Posts Tagged ‘Virtual Learning’
My Friday’s Quotes
Today I thought, rather then share a quote, that I would share with you an educational site. Teachers will probably know this as a very valuable resource. However, for parents who home school or are just interested in what is going on in education, this is a great place to bookmark and visit regularly.
Edutopia, “K-12 Education & Learning Innovations with Proven Strategies that Work”. I strongly suggest you browse this site and then sign-up for their weekly newsletter. For me to list all it’s benefits would be a waste of my time for they become quickly apparent when you enter the site. It is broken down into five major sections: Core Concepts, Community, Sections,(where you will find blogs, videos, webinars and more), Stay Connected, and The Foundation, referring to the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
“An in-depth and interactive resource, Edutopia.org offers practical, hands-on advice, real-world examples, lively contributions from practitioners, and invaluable tips and tools.”
“Through an extensive offering of documentaries, Edutopia video is a catalyst for innovation by helping educators and parents, as well as business and community leaders, see and understand pioneering best practices.”
But don’t take our word for it – go find out for yourself. You will find a wealth of information and support.
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Yesterday we briefly looked at the first 4 steps when doing a Project Based Learning assignment. It should be easy to see how nicely this allows for individualization and homeschooling curriculum. Now let’s look at the last 5 steps.
5.Make a list of what needs to be completed with a timeline: What information is needed to solve the problem? How are the possibilities ranked? How are they relate to the list of solutions?
6.List “What do we need to know? You will have already started this list in step 2 but as you have looked more closely at your question, there may be additions to the list. Start the research. Parents can help find possible resources, â¨experts, books, web sites, etc.
Make up a timeline listing the tasks/question being researched. This will help to stay focused and organized. *If your research supports your solution, go to (7). If not, go to (4)
7.Write up your solution with its supporting documentation â¨Findings and/or recommendations should include the problem statement, questions, data gathered, analysis of data, and recommendations based on the data analysis: in short, the process and outcome.
8.Review your performanceâ¨: â¨Take pride in what was done well well and learn from what could have been done better. Thomas Edison felt unsuccessful experiments were part of his journey to successful outcomes!
9.Celebrate the work! Find a way the project can be shared with others. It could be anything from addressing the town council to putting up a video on U-tube.
PBL is a perfect match for a virtual school. It is an effective way to integrate technology used by the school into the curriculum. Like a virtual school, its potential is a limitless.
We recently got involved in a workshop to learn about PBL or Project Base Learning. Would it fit into a homeschooling program? Could it be used successfully in a virtual learning environment? Did it allow for the necessary individualization which is so important to Mistacres School?
PBL is an approach to teaching across the curriculum by allowing students to explore real-world problems. These projects can last a few days or can go on for a semester. They allow the students, either individually or collectively, to develop a deeper knowledge of the subjects they are studying through direct involvement. It is a way to provide active and engaged learning.
It is obvious students are more likely to remember things they learn through an active, hands-on approach then the more traditional textbook-centered learning. But as important is the confidence and self-direction students gain as they move through their project. As students work through their projects they strengthen their organizational and research skills, develop strong communication skills with peers and adults, and will often have opportunities to work within their community and see first hand effects of their work.
Assessment also becomes reality-based, not on some arbitrary fill-in-the-blank test that asks them to regurgitate what a teacher has said. Students are evaluated on the basis of their projects which has more meaning to them and is more in line with how were are assessed as adults in the real world. How often as I teacher did I hear, “Why do we need to learn this? I’ll never use it!” PBL allows students to see how academic work connects to real-life issues.
The next post we will look begin to look at the steps involved in Project Based Learning.
I want to share with you some quotes from inspired people in history and literature. These quotes have made me happy and given me something to think about. They have led me to decide to provide online education to children. I hope you will enjoy them as well.
