Lightning in a Bottle

The Sacramento Bee has a fun article about how a teacher is able to work with his students while home recovering from surgery. With a cell phone and software that lets him remotely view student computer screens, he is able to do much of his normal instruction in a computer aided design class. A substitute teacher provides the in-class structure while he is working one-on-one with his students. The article is at www.sacbee.com/content/news/education/story/8096785p-9029177c.html.

I came across an interesting site as I was researching online learning and pedagogy. It visually demonstrates how educational theory has developed over time and how the concepts involved relate to one another. The Interactive Exploration allows you to explore your own theoretical and practical interests, and perhaps discover some new ones. For me, this was a great review of those ed theory classes I took long ago and helped put constructivism in its proper context.

Go to http://www.nyucolp.org/pedagogy.shtml, click the link on the bottom of the page and explore! Everything is clickable.

The New York Times has an article today about online schools that features two northwest programs - Salem-Keizer Online from Oregon, and Christa McAuliffe Academy in Yakima, Washington. The Oregon school is a public school, and the Washington school is a private school.

Much of the article consists of interviews with parents and students participating in these programs. The major reasons given for attending virtual schools instead of traditional schools are social, rather than educational. Many of the students speak of alienation at school, not feeling a connection to other students or the staff.

The author of the article seems ambivalent about the whole idea. She’s clearly sympathetic to the kids and what they have escaped, but still seems uneasy about what they lose in leaving school for learning at home. I kept wondering why it’s so hard to create a high schools where students don’t feel so completely alone and vulnerable.

The article is at www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/magazine/07CYBER.html?pagewanted=1. You need to register to view the article, but it’s free. It also gives you access to all of the newspaper, and there are often very informative articles on education.

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.

The University of North Texas has backed away from a plan to set up the first completely online public school in Texas. The proposal was very controversial, and there are no standards currently in place for approving such a charter school program. The University has decided to wait until such standards are in place before resubmitting their application. (Sounds like a good idea to me - don’t you want to know what the expectations are for a project before actually turning it in?)

The article is online at www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/education/2201115.

The Cincinnati Public Schools launched a Virtual High School in 2001. By the end of the first year, the participation rates of the students was so poor that half were dropped from the school. The program has been radically redesigned, recognizing that “…most students need rigid deadlines, human interaction and positive reinforcement to succeed. ”

The program now requires that students come to the building housing the Virtual High School at least twice a week for 90 minutes. There is also much tighter monitoring of student progress and effort. The revised program seems to benefit those students participating, who range from kids that struggled in regular classes to really bright students that were bored with the pace of normal classes.

The Cincinatti Enquirer has article online about this program at http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/10/08/loc_virtualschool08.html.

The online collection of materials at the Library of Congress continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. If you visit their online collections at memory.loc.gov, you will find text, images, sound files, and now video files. You can search the hundreds of thousands of files by keyword, or browse the collections by topic, such as the Civil War, the Depression, Early Animators, or many others. It’s an amazing resource, and all of the files can be downloaded for use in classroom presentations.

(A footnote - at this moment on Sept. 18, the site is unavailable, probably due to Hurricane Isabel and the closing of all federal offices in Washingto D.C. If you can’t get in, try again on another day. Assuming they aren’t washed into the Potomac.)

I couldn’t pass this up. I took fifteen credits of Soil Sciences classes in college, and was tickled to find the NASA “Soil Science Education Web Page” (ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/globe/.) It’s a resource page for students with loads of information and activities for studying soils. It even has a “Soil of the Month” picture!

Studying soil is a great integrated science project, because it involves botany, biology, chemistry and geology. (It’s also one of the only educational activities you can do that gives you a legitimate reason to dig big holes in the ground, which, come to think of it, has a language arts tie-in with Holes by Louis Sachar.) If you and your students want to have the necessary appreciation for the ground beneath us, check this page out.

There was a new online teacher certification progam announced earlier this week. Called “Passport to Teaching Certificate,” it’s being run by an organization called The American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence. The ABCTE page on the program is at www.abcte.org/passport.html. A more global overview of the program and comments on it are at eSchool News at www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryalert.cfm?ArticleID=4583.

Funded by $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the goal of the program is to provide an alternative route to certification for anyone with a bachelor’s degree. To quote the Department of Education, this route allows potential teachers to enter the profession “…without having to bear the burden and expense of a post-graduate education.” (”Meeting the Highly Qualified Teacher Challenge”, U.S. Dept. of Ed, www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/Title-II-Report.pdf.) It’s entirely competency-based, and competency is demonstrated through two computer-based tests, one on teaching skills (classroom management and such) and one on content knowledge. Currently, only Pennsylvania recognizes certificates granted by ABCTE, although others are considering it.

This program is obviously in the start-up phase. Many of the links on the home site go to empty pages, and as yet there is no research on the effectiveness of the approach. Another more established program is offered through the Western Governors’ University at www.wgu.edu/wgu/academics/itcee_listing.html. In contrast to the ABCTE progam, it does involve classroom experience and development of a teacher portfolio in addition to content/knowledge competency testing. Their certificates are directly accepted by five states (Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Nevada and Texas), and almost all other states by reciprocity.

Call me old-fashioned, but I still remain a bit skeptical of teacher certification programs that do everything possible to keep prospective teachers from entering a classroom.

The Bend-LaPine school district in Oregon will be launching the state’s first charter online school.. 25 students have already signed up. While Oregon districts have been leaders in developing online classes for students, this will be the first charter school set up to provide the majority of the instruction online. Diplomas will not be granted for students unless they attend a minimum number of classes in person, however, becaues “part of the high school experience…is being in the classroom with other students and participating in activities at the school.”