Virtual Schools

Online Learning the Next Resort

• Your a rural district with only a few hundred students total. A child wants to take courses like calculus, but they cannot feasibly be offered by your high school.

• This is where online classes would be beneficial. Students will be able to take classes that can’t be offered at high school. A pitfall would be cost of to the district to allow the students to take class. In a rural district where there is not much money to spare it might affect the funding of the programs that the district already offers.

• You're a principal of a school. An overbearing parent comes to you. Their first son had Mr. Siko for chemistry and hated him. He's the only chemistry teacher, and now their younger son has him. They want to pull him out and have him take it online. Can you prevent this? Should you prevent this?

•  If this what the parents want then why prevent it if they feel that I would help their child. The only thing that would prevent this is if the school or district feels that the online chemistry courses that are available do not fit with the core standards set by the state or rigor required by the district. After talking with other teachers that have worked with the child they would feel that the child would not be successful in an online environment. Then other accommodations would be considered to have the child remain in current chemistry class. Another alternative the child could have independent study for chemistry.

• A child comes into your class, having transferred from a 'cyberschool'. It is clear the quality was subpar. Any of this child's standardized test scores this year are tied to your performance evaluation under the new teacher evaluation guidelines.

• As a teacher, you already deal with this every day. It is not something that should not let consume much of your time worrying over. Students transferring in from another school district or state might be low in areas that as a teacher you are going to have to work with. All you can do is find the help that the child would need to be successful.

•  I am a teacher whose district is embracing online learning. It is attracting many students from other districts, and this generates extra revenue (students = $$). I am asked to be a 'facilitator' for these students, who are not required to attend during the school day. I am not given extra release time for this.

• This would be difficult to undertake without extra time to plan, but as a teacher you might face this type of situation. As the online facilitator, I would first try and change the way that I run my current in classes in to more of a blended learning or distance learning environment. That way instruction would be done through video lectures before students walk into class and the online students still get the same instruction. During class will be for discussion and applying the skills talked about in the videos. Online students can then join in the class discussions through a polling app or discussion board as well as the actives and group work. You could have the online classes be synchronous with your normal classes. Online student would log in at the same time as your normal class and then through audio visual (AV) online students can interact with class and teacher at the same time.

• I am a 12th grade student who was diagnosed with leukemia the summer before my senior year. I am unable to attend a full day of school while receiving treatment. I want to graduate on time with my friends.

•  This student could qualify for a 100% online seat time wavier and take all their senior classes online while having treatment. The course need to be taught by a Michigan certified teacher. Otherwise the student will to be provided an on-site mentor who will serve as the teacher of record while the students is on leave. The mentor too must be a Michigan certified teacher. The district is responsible for picking up the tab for all courses the student is enrolled in and the course should meet the districts standards and rigor related to that course.

     Do you think schools are equipped to handle these changes? Has your school/district been public about any changes they've made to curriculum and instruction, or have any changes gone unnoticed? How is your school handling this (consider asking your administrator to see how s/he is imagining the larger picture)?

• Most schools are not equipped to handle these changes due to the high cost of updating network infrastructure and providing technology to students. My district haves already started by supplying one to one technology to all students. They are going toward more of a blended learning environment where instruction is given on-line and classes time is used to apply the skills. Teachers are being required to put more and more of their content on Its Learning so students have access to it outside of school. Curriculum has changed to incorporate the use of technology next year they are changing the math curriculum to a program that will utilize an online tool called Zearn. I am not aware if the district has any student enrolled in an online program or if they are offering online programs. 

Looking into the Past: Virtual Schools Revisited

            I was surprised by the fact that cyber schooling and virtual schooling are two different things. Cyber schooling is done entirely on-line where the cyber schools provide the materials to the children and the parents are there to provide support and basically teach. Where the virtual schooling uses a combination of synchronous and asynchronous delivery models. (Barbour, 2009) Another think I found interesting was that virtual school teachers are better synchronous teacher than asynchronous teachers. According to Barbour (2009) this can be associated with the fact that the synchronous environment resembles a typical brick and mortar classroom. If you think about it that is true most of what is taught in an education program is how to manage a classroom, so in a synchronous environment you could use those classroom management techniques. In an asynchronous environment where students work at their own pace and at different times then you can’t use traditional classroom management skill.

