Guest Commentary: Innosight Institute Wonders if There is Trouble Ahead for Blended Learning?

Heather Clayton Staker is a Senior Research Fellow for the Education Practice at Innosight Institute. She recently took a look at the burgeoning field of blended learning programs, and she was worried by what she found.
"I’ve been troubled especially by early signs that government is starting to define and encode blended learning. Online learning, which involves the Internet delivering instruction and content to students, has been around for several years. But blended learning, meaning learning that takes place when online instruction blends into brick-and-mortar schools, is quite new. Policymakers are just starting to notice it. Their efforts so far have concerned me," Staker wrote.
"In one state (name withheld), a few legislators kicked around the idea of authorizing up to 25 'blended-learning demonstration programs' in schools throughout the state. The demonstration sites would weave online learning together with face-to-face instruction and have one year to measure results. If effective, the program could expand to more schools.
"Other state legislators recently debated the merits of allowing paraprofessionals, meaning adults without teaching licenses, to supervise students working online and thereby allow credentialed teachers time to pull aside clusters of students for small-group face-to-face instruction," she continued.
"In a third conversation, a national education group grappled with whether it should begin to pressure all states to define blended learning in law, and whether that the definition should specify that blended learning must include both online and face-to-face learning methods.
"The problem," Staker added, "with all three of these ideas is that codifying any of them into law will not improve education, and even worse, will likely prevent viable blended-learning models from coming to fruition before they get a fair chance to play out."
Click here to read Staker's complete post and her solutions.

Tom Vander Ark: An Arizona Online Success Story

Last week I visited Arizona’s largest school, Primavera Online.  Headquartered in Chandler, Primavera serves primarily upper division students seeking an alternative pathway to graduation.  Half are juniors and seniors.  A quarter who have left school are classified as ‘grade 13’, what my friends in New York would call over-aged and under-credited
Primavera is powered by American Virtual Academy curriculum and learning platform (more on AVA in a later post).
In a few months, more than 500 graduates will gather (most physically, some virtually) at Grand Canyon University for a graduation ceremony.  Primavera has been helping Arizona students graduate for a decade.  It’s a homegrown academic success story. Click here to read more about my visit.

Tom Vander Ark: A Turning Point for Personal Digital Learning

It appears that 2012 will be the year where five mostly disconnected streams of tech-rich K-12 learning are finally connecting.
Districts and networks are beginning to mix and match innovations from these strands in new blended models that extend the day, personalize learning, and combine the best of online and onsite learning.
In the U.S., this confluence is being driven by the adoption of the Common Core State Standards and the planned shift to online testing in most states in 2014.
Click here to read more on why I believe we are at the turning point for digital learning.

Guest Commentary: Is Blended Homeschooling the Way Forward?

Tim Brady wrote a guest post for the education blog of the Innosight Institute, the home base for Liberating Learning Blog contributor Michael B. Horn.

In his post, Brady looks at homeschooling, which is more of an education norm than it was just a few years ago. Brady believes that blending virtual education with homeschooling could increase the growth potential of both.
"Given the access to online courses, great tutors, and unlimited information, the daunting part of homeschooling—trying to teach your kids everything—isn’t quite as daunting anymore," Brady wrote.
"The art of homeschooling is now more about thinking through what you want your child to learn, researching it, and then organizing the curriculum. There are websites to help you do that, too," he added.
Click here for the complete post and find out why Brady wants this new movement to be called "Blended Homeschooling."

John Chubb: Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning

John Chubb co-authored with Terry M. Moe "Liberating Learning," the milestone book on the intersection of education and technology and the impact "edtech" would have on American education.
There are few people as qualified as Chubb to write the final paper in the Fordham Institutes series "Creating Sound Policy for Digital Learning."
In "Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning," Chubb reports that Online learning and our current system of local education governance are at odds with one another.
Chubb examines how local school district control retards the widespread use of instructional technologies. He argues that the surest way to break down the system’s inherent resistance to technology is to shift control from the local district—and thus the school board—and put it in the hands of states.
He then provides 10 education reform steps that would make the environment more conducive to expanding online learning programs.
Click here for a pdf of "Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning."
Click here for the complete Fordham series.

Tom Vander Ark: 10 Things School Leaders Should Do to Boost Blended Learning

During a couple breakout sessions at a Rhode Island conference on Innovation Powered by Technology (#iptrideconf) I spent time with teachers and principals thinking about next steps as they prepare for the shift to personal digital learning.
Click here to read the 10 steps we discussed.

