“Online Learning” Articles Needed

Something from my inbox. It would be nice to see my K-12 stuff in this publication, so please submit your virtual school manuscripts.

Colleagues–

_Academic Exchange Quarterly_ is looking for well-written articles for its “Online Learning” feature. These articles should consist of not more than 3,000 words and should appeal to readers who are using the Internet in creative ways to teach:

http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/5onlin.htm

If you have such an article, see the following for submission:

http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/rufen1.htm

(See the “Six Simple Submission Steps” for quickest submission.)

If you have any questions, feel free to send them to me.

Ben Varner
———
Academic Exchange Quarterly
http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/edpbva.htm

JTATE Special Issue: Call for Manuscripts

I got this message yesterday from Rick Ferdig and wanted to pass it on here.

Hi All: I apologize for any cross-referencing. Michael Barbour created a list of people who are attending AERA and presenting on Virtual Schooling. Michael, I hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed your list to share information about an upcoming publication opportunity.

Niki Davis and I are co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. It’s on K-12 virtual schooling and teacher education. I have attached a call, and I hope that you’ll consider submitting a paper for the special issue review. Papers are due May 1^st. Best, Rick & Niki

PS. Please feel free to share with others that you think might be interested.

So, here is the call in case anyone is interested. BTW, I’ll post the list of AERA presentations about virtual schooling that Rick has referenced tomorrow.

Journal of Technology & Teacher Education (JTATE)

Call for Manuscripts: Teacher Education and K-12 Virtual Schooling

Please consider submitting an article for the Fall 2008 theme issue of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. Submission deadline: May 1, 2008.

According to John Watson in his 2007 Keeping Pace report, at least 42 states have significant supplemental online learning programs at the K-12 level http://www.nacol.org/docs/KeepingPace07-color.pdf). In 2006-07, Florida Virtual School had over 100,000 course enrollments. Michigan recently became the first state to require students to have some sort of online learning experience prior to high school graduation. And, various states are beginning to develop an endorsement or certification for teaching K-12 online. Online education is quickly becoming one of the most important issues in US K-12 schools. Virtual classrooms are also increasingly international as evidenced by the renaming VHS to VHS International. In addition, distance education for young people has a longer history in other countries, including Australia and Norway, and those schools are evolving virtually too.

Much of the work in teacher education related to online learning has focused on online experiences of pre-service or in-service teacher education students. JTATE has published many influential articles on what it means to improve teacher education using online teaching and learning. Other studies have attempted to understand various technical and pedagogic skills learned by future and current teachers. Fewer research efforts have been directed at how to prepare future teachers for roles in K-12 online education.

JTATE seeks articles on Teacher Education and K-12 Virtual Schooling that address:

• Description of research-based models for preparing preservice or inservice teachers for K-12 online education
• Research-based studies on collaborations between teacher education programs and K-12 virtual schools
• Research-based studies on professional and or faculty development for virtual schooling
• Issues in the evaluation of preparing qualified online K-12 instructors
• Research-based studies on the experience of preservice or inservice teachers and/or related resources
• Research-based studies on the experience of Schools of Education faculty in working with virtual schools on teacher preparation
• Original theoretical perspectives to inform scholarship teacher education and K-12 virtual schooling
• Factors relating to success or failure in virtual schooling related to teacher education
• Other issues that address teacher education and K-12 virtual schooling

All submissions will go through the regular JTATE policy of blind review by experts in the area. Guest editors: Richard E. Ferdig (University of Florida) & Niki Davis (Iowa State University) Please follow the Author Guidelines available at: http://www.aace.org/pubs/entrance. Please submit manuscripts at the same location and designate “JTATE: TE & K-12 Special Issue” when you submit. Contact Dr. Rick Ferdig with questions (rferdig@ufl.edu).

Note I’ll have a couple of these kinds of announcements today.

What Would You Recommend?

A colleague of mine is teaching a distance education course for the first time. He asked me to recommend a couple of readings focused on the K-12 environment or virtual schooling. I recommended:

Smith, R., Clark, T., & Blomeyer, R. L. (2005). A synthesis of new research on K-12 online learning. Naperville, IL: Learning Point Associates. Retrieved on October 8, 2007 from http://www.ncrel.org/tech/synthesis/synthesis.pdf
Clark, T. (2007). Virtual and distance education in North American schools. In M.G. Moore, Handbook of Distance Education (2nd ed.), pp. 473-490. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

As I felt both were good introductory pieces that gave a good overview, but also provide a comprehensive look at some of the work that it going on right now.

He has one student who is quite interested in this topic and asked for additional readings. I wrote the following response:

Let me recommend three entries from my blog.
- http://virtualschooling.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/where-does-one-start/
- http://virtualschooling.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/repost-from-the-aect-blogtrack-current-research-literature-base/
- http://virtualschooling.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/a-need-for-a-common-language/

All three of these outline specific issues in virtual schooling with the appropriate citations (mostly online or open source items) that you can track down.

I’d also recommend that you take a look at my website:

http://www.michaelbarbour.com

Click on RESEARCH and then PUBLICATIONS (and to a lesser extent PRESENTATIONS). This will give you a sense of some of the work that have done in the area (and, in particular, you might find the bibliographies useful).Then, if you have any further questions feel free to shoot me an e-mail.

But what about you, what would you suggest?