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

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 How to Start an Online Learning Program Online Program Evaluation Online Science and Virtual Labs: Working with NACOL’s New Guidelines Research Focus: Lessons from State Virtual School Leaders Web 2.0 and Emerging Technologies for Online Learning What Online Teachers Need to Know and Do: A Guide to Professional Development for Online High School Teachers 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.

MVU’s 5th Annual Online Learning Symposium

Received this in my inbox from the MVS folks yesterday.

I would like to extend a personal invitation to you for this year’s Online Learning Symposium being held December 3, 2008 on the campus of Michigan State University.  Our keynote speaker is Michael B. Horn, co-author of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.  This book is a must read for anyone thinking about the future of public education. The authors of this book predict that half of all high school classes in the U.S. will be taught online by 2019.

Our second keynote speaker is internationally-known educator and author Dr. Warren Buckleitner, founder of Children’s Technology Review and frequent contributor to The New York Times Circuits page and to Parents and Scholastic Parent & Child magazines.  Dr. Buckleitner’s session titled “Predicting the Future of Educational Technology” will address the question “What does technology mean for the business of education?”

I believe our speakers and breakout sessions will challenge your thinking and provide you with a look at how “disruptive innovation” and online learning will impact education now and in the future. Session topics include online teacher training, a look at online learning from a national research perspective and more.

Please consider registering for the symposium now at http://www.mivu.org/symposium. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or need additional information.  I have attached a one-page flyer that announces this event.   I appreciate your willingness to share this information with others.

I hope to see you at the Kellogg Center on Dec. 3rd.

I’ll be there, so if you are too, let me know and we’ll chat.

Blogging About The K-12 Online Conference

I post flyers and notices for this every time they cross my inbox.  I figured this extra bit of publicity wouldn’t hurt.

• K12Online Conference from Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net
• K12 Online from Remote Access

International Online Learning Trends at VSS 2008

I should also note my own presentation on the state of K-12 online learning in Canada, which wasn’t included in the list below (even though my presentation with Abigail Gonzales on trial periods in Canada and the US was).

September 12, 2008

International Online Learning Trends at VSS 2008

NACOL is pleased to announce the keynote speaker for Monday, October 27, 2008. Fabrizio Cardinali will deliver a keynote on the topic, “Innovating E-Learning for the Knowledge Society: Global Challenges, Threats and Opportunities.” He serves as Chair of the European eLearning Industry Group (ELIG), a group which encompasses all major EU stakeholders in the learning industry innovation cycle. Fabrizio is one of Europe’s leading e-learning experts and author of numerous papers in international journals and conference proceedings.

Additional Conference Highlights

International Baccalaureate’s (IB) Diploma Programme Online Spanning cultures, time zones and national borders is becoming a reality for IB students. The Diploma Programme Online project aims to increase student access, extend subject choice, enhance intercultural understanding and help students develop the 21st century skills necessary for life after school. Selected course providers who adhere to the standards established by the IB to ensure the quality and “IBness” of the online experience will discuss the challenges and promises of this exciting initiative.

No Longer an Elective: Foreign Language, The New Requirement for a Globalized Era Learn how leaders and innovators in education are placing foreign language at the forefront of their initiatives to provide students the skills they need to succeed in this new era of globalization. Dr. Benjamin Blair, PhD (Power-Glide), Darby Carr (K12 Inc) and Joanne Barnett (PAVCS) will share research-based strategies that demonstrate why your students will excel in social, scholastic and professional settings when they learn a foreign language. They will discuss how online learning is uniquely suited to make language acquisition more engaging and effective than ever.

Trial Periods and Completion Policies: A Comparative Study of Virtual Schools in the United States and Canada Variations in virtual school course enrollment trial periods and course completion policies impact the comparability of school attrition statistics. Researchers contacted 170 U.S. and 62 Canadian virtual schools. Three quarters of responders had trial periods, a practice more common in the U.S.. U.S. course completion definitions appeared more stringent. Policy differences by region and school type are discussed. Researchers recommend adopting multiple measures for calculating student attrition to enable meaningful comparisons among virtual and brick and mortar schools.

See the full Conference Agenda here:
http://www.virtualschoolsymposium.org/agenda.php

Last Chance for Early Bird Pricing - Offer Expires Monday, Sept. 15th!
Register Now!

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.

Assessing the Online Learner

Received this in my inbox overnight.  Not specifically focused upon the K-12 environment, but Palloff’s and Pratt’s work does transcend both the adult and adolescent learner in many instances.

Dear Colleague,

Authors Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt recently spoke to LearningTimes Executive Producer Jonathan Finkelstein about assessing learners in online courses, and offered practical ideas for measuring learner progress and gauging understanding online. To access the podcast of their conversation and offer comments please visit:

http://www.onlineteachingandlearning.com/blog/

The podcast is based on the Jossey-Bass Online Teaching and Learning guide book series, and is a pre-cursor to the 2nd annual OTL Conference — which will take place online, October 7-8, 2008. A special pre-conference workshop, hosted by Fielding Graduate University, will be held on October 6, 2008.

