Guest Commentary: Jaime Littlefield on '10 Myths About Online High Schools'

Blended learning teacher Jamie Littlefield writes a popular weekly column on distance learning for About.com. Recently, she tried to dispel some of the myths that surround online programs for high school students.
"Don’t believe everything you hear about online high schools," she wrote, adding that "by finding out the truth" it is easier to make decisions on what works best for individual students.
Click here to read the full story.

Guest Commentary Educational Technology Bill of Rights for Students

Brad Flickinger is a technology integration specialist who teaches technology at Bethke Elementary in Timnath, Colo., and is the founder of SchoolTechnology.org. Recently, he wrote a student's edtech bill of rights that was published as part of the Digital Learning Environment Blog.

Taking the viewpoint of a student, Flickinger believes an edtech bill of rights should include:

• The right to use technology at school. I should not be forced to leave my new technology at home to use (in most cases) out-of-date school technology. If I can afford it, let me use it -- you don’t need to buy me one. If I cannot afford it, please help me get one -- I don’t mind working for it.
• The right to access the school’s WiFi. Stop blaming bandwidth, security or whatever else -- if I can get on WiFi at McDonalds, I think that I should be able to get online at school.
• The right to be taught by teachers who know how to manage the use technology in their classrooms. These teachers know when to use technology and when to put it away.

Click here to read all 10 of the rights Flickinger believes students need to have.

Guest Commentary: Tight State Budgets Make Cyber Charter Schools Easy Targets

James Hanak is the CEO of Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School in West Chester. Virtual education leaders like Hanak are on the front lines of the battle over state funding and K-12 online courses.

"In recent months, conversations surrounding the funding of Pennsylvania’s 12 cyber charter schools have reached a fever pitch, not only in Harrisburg, but across the commonwealth,' Hanak wrote for PennLive.com.
"Though this type of charter school represents the only true public school choice for all 1.87 million K-12 students in Pennsylvania, cyber charter schools have undeservedly drawn heavy criticism and found themselves on the funding chopping block