Lightning in a Bottle

A husband-and-wife educator team in Oregon has submitted an application to set up an online charter high school. They are targeting the program at home schoolers. Currently, home schoolers only receive a GED for their studies, but could earn an accredited high school diploma through the proposed Internet-based school. Because they would use state funding to cover student costs, there would be no charge for participating.

If approved, Tim and Tami King’s Oregon Web Academy would be operated as part of the North Clackamas school district, where Tim is principal of an exising charter school called the New Urban High School. They have applied for federal start-up funding of $50,000, and could be eligible for another $300,000 down the road. Students would be provided access to K-12 online curriculum and a computer.

One point of possible controversy is that while current charter school law mandates that at least 80% of students in a charter school must reside within the hosting district, that restriction will expire in January. At that point, the Oregon Web Academy could conceivably start drawing home-schooled students (and their potential funding) from anywhere in the state.

You can read more in the online edition of The Oregonian at www.oregonlive.com/metrosouth/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/metro_south_news/107028336737720.xml.

A new survey has been published about students’ and parents’ attitudes toward the Internet at home and school. Some of the more interesting points:

- More than two million children aged 6-17 already have their own websites, and 44% of kids 13-17 plan to create one if they haven’t already.

- Girls are more likely to set up websites than boys. Over 12% of girls in the 6-17 age range have already done so, while only 8.6% of boys have.

- 76% of students with broadband (cable or DSL) and 62% of students with dial-up connections at home felt that their school networks were slower than their home Internet access.

- Of families with Interent access at home, 49% of their kids and 32% of their parents felt that there was not enough time spent online in school. Both of those figures are nearly double the 2000 survey figures.

You can read a little more info at the Grunwald Associates website at www.grunwald.com/surveys/cfi/newsrelease.html. Unfortunately, if you want to read the whole thing, you have to purchase it. It costs (ahem) $4,900 for the hard copy, or $7,000 for a searchable electronic version.

If you buy it, can I borrow it?

The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. The Washington Post has an article on student plagiarism today (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16624-2003Nov26.html) that gives a good primer on how they access material to copy and call their own. However, the Internet provides the most effective means of catching students involved in this practice. A service called Turnitin (www.turnitin.com) will take papers and compare them to a vast database of web pages, electronic books, term papers, and other documents and give a detailed report catching word-for-word matches and the original sources. Participating teachers can also submit student work to the database, further developing the value of the service.

On the one hand, it’s really sad that so many students resort to this kind of nonsense, with little remorse. On the other hand, if they find the assignments so irrelevant, what does that say about our curriculum, or how we teach it? What can we do about this mismatch of values?