Register now and get early-bird registration savings AND a special discount coupon just for LearningTimes members.

For more information visit: http://www.onlineteachingandlearning.com

Enter discount code sq10 when prompted, to get your extra savings.

Gain an instant library:

Registrants receive their choice of ANY three books from the Jossey-Bass Online Teaching & Learning series upon registration, for no additional fee.

Sign up by September 8, 2008 and save $30.00 with the early-bird offer.

http://www.onlineteachingandlearning.com/register

Many group pricing and sponsorship opportunities are available. To find out more click this link to contact us:

http://www.onlineteachingandlearning.com/contact

We hope to see you online in October!

Warm regards,
John Walber

Disrupting Class at VSS 2008

August 22, 2008

Disrupting Class at VSS 2008

NACOL is pleased to announce that author Michael Horn is going to be the Virtual School Symposium keynote speaker on Tuesday, October 28 at 8:00 a.m. His keynote is titled, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, and his keynote will cover the case studies and themes of his book of the same title, while focusing on the important innovation of K-12 online learning.

The book uses the theories of disruptive innovation to identify the root causes of schools’ struggles and suggests a path forward to customize an education for every child in the way he or she learns. In his keynote address, Horn will share the main ideas of this book to inspire change in today’s online learning field. Michael Horn is the Executive Director of Innosight Institute. He holds an AB from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. Michael Horn co-authored the book with Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and Curtis Johnson.

Additional Conference Highlights

Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning: A Policy and Practice Review Monday, October 27th, 10:30 - 11:30 AM

Successfully Launching a Virtual School in 30 Days Monday, October 27th, 3:00 - 4:00 PM

Online Learning 2.0: Moving from Flat Courses to Rich Interactive Learning Experiences Using Web 2.0 Tools Monday, October 27th, 4:15 - 5:15 PM

A Wild Policy Ride: Online Learning Trends and Battles in 2007-08 Tuesday, October 28th, 9:15 - 10:15 AM

Operating a High Quality Online Program: A Focus on Standards and Accreditation Tuesday, October 28th, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Research and Practice in Virtual Schooling: A Review of the Literature Tuesday, October 28th, 1:30 - 2:30 PM

See the full Conference Agenda here:
http://www.virtualschoolsymposium.org/agenda.php

Only 8 weeks left until VSS 2008!
Register Now!

DEANZ - Online visual arts at The Correspondence School

Here on the final day at DEANZ.  We just received an overview of Second Life and how one New Zealand university was using it.  I’m now in the following session:

Kerry Whelan-Jones

Online visual arts at The Correspondence School

Kerry began the presentation be explaining that much of The Correspondence School (TCS) did in the past was based on booklet.  However, some of the limitations of that were their limited ability to use colour, copyright issues (and usually having to pay per printing for copyright which could get to be quite high for visual arts items), the need to re-print booklets because of changes to standards or other content items, etc..

So, in the past few years (I missed how long ago) they undertook a re-design of their website and much of the print-based materials - I believe particularly for the visual arts - were converted to a web-based format (see http://www.correspondence.school.nz/departments/art/web/ ).

Some of the design decisions they made included:

• colour coding text between lessons so the students would consistently know what type of material they were reading
• there are only three clicks or less for the students to get to or back to their work from any given point in the course
• there is a limited number of words and images per page maintained throughout the course content
• images are used as tags to indicate different types of material for the students
• all portions of the site have to be accessible to dial-up Internet users
• all pages are designed that they could be printed by students and the students would not lose any functionality

The courses are housed online, but for students that don’t have Internet access there is an CD-Rom option.  The CD-Rom option is the exact same as the online version, but the images are of higher quality on the CD-Rom as the need to maintain a low-bandwidth threshold is no longer necessary.

The work that is completed by students can be submitted via mail or electronically.  The majority of students have chosen the electronic option, but some students still choose the traditional mail.  The only exception to this is the students’ final projects which must be mailed in to allow the authenticity of the work is maintained.

The examples of art included in the course are largely New Zealand-based pieces (although not exclusively).  TCS has been able to reach some quite generous agreements with a number of artists to use their work in this online course (and I mean generous on the part of the artists towards TCS).  In many of these examples, they show how an individual artist utilises various mediums and how their own work has changed over time. Finally, they have also tried to use examples of student work in the course.

For most students, TCS supplies the students with the actual art supplies that they need.  This does not apply to adult students or what we would call in North America supplmental students (i.e., students enrolled in a brick-and-mortar schoool that are taking only a single TCS course - they call them “journey students”, at least that’s what I think she’s saying).

The remainder of the presentation was largely an illustration of some of the content of the various courses.

DEANZ - Virtual Field Experience: Preparing Future Teachers for e-Learning in Secondary Schools

The second presentation in this time block was:

Lily Compton, Niki Davis & Brad Meek - Virtual field experience: Preparing future teachers for e-learning in secondary schools

Which is definitely focused on K-12. Niki was the one who was here to present and the presentation was largely based upon the Teacher Education Goes into Virtual Schooling (TEGIVS) project in the US and how she brought or has been trying to implement down here in New Zealand.