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” ⨖ Jim Rohn
“Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don’t know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.” ⨖ Sir William Haley
” Instruction ends in the school-room, but education ends only with life.⨠Frederick W. Robertson
Facts about Socialization and Online Learning: Conclusions and Reflections- II
posted by admin @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Five years ago I was given the opportunity to see if my gut feelings were correct. I became Program Director for a small non-public school middle school that served students whose behaviors kept them from being successful in a public school setting. For the most part, they were students that had specific learning disabilities, or were gifted, or just had extreme anxiety being in a large class setting. The thing they all had in common was the feeling of being a failure. This fear didn’t develop over night; It had been drummed into them over many years in the public system.
Each student had their own work station with computer. Using the technology that I had been studying, I developed individualized programs that were delivered directly to their computer. My foundation for each student’s program that required reading was the Lexile. Math was developed around another program that assessed mastered skills and areas in need of improvement. Then I stood back, held my breath and watched.
Yup, I watched. Because I had handed their learning over to them. If they needed me, they came to me with their INDIVIDUAL problem….or the programs I used flagged me with information. I didn’t have to stop everyone in the class to address one person’s questions. I didn’t hold anyone up by trying to teach the same thing to a group as, in my mind, there was no group. They were all at different levels of learning even if they might be in the same “grade”. And when we came together for discussions, nobody was left out for they had all worked on the skills, their way.
For the first time, these students were being successful. Then they became motivated to learn more – because they could. It was like taking a little ball of snow up to the top of the mountain and letting it roll down to the bottom. The result was students showing no behavior issues but making as much as 2 years growth in all academic subjects. Students that could stand tall and be proud.
I took this philosophy, this technology, to the web and created Mistacres School. I meet with the students whenever they buzz me on Skype or email me or I buzz them. I group students together online to work on projects or to hold discussions. Socializing is never questioned as it is a part of our school day. In fact, as we expand to bringing in students from other areas of the USA as well as internationally, then socialization takes on a whole new meaning. Think of the implications! Learning with others around the world!
But parents also have their needs satisfied. They can be more directly involved in their children’s education, they can direct better, more positive social opportunities outside of the school program, they have the flexibility to do more things with their children such as take trips without loosing academic time, go to museums or cultural events, the possibilities are endless.
I, for one, do not think Virtual Schools undermine social skills. If anything, they have the opportunity to develop strong, positive skills that will make them leaders in future years.
Facts about Socialization and Online Learning: Conclusions and Reflections – I
posted by admin @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Online public schools are experiencing rapid growth across the country,” said Dr. Jay Sivin-Kachala, Vice-President of IESD, who led the research project. “Yet some concerns have been expressed that students enrolled in online public schools may suffer from a lack of opportunities for socialization, and
consequently may fail to develop important social skills. The results of this study provide substantial evidence supporting the conclusion that typical, mainstream students enrolled in full-time, online public schools are at least as well socialized as equivalent students enrolled in traditional public schools.”
As a person who has spent over 30 years educating in the public school system, I feel that my reflections of value. As a new teacher starting out in 1979 (OMG), behavior issues were few and far between. We had them but they didn’t take over the class. There was a lot of collaboration; parents and teachers worked together to solve the issues. In the mid ’80′s there seemed to be a shift; each year there were more students that had behavior problems, parents were less supportive – not wanting to deal with the problems as they were the schools. Every year a little worse until finally in the early ’90′s teaching became less of the academics and more of the behaviors. Discipline, rather then learning, became the way of the classroom. It is not a surprise that teacher burn-out also increased. I didn’t become a teacher to be a baby sitter or a disciplinarian. The joy of teaching left and so did I.
I left the classroom but not education. I began to discover and investigate the technology that was developing at the time; the most influential being the Lexile. During this time I worked with severely disabled, multi-handicapped children. This was a wonderfully rewarding experience but I was drawn to those children whose learning was being interrupted by the behaviors and kept thinking that there was a better way.
Facts about Socialization and Online Learning: Results
posted by admin @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
When rating social skills of the online learner, parent ratings of their children were significantly higher than the national norms in all elementary grades in every grade/gender category. Likewise, student self-ratings on social skills were also significantly higher across the grades and most categories. The one area student self-ratings were lower was in Self-Control. Teacher ratings, on the other hand, rated Self-Control significantly higher but did not differ much in the other sub-scales from the national norms.
