b.

For more information about The Advising Centre please contact Chris Lynch at LearnNowBC at 250 940-1140 x2007 or send him an email.

Educator Services at LNBC

LearnNowBC now provides you with access to a wide range of technology services, tools and resources you can use to develop and deliver learning experiences and support learners in new ways.

Check out the Educator Services section for links to the Rural Education Network, Professional Learning Opportunities, the PL Calendar, our Annual Conference, Learn To Teach Online and Online Tools & Resources.

Many resources and training opportunities offered to you this Fall are the same programs that were available last year:

10 knowWEEKS programs (see Back By Popular Demand: KnowWEEKS)
Teaching Online 101
SuccessMaker Online
Two “New to DL” programs - Teachers Working With Students, Teachers Working With School Administrators.

Issue No. 11, October 1, 2008

Quick Links

Professional Learning Events

Oct 5, 2008
knowWEEKS: Introduction to knowWEEKS & Online Environment Resources
The biggest factor in moving from F2F to online is finding the time to build the skills needed to support your students. If you are new to knowWEEKS, this session will help you wet your feet online and introduce the process that the knowplace Family of Sites uses in the knowWEEKS Community. You’ll discover a list of resources for you to refer back to throughout the year while you build your online facilitation skills.

Daily Physical Activity Tracker

To support the BC government’s goal to have the most fit population to host the Olympics, the VSS, working with the Ministry of Education (MoE), has created the Daily Physical Activity (DPA) Tracker located on the LearnNowBC site for use by students.

What is DPA?
We know that active, healthy students are happier and learn better. They also develop good habits that bring better chances of longer, healthier lives. To help students achieve their best, the MoE announced the introduction of Daily Physical Activity, for all schools and students in B.C. Schools will provide 30 minutes of daily physical activity for K- 9 students; students in Grades 10 to 12 will perform an average of 150 minutes of daily physical activity a week as part of their graduation requirements. Daily physical activity works alongside other Government initiatives, such as the Healthy Schools Network, Action Schools! BC, the School Fruit and Vegetable Snack program and revisions to guidelines for the sale of food and beverages within schools, all of which are tackling BC’s obesity and healthy living challenges.

What is the DPA Tracker?
It’s a tool developed by the VSS that students can use to record their daily physical activity and create a report to submit to their teacher for class credit. The DPA Tracker is available online at LearnNowBC.

Please let your students and their parents know!

Edmark House Series

In early September the Virtual School Society added four new interactive courses for Kindergarten to Grade 2 children called the Edmark House series on our LearnNowBC website. The result of a licensing agreement among the MoE, Ministry of Children and Families and the Virtual School Society, in cooperation with BC ERAC, the series is an interactive software program that aims to provide access to early learning supports for young children.

These online courses are available to parents and children exclusively at LearnNowBC, can be accessed by both PC and Mac users at school or anywhere web access is available, and best of all, they are free of charge.

They are available in four titles in four subject areas:

Bailey’s Book House (Language Arts)	Millie’s Math House (Math)
Sammy’s Science House (Science)	Trudy’s Time and Place House (Social Studies)

In addition, there’s a series of learning resources available to educators for each subject title:

A complete Teacher’s Guide (PDF format)
Individual Classroom Activity Guides
Individual Take-Home “Together Time” Activities
Activity-specific Lesson Plans.

Visit LearnNowBC’s Learning Centre to access these courses and resources. For answers to questions, please call the VSS at 1-800-946-8332, or send an email.

Back By Popular Demand: knowWEEKS

knowWEEKS is brought to you by the knowplace Family of Sites with participants and sites all over the globe that help individuals and organizations build online courses and communities in moodle and other open source environments and freeware tools. KnowWEEKS is a series of unique week long online offerings focused on tools, tips and strategies for teaching with technology and teaching online.

As the webstats show, the 2008 series was well attended.

Participants came from school districts and independent schools throughout the province as well as some from other organizations, including the VSS
Participants were educators in a wide variety of subjects but the majority of them were teachers of math, the sciences and media subjects (visual arts, computers, IT etc.).
Participants represented the entire K-12 grade range but the majority were teachers of grades 8-12. However, it is important to note that some of the sessions were populated heavily by teachers of a particular grade level.

Since nearly 60% of the participants were novices and nearly 93% of all participants believe that they might or will teach online in the near future, this indicates that the professional learning opportunities with the greatest appeal are those targeting teachers who are newcomers to online teaching and learning.

These statistics as well as knowplace’s own analysis of historical data and continuous polling of participants has revealed that there is a growing demand for online professional learning opportunities for BC educators.

Therefore, the series this Fall is targeted primarily, but not exclusively, to newcomers.

To ease the trepidation experienced by some new participants, the knowplace team of professional online facilitators, coaches and knowMATES (former participants) support you quickly with an informal welcoming tone. For example, when you first join a knowWEEKS session, support is provided through an initial description of offerings, site access, and system nuances. This is followed by intensive support when you participate in the online discussion area.

Assistant facilitators are available to support the facilitators and you. Their role is to stimulate discussion, follow-up with people who haven’t logged in or posted and assist the facilitator as required. The numbers of assistants vary according to the number of participants and their entry skill level but it is knowplace’s policy to always have a minimum of two.

Click the picture to view a description by Frances Long, President knowplace, about what knowWEEKS is and how it can help educators get involved with teaching and learning online (approx 3 min).

Check the calendar for the sessions occurring from Oct through Dec, 2008.

Information For You To Share With Parents

Remind parents to check out the DPA Tracker.

Also remind them about the Edmark House series.

Click here to see everything that is available for parents through LearnNowBC.

Information For You To Share With Students

Tell all your students they can access courses through DL by visiting LearnNowBC.

Remind them there’s another option open to them if the courses they want or need are unavailable.

Also remind your K-2 students about the Edmark House series.

Click here for information about the other services available for students through LearnNowBC.

Visit LearnNowBC: Visit LearnNowBC Calendar of Events Contact

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