The first half of the presentation was background information about the TEGIVS program at Iowa State - see the Publications and Presentations link at the project website for more information from previous papers and presentations (or just click on the Curriculum link and see the project materials yourself).

After describing some of the main take-aways from the TEGIVS project, Niki turned her attention to the next steps for her work here in New Zealand at the University of Canterbury, which include:

• recruit an e-teacher who is keen to pilot an e-learning field experience
• persuade colleagues to let us try a pilot
• gather materials for briefing New Zealand e-learning
• recruit future teachers
• pilot and online course

So, essentially I think Niki is hoping to being to built relationships down here to replicate TEGIVS in a New Zealand context.  I’ve been thinking over the past few days, as I have been working on a manuscript for a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Education, how a Canadian TEGIVS project might look.

DEANZ - Professional Development in e-Learning

Day two at the DEANZ conference.  I’m done my keynote (which I’ll post a podcast of a portion of at a later date) and my two workshops (one yesterday and one just now).  I’m currently sitting in another K-12 focused session, or at least a session focused upon professional development and e-learning.

Juliana Mansvelt, Gordon Suddaby & Duncan O’Hara - Professional development in e-learning

The purpose of the project being discussed was to develop a strategic framework to support professional development for e-learning.  The Massey study explored issues to inform the adoption, implementation and improvement in e-learning. The initial research was based upon survey research conducted with teachers at the polytechnical level (I believe that they said about 500).

They found that these teachers indicated:

• 95.6% of participants saw PD as important part of the job
• 74% believed institutions saw it as important
• 71% were aware of e-learning PD courses
• 53% had engaged in some form of formal or informal e-learning PD
• 36.8% of participants had been involved in formal PD which combined pedagogy with technology

The researchers then conducted 40 interviews - the sample is indeed teaching, support and managerial staff at polytechnical institutions (and I’ve just figured out that these are post-secondary institution, so these notes are based upon PD with post-secondary teachers - so take their applicability to the K-12 environment with a grain of salt).

In the interviews they found that teachers were anxious about the formal e-learning PD. They also found that teachers saw the following as effective:

• relevant
• just-in-time
• personalized assistance
• problem and needs based learning
• disciplinary expertise
• flexible in format and deliver
• supported appropriately

Looking at this list, and these are my own comments, I wonder what the researchers actually expected to find.  This list seems fairly intuitive to me and I’d think that this would be consistent at many levels.

The presenter continued with some other points, but given the post-secondary focus and the fact that I was in the back and the woman was quite softspoken, that’s about all I got.

DEANZ - Extending Learning Opportunities for High School Students in Rural Communities: The Replication of a New Zealand Model in Canada

Well, I’m here at the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (see http://www.deanz.org.nz/conf2008/) and while there aren’t many sessions focused on the K-12 environment, there is one that I am in now:

Dr. Ken Stevens - Extending learning opportunities for high school students in rural communities: The replication of a New Zealand model in Canada

As Dr. Stevens’ introduced it, the problem is “the provision of educational opportunities for senior students in small rural high schools that are comparable to those expected by urban students in big high schools.”  His beginning in addressing this problem was through the creation of district intranets to link schools together for parts of their day here in New Zealand with 10 rural schools (this is building on his open school concept that he’s described earlier in papers such as:

Stevens, K. (1999). A new model for teaching in rural communities: The electronic organisation of schools as intranets. Prism, Winter, 23-26. Retrieved on June 21, 2005 from http://www.tellearn.mun.ca/pubs/model.html

Stevens, K. (1997). The place of telelearning in the development of rural schools in Newfoundland and Labrador. Prospects, 4(4). Retrieved July 4, 2005 from http://www.cdli.ca/Community/Prospects/v4n4/telelearning.htm

Stevens, K. (1997). Three dimensions of leadership in a telelearning environment: School networking, collaborative teaching and open administration. The Morning Watch, 25(1-1). Retrieved on June 21, 2005 from http://www.mun.ca/educ/faculty/mwatch/fall97/three.htm

The open school model is designed to:

• teaching in schools and teaching between schools
• expanding the school class in time, space, organization, and capacity

After describing the transition from the Vista District Digital Intranet (Dr. Stevens’ original project) to the provincial virtual school (see my own article in BJET - http://www.michaelbarbour.com/research/pubs/bjet-05.pdf - which describes this evolution), he moved to discussing the role of the small schools in these projects, which he saw as:

• desperation with falling student rolls
• school closure
• lack of curriculum options
• duplication
• collaboration for growth
• sharing facilities and staff
• enhancement of opportunities

The pedagogical challenges that remain or need to be overcome:

• integrating on-site and online instruction
• integrating physical and virtual spaces
• blended, asynchronous and synchronous learning
• [missed this one]
• new classroom organizational models

Next steps in looking at e-learning in rural K-12 schools:

• horizontal integration of e-students
• vertical integration at community levels
• integration of virtual and physical learning - “cybercells” (Stevens & Stewart, 2005)
• customized instruction - education for each

Note: Stevens & Stewart (2005) - http://www.mun.ca/research/2006report/publications/cybercells.php