            After the readings I found that most of what I said in part one was accurate. The asynchronous environment can clearly be done form the comfort of home and in your pajamas. The definition of cyber schooling were the students take all of their course online and the materials that are provided are used by the parents and students from home. (Barbour, 2009) When I was working on another assignment I did make the assumption that online teachers have easy job by saying that sometimes teachers take what they are doing in their traditional classrooms and convert the lessons to an online format with instruction done through prerecorded videos or Power Point presentation with audio explanations. Although teachers still might take a lesson or unit and convert it to an online environment the amount of work that goes into making the conversion so that the lessons are effective shows that it is not as easy as it sounds. 

What is K-12 Online Learning?

            K-12 online learning is just that elementary through high school presented online students can be anywhere and still be in school. The students can be in the comfort of their own homes and log into a learning forum like Blackboard, Edmodo, or Google Classroom or they can go to a student center where the teacher is broadcasting from a different location to multiple location. It could also look like many teachers at different building with in district collaborating in their subject area and grade level taking turns presenting lessons through an online forum.

            There are two forms online learning can take asynchronous which means students can follow their own pace at any time in any place. Student that like these types of classes are highly motivated, organized and independent. These students want to be able to move through a lesson at their own pace being able to take more time on things they don’t know and less time on things they already have mastered. In asynchronous online classes the class is laid out in modules and students work through the modules on their own with the teacher to add support and guidance. Where in a synchronous online classroom students show up at the same time as the teacher it does not have to be in the same place although that can happen too. Meaning the student goes to a student center at the same time every day to see the instructor and interact with fellow students but the instructor does not have to be at the students center they can be in any were in the world teaching the class. The typical student that would take a class like this would be one that need more structure and organization, someone that is distracted easily, and need the social interaction with peers. Some synchronous online looks like a typical classroom except the teacher is being view on a monitor and camera are set up throughout the classroom. There might be an aide in the room to help with behavior and getting supplies but the teacher is not physically there. Another way a synchronous online class could look is it could be totally online but students would have to login to class at the same time every day to receive instruction. The instruction and pace of the class is teacher driven.

            Online classes allow schools to offer much more instructional options then they would in a traditional school where they are limited by physical space. Giving students the opportunities to explore their passions. It also provides the schools to utilize instruction from other schools and resources improving instructional quality. 

Wikies are they good for us?

            I would not let my students use Wikipedia as a source for any research I would encourage them to use it as a tool to help them to get ideas of topics that they would like to explore further or to narrow down their search. As a legitimate source, I would not have allowed them to use Wikipedia. The reason for this is because you don’t know where the information came from or who wrote it. Mainly I don’t know who wrote the information like the podcast said if someone does not like all they do is delete it and write their information in its place. There really no time for other people or scholars to look at the information and verify the information validity. If I was giving them a research project of some form I would demonstrate to them how I would use Wikipedia to come up with search ideas, but I would strong suggest that they not use it as a resource on any formal research that they do. If I was in the middle of a lesson and need to look up something and did a quick search for information I might use the information, just because Wikipedia is the first thing that would pop when searching for information. Telling my students that further research is going to be needed on the topic.

            YouTube on the other hand I would feel comfortable with my students using it as a source. It is true that anyone can post just about anything on YouTube, but you know who is doing the posting by looking at user name with a little research you can find out if the person posting the information is legitimate. I use YouTube videos all the time in my Health lessons when I was doing a long term as the PE/Health teacher for the elementary schools in Fraser. You still need to be able to back up the content with in the video with facts from a reliable source, but feel more comfortable with using YouTube as a source then Wikipedia. 

PLN Additions

Blogs

The Joy of Literacy

http://thejoyofliteracy.blogspot.com/

She goes into detail about how she set up her reading intervention room and the materials she uses in a small space.

