How Online Learning Works

Here's a graphic representation of how online learning works. It shows funding sources, governmental participation, public and private sector contributions, even school structure and administration. It's from the current issue of Threshold magazine. This quarterly is an amazing resource.

Threshold is a forward-looking quarterly journal for district, state, and national education leaders. Launched in 2003, it features nationally-recognized experts offering provocative ideas, opinions, and research at the intersection of education and technology. The content for each issue is developed in partnership with a leading education organization with a stake and expertise in the topic at hand, meaning readers are guaranteed authoritative perspectives on the key educational issues of the day.

You can access every edition of Threshold from Fall '03 until the most recent issue here.

Using What They Relate To

I was talking to a middle school science teacher at Little League sign-ups and he was telling me about a program that utilizes a non-school aspect of students lives to teach concepts in original ways. Apparently. the local Triple A ball club the Beavers puts it on in partnership with OMSI, the Portland science museum. They apply art and science to baseball to teach physics among other things. I thought of that program when I saw this post (from marketing blogger Kevin H. Davis) about teachers using podcasts to deliver audio information. Students can listen to it on a computer or download it onto their IPod or other inexpensive portable media player.
Today this is somewhat common on college campuses, but it seems that K-12 is only just starting to take advantage of the technology. I'm not sure how effective it would be, especially for the younger grades, but you'd be sure to earn at least a little bit of respect from the millennials.

Florida's Virtual School law

Here's an article on ohmygov.com about Florida's innovative new law requiring public schools to provide full time virtual schools to all students. This would allow a student in Florida to earn a diploma, theoretically, without ever setting foot in a brick and mortar school. You can read the full text of the law (1002.45) on the Florida Senate website. Or read an article about it by Laura Green at the Palm Beach Post.

The law allows districts to develop their own program, collaborate with other districts, or contract with state approved private online curriculum providers.

The ohmygov.com article sums up some of the advantages:

The benefits of an online education are varied. For starters, because students range in abilities and habits in a given class, online tools allow students to work at their own pace and at their chosen hours. Night owls (a.k.a. teenagers) can work through the night and sleep all day. Gifted students who digest a lesson quickly don't get stuck in the same lesson as those who digest the material more slowly. Students in rural areas can attend programs and classes previously unavailable or difficult to get to. Sick days are also less of a problem in an online world.

This innovative program should go a long way toward legitimizing online education. Hopefully other states will follow suit.

Vital Components

Here's a story from Education Week about some key pieces to successful technology programs and initiatives.

Getting your Superintendent and School Board in the loop is vital according to the article.

Education May Receive Proposed Stimulus Money

There's some public skepticism about the new proposed stimulus package, what with the lavish holiday parties, funded with bailout dollars, fresh in our minds. But it's good to see education will get a share of the package, they're calling it Education for the 21st Century.

How soon until we read about some elementary school throwing a pizza party featuring Wolfgang Puck personally wood firing chorizo pizzas while Jay-Z performs in the multi-purpose room?

Kidding aside, some of the money has been earmarked for renovation and modernization, including technology. Below is some text from the actual Appropriations Committee summary:

Education for the 21st Century: To enable more children to learn in 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries to help our kids compete with any worker in the world, this package provides:

• $41 billion to local school districts through Title I ($13 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), a new School Modernization and Repair Program ($14 billion), and the Education Technology Program ($1 billion).
  
• $79 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cutbacks to key services, including $39 billion to local school districts and public colleges and universities distributed through existing state and federal formulas, $15 billion to states as bonus grants as a reward for meeting key performance measures, and $25 billion to states for other high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education.
  
• $15.6 billion to increase the Pell Grant by $500.
  
• $6 billion for higher education modernization.

Teach the Teachers

Starting with a strong curriculum as a base is vital, but the programs that I've seen that prove to be most effective use brilliant and original ways to deliver the curriculum and use the tools available to serve the widest range of student needs. Promisingly, it seems the programs that have proven models of success are willing to share those techniques with other school districts.

On the academic side this program at the University of Maine is a grad level course for future and current K-12 teachers about technology integration (it looks like the course is offered on a non degree basis as well.) The course outcomes are:

• Enhance learning in K-12 classrooms by integrating knowledge of learning and teaching with knowledge of educational technology, media and instructional methods
• Apply and evaluate applications of technology to specific instructional situations and develop materials and strategies needed to enhance learning
• Plan, implement and evaluate mediated instructional and educational technology delivery systems based on knowledge of research
• Evaluate existing instructional technology hardware and software resources in a school or school district and plan, implement and evaluate changes needed to heighten teaching and learning
• Evaluate the instructional technology knowledge and skill levels of teachers, administrators and other school staff and provide needed training and support

We need our future teachers (and current ones too) to be educated about these technical integration issues. This looks like a good program, too bad it's noteworthy for it's rarity.

Tech Savvy President

So, for the first time, we have a president that personally utilizes technology, and understands it's usefulness in daily life. President Obama owns a Blackberry, used the Internet for grassroots campaigning and will use email for daily communication with friends and senior staff members. He is the first president to use email. Presidents have not used email in the past either from unfamiliarity or because the Presidential Records Act makes email communications public.

President Obama has a plan for education of course. It's nice to see that he understands the futility of teaching to a standardized test, and he wants to reform No Child Left Behind improving assessment and accountability. In all the conversations I've had with educators, I've yet to meet a proponent of NCLB in its current form. He also has a Zero to Five plan to help young children and their parents get a head start on education. While our new president has a technology plan as well, he has yet to give a detailed plan on how technology and education should merge.

Christopher Dawson an Education Technology blogger for ZDnet has some good Obama quotes and a discussion about Ed Tech and the new administration in this post.