Virtual School Teaching Internships

I guess this is kind of a Florida Virtual School (FLVS) themed few days.  As I was exploring the FLVS website yesterday for the FLVS: Completed Research Projects entry, I came across a page marked “University Partnerships“.

http://www.flvs.net/areas/aboutus/Pages/UniversityPartnerships.aspx

The page itself describes FLVS‘s openness to partnerships with universities and states:

These collaborations include grant partnerships, research opportunities, professional development for teachers and pre-service teacher observation/internship opportunities in our virtual classrooms.

What is interesting is that immediately following that statement is a section that is specifically devoted to:

Pre-Service Teacher Program
The demand for online education is growing and FLVS’s pre-service teacher program is the most innovative in education today. There is no other place where education majors can work in an online classroom. According to NACOL ‘s “Keeping Pace” report, 44 states have online learning programs. A Sloan Consortium report estimated 1,030,000 students engaged in online courses. This was a 47% increase from 2005-2006. Faced with the fast-paced expansion of online education, FLVS decided to open this school in an effort to help education majors prepare for the 21^st century classroom.

We offer opportunities for students to complete their observation requirements in our classrooms along with internship placement up to 14 weeks in the classroom of a clinically-trained, supervising teacher. Please click here to see pre-service teachers’ work and reflections of their time spent in our classrooms.

The presentation is worth the 5 to 8 minutes to takes to watch.  Anyway, this got me wondering how many other virtual school programs have relationships with teacher education programs where they are allowing pre-service teacher education students to complete their student teaching or teaching internships (whichever terms you happen to use) in a virtual school.  And when I use these terms I am not thinking about a teaching practicum that often comes earlier in the program to give students some exposure to the classroom (brick-and-mortar or virtual), maybe even teach a lesson.  I’m thinking of situations where the students spend a full semester doing nothing other than being in a classroom to teach (and in theory be mentored into that role in some systematic way).

I’m going to assume that the FLVS example has something to do with the University of Central Florida program that I last discussed in the entry Student Teaching Online.  And I know that the Teacher Education Goes into Virtual Schooling (TEGIVS) program at Iowa State University also has an internship component (and it dawns on me that when I examine the TEGIVS tag for this blog I have never written an entry totally devoted to the TEGIVS program, so I’m going to have to change that).  In addition, I do know of a number of other programs that do have the practicum components where students get exposed to virtual schooling, its environment and have some limited opportunities to teach.

So, are there other university programs or virtual schools out there that do similar kinds of student teaching or teaching internship program?

Student Teaching Online

There is a story developing in Florida that has been appearing in my inbox via my Yahoo News Alert for virtual school and the ASCD Smart Brief.  It’ll show up tomorrow in the Virtual Schooling in the News weekly feature, but it caught my attention this morning and I wanted to talk a bit about it.

“Virtual internships” prepare future educators to teach online classes
Future teachers at the University of Central Florida are participating in “virtual internships” to prepare them to teach students via Internet courses. The students are paired with teaching mentors at the Florida Virtual School — the first public school in the country to conduct all classes online — allowing them to familiarize themselves with the technology they will be using and with the teaching methods used in a virtual classroom. Orlando Sentinel (Fla.) (1/14)

Florida Virtual School, UCF to train future teachers how to instruct online
Orlando Sentinel Wed, 14 Jan 2009 1:23 AM PST
The Florida Virtual School — the country’s first entirely online statewide public school — and the University of Central Florida are teaming up to offer future teachers what they call first-of-its-kind training: virtual internships.

UCF, online school ink partnership
Orlando Business Journal Wed, 14 Jan 2009 6:27 AM PST
The University of Central Florida and Florida Virtual School are partnering on a new program allowing college students to intern with the Florida Virtual School.

Virtual interns will learn online teaching
Sun-Sentinel Thu, 15 Jan 2009 3:29 AM PST
UCF grads will learn how to teach online The Florida Virtual School — the country’s first entirely online statewide public school — and the University of Central Florida are teaming up to offer future teachers what they call first-of-its-kind training: Virtual internships.

As best I can tell, the program is associated with the Internship Opportunities provide by the Instructional Technology program at University of Central Florida (see PreK-12 for the specifics available).

As you may have noticed, over the past week or so I’ve been talking a bit about Teacher Education and K-12 Online Learning (see Teaching And Learning Online and Telelearning And Rural School Teaching for these recent examples).  So, a few words about this development…

While it is a comprehensive approach to preparing pre-service and in-service teachers for teaching in a K-12 online learning environment, I’m not sure that I would classify it as the “first of its kind”.  There have been other programs that have included virtual field experiences (although I’m not sure if they have been as long or as extensive as the ones proposed here).

As one quick example, there was a fellow blogger who posted about her experiences doing observations of a virtual school course (see here and here and here and here).  I believe that this was at the University of Florida, so I’m going to guess  Cathy Cavanaugh was responsible for that course (maybe even the Virtual School Philosophy and Pedagogy course).

Another, probably more comprehensive example would be the  Teacher Education Goes into Virtual Schooling (TEGIVS) program at Iowa State University (see TEGIVS tag).  I note that in addition to their general curriculum, they have courses that appear to be associated with a field experience (see here and here).

Also, as I mentioned a few days ago in Teaching And Learning Online, Geoff Roulet at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario has a course entitled Teaching and Learning Online that offers an alternate practicum, which he describes as:

Agencies delivering online education programs have indicated support for courses such as FOCI 291, introducing teacher candidates to teaching and learning online. They are willing to explore the possibility of providing opportunities for candidates to experience both online teaching and the development of online curriculum and learning activities. Candidates may wish to spend the Alternate Practicum period participating in the development and delivery of online courses in jurisdictions beyond Ontario and Canada.

A significant number of individual classroom teachers are interested in developing learning objects and websites to complement their classroom activities. Many are just in the initial stages of such experiments and would welcome assistance in the design of web-based learning environments and online interaction with students. Course participants could find Alternate Practicum placements working with these teachers.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that here at Wayne State University we had students enrolled in our IT7130 course (i.e., Facilitation of On-Line and Face-To-Face Learning) who completed practicums with the Illinois Virtual High School during the Winter 2008 and Fall 2008 semesters.

And I’m sure there are others that I’ve missed (e.g., the Graduate Certificate in Online Teaching at Boise State University could very well have a field experience – Kerry or Lisa care to comment?).

Please note that I am not trying to diminish this particular initiative at the University of Central Florida. Do I believe this to be a good program?  Based on what I have read, yes.  Do I think that there should be more programs like this?  Absolutely!

However, I think it is important for the media to get things write (and for people to speak up when they don’t).  Otherwise, we’ll be heading off to overthrow some dictator, totally devastate some underdeveloped country, be stuck there for years to come, all because our leaders told us about these weapons of mass destruction and the media never bothered to question it!  Oh wait…

The truth is important, even well we are talking about good and welcome news…