Hello Literacy

http://www.helloliteracy.com/

The author is a literacy professional development speaker on the blog she gives advice on how to incorporate 21^st century reading strategies into the classroom.

RTI Action Network

http://www.rtinetwork.org/

Response to intervention (RTI) provides research and procedures on how to effectively implement an intervention program.

Twitter

George Couros

@gcouros

George post about issues that relate to the teaching world and the why in which as educators must change their mind sets so that we can our students mind sets.

Reading Rockets

@ReadingRockets

Reading Rocket is a website that focuses on reading and provides tools and strategies to help improve you reading instruction and help those students that are struggling.

Steven W. Anderson

@web20classroom

Steven tweets about the use of technology in education. He holds chats on his hashtag #edtechtips were they talk about using technology in the classroom and pedagogies behind them.

WeAreTeachers

@WeAreTeachers

The tweets on this twitter account are about giving teachers idea and inspiration to do what they do best teach. They talk about the things that all teachers need to know as well as showcasing teachers that provided inspiration to keep going on the hard days.

Monica Schroeder

@schroederpage

This second-grade teacher’s twitter page is fill with many helpful activates, classroom ideas, and lesson plans with in all subject area.

Reflection

            I have not really used any of these tools with in my instruction mainly because the opportunity has not come up yet. I am gravitating towards more of using the blog in my classroom as a way for me to keep my classroom parents up to date on what is going on with in my classroom. Being able give my students extra help outside of the classroom by providing instructional videos so they can rewatch any lessons to gain clarity and so the parents understand what they are learning as well. I would like to work on able to find information that is relevant to the topic that I am researching. Learn better ways of narrowing down my searches. 

RAT Model "There is nothing to be afraid of"

I am a second-grade intervention specialist at Eisenhower Elementary in Fraser. As such I work with students are below grade level in reading and math many in small groups and sometimes individually. I don’t get a lot of time to incorporate technology into my line of work, although I do use technology to monitor my students by giving a program call Amis Web to progress monitor each student that is on Tier 2 and 3. In a way the Amis Web program could be at least for me fit in the A of the RAT model (Amplification). By using this program to do our testing and progress monitoring I am able to get information that I need to help each one of the children that I teach. The program lets me compare how they are doing to national norms it even breaks down the areas that each child is struggling the most in, so am I can differentiate their learning to those particular needs. When it comes to Web 2.0 tools for amplification I would have to go with Class Dojo it is a classroom management tool that teach are able to create a classroom then invite parents and other teacher to the class. The classroom teacher and the teacher that were invited can give and take away points based on a student’s behavior. Plus, the teachers are able to communicate how their child is doing though out the day in real time as well as give important information and reminders to parents. The points collected can lead to rewards for the students or class. amplifying classroom dynamic to a more positive in environment. Seesaw is another example. Students take or draw pictures of different land forms for science then add labels and captions to the pictures. Other students can make comment or even guess what land forms they are looking at add more information that the student might have missed.

When it comes to replacement of Web 2.0 tools which is the R in the RAT Model. I go to using Prezi to give presentations over the traditional PowerPoint. I can see my students creating book report presentation for a book that they just have read. When I was a 3^rd grade intervention specialist during one of social studies units on Michigan the students had to draw a timeline about the progression of Michigan becoming a state with pictures that they drew themselves. I on the other hand help with the creation of timeline by drawing my own, but I also created one with Prezi where I was not only able to add picture but videos as well. With the Prezi you were able to move about the timeline freely moving in to focus on the important information, show a picture and add voice to explain, or show a video for clarification.

The last part of the RAT Model is Transformation. Integrating a Web 2.0 tool that will change how we educate our children. One is Khoots an online quiz/polling program. I would use it to introduce new concepts with in my classroom am going to teach using what Khoots call a Blind Khoot. It like a pretest but you are not trying to find out what the students knows you are actually teaching them concepts through a series of questions. At the same time the teacher is getting real time information on what they know and what concepts they might have to go into more depth on.