Tom Vander Ark: Flex Schools Personalize, Enhance & Accelerate Learning

Innosight Institute’s seminal report The Rise of Blended Learning outlines several emerging school models that combine the best of onsite and online learning. Besides students taking online courses when possible, there are basically two emerging school models.

• Rotation: Students spend 20 to 50 percent of their time online. The Bay Area’s Rocketship Education is a high-performing elementary network where students spend two hours per day in a computer lab.
• Flex: Core instruction is conducted online with on-site academic support and guidance, integration and application opportunities, and extracurricular activities. Students in flex schools progress as they demonstrate mastery in most courses. In some courses, particularly those with teachers at a distance, they may remain part of a virtual cohort.

In short, rotation schools add some online learning to what otherwise may look like a traditional school while flex schools start with online learning and add physical supports and connections where valuable. As a result, the potential for innovation is higher in flex schools.
Click here to read my complete post and find out why I believe there are four big benefits of flex models.

Guest Commentary: EdWeek reports that 'Virtual Education Seen as Understudied'

Would online learning gain faster acceptance if there was more data about how it works?
That's the conclusion that an Education Week report makes.
In EdWeek's "Digital Directions" section, Michelle R. Davis reports, "At this point in the maturation of virtual education, the importance of high-quality, objective research is greater than ever. Education leaders need it to make informed decisions about how to use virtual education programs. But therein lies the problem: Very little high-quality, objective research on the subject is available."
"The research is definitely lagging behind," Barbara Means, the director of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif. told EdWeek's Davis."We're way behind on research when you consider how many schools and individuals are embracing online learning. It's understudied."
Click here to read the complete EdWeek report.
Click here for the 2011 paper "Quality Control in K-12 Digital Learning: Three Imperfect Approaches," in which Rick Hess provides insights and guidance of how to study online education.

Guest Commentary: Joel Klein on The Promise of Edtech (It's not Just About Lighter Backpacks)

Joel Klein is the former chancellor of New York City's public schools. He is now chief executive of the Educational Division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
In a Huffington Post column, Klein recently wrote about education technology and its future.
"When Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke at the first ever 'Digital Learning Day,' ' Klein wrote, "and pushed schools to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years, it marked a vital recognition that technology can help us re-imagine teaching and learning."
But, Klein continued. "it's equally important to admit that, as nifty (and lightweight) as digital textbooks may sound, when it comes to realizing the potential of education technology to lift student achievement, we're still on our own 5 yard line. The digital textbook push is a positive step and a meaningful sign of change, but it risks being an incremental move in a field that urgently needs transformative improvement.
"As someone who led America's largest school district for 8 years, serving over 1 million children, I believe technology can radically transform the way students learn by customizing instruction, and by helping teachers focus on each student's areas of greatest need. But the key to capturing this potential lies as much inside our own hearts and minds as it does in any hardware and software we'll deploy," he added.
Click here to read Klein's complete post.

Guest Commentary: A Kid's View of Online Learning

OK, Murray Rosenbaum is not your typical 14-year-old. For one thing, he is a blogger for the Huffington Post and his biographyy makes him look like a Renaissance Man.
That said, young Rosenbaum recently posted a column about what it's like to participate in online learning, Khan Academy to be specific.
"The reason why I loved what this student said is that whenever any student asks a teacher to repeat something more than once, they get agitated. The ability to stop, rewind, or fast-forward really makes a difference in learning. Salman continued this quest still to this moment, and he has made videos on math, geography, history, trigonometry, physics, the recent SOPA bill, and even banking!" Rosenbaum wrote.
Click here to read his complete post.

Guest Commentary: Give Students Mobile Devices to Maximize Their Learning Time

Chris Dede is the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Additionally, every fall, he co-hosts a major conference for Qualcomm on mobile learning.
Recently, Dede wrote a blog post for Education Nation's "The Learning Curve." In the post, he advocated for allowing students to use mobile devices in the classroom.
"We know that students’ lives outside school are filled with technology, giving them 24/7 mobile access to information and allowing them to participate in online social networks and communities where people worldwide share ideas, collaborate, and learn new things. Our education system should leverage students’ interest in technology and the time they spend learning informally outside the regular school hours to extend learning time in a way that motivates them even more," he wrote.
Click here to read Dede's entire post.