When addressing problem behaviors, parents ratings of student enrolled in full-time, online public schools were significantly lower across in most sub-scales. This was also true for the teacher ratings.
The study compared students who had been enrolled in full-time, online public schools for a year or less to whose who had been enrolled for more than one year. There were no major differences in the parent ratings for either social skills or behaviors except in the area of self-control where more gains were made for students enrolled for a longer period then a year.
In addition to these findings, the study highlighted reasons parents most often choose full-time, online public schools for their children. For the most part they sought a home-based environment that was consistent with their family values and allowed them more involvement with their children’s education while continuing to have the support and structure of a public school.
The study also showed that students enrolled in such a program were actively engaged in activities outside the school day, some of which involved peer interaction and some not.
Finally, parents noted that their children showed improvement in a variety of areas including the use of technology and better balance of development of skills across many areas of learning, and academic progress in subject areas.
Facts about Socialization and Online Learning: Survey
posted by admin @ 8:00 AM
Monday, July 12, 2010
Virtual Education continues to grow as both an alternative to traditional education and support to the public schools. Virtual Schools have the ability to offer classes to fit the students individual needs and learning styles at times that optimize their learning at a pace that best fits them. Education their way which leads to greater success.
The one thing, however, that continues to be questioned is that these students may lack opportunities for socialization, stagnating the development of necessary social skills. In a research paper presented by iNACOL (International North America Council for Online Learning) dated May of 2009, “IESD Comprehensive Technical Report: Evaluation of the Social Skills of Full-Time, Online Public School Students” this issue was addressed in depth.
Interactive Education Systems Design (IESD) Inc. collaborated with staff from The Center for Research in Educational Policy (CREP) with the purpose to compare parent, teacher, and student self-assessments of socialization skills of students attending full-time, online public schools to national norms for the same assessments. The study was conducted from February through August of 2008 and included students attending grades 2, 4, and 6. The rating scale used was the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS).
Forty-eight states along with Washington, D.C. Agreed to help develop these core standards. Four states to date have pledge to adopt these standards, Kentucky being the first. The National Association of State Boards of Education point out that if a state decides to adopt these standards, “they will have to develop curricula, align assessments, and train teachers and other staff.”
There is no question that the concept of national standards is long over-due particularly in this day and age where families are so mobile. The question in my mind is the timing, Like all other educational policies and mandates I have seen passed, it is usually under funded or not funded at all. Teachers are being laid off, budgets are being defeated, schools are closing and you want to do what? Develop curricula? Align assessments? Train teachers and staff? Just how will this be paid for? And as you read through the standards, much is still left to the interpretation of schools, districts, states. Do they really think that money won’t play a major role in how states implement these standards? Aren’t we then back to where we started; segregating education by the money each state can but into the adoption?
“The only way to get this adopted on a widespread basis is with a fair amount of arm-twisting and coercion,” said Jay P. Greene, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. “States and districts are in a horrible budget crisis, so support follows the money.”
That may be true. Only time will tell. Here were will hold a Common Core Standards watch. Meanwhile, take time to look at the standards yourself. Go to www.corestandards.org/ and read them for yourself. Look at your town’s school district and your state department of education. Is this going to be another educational bandwagon idea or will it accomplish the goal of delivering high quality education to every child regardless of where they live?
A brief summary of the common core standards for mathematics include:
* Assuring that students in the K-5 grades have “a solid foundation in whole numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and decimals.”
* Kindergarten students will focus on numbers, , how they correspond to quantities and how to put numbers together and take them apart.
* Teachers will have “detailed guidance” on how to teach the k-5 students difficult topics such as fractions and negative numbers.
* “Conceptual understanding, in addition to procedural skills, will be essential.”
* Once K-5 students have a solid foundation as described above then they should be prepared for such content as geometry, algebra, and probability and statistics.
* High school students will be expected to apply mathematical ways of thinking to real-life situations.
* “Mathematical modeling” (“use of mathematics and statistics to analyze empirical situations, understand them better, and improve decisions” will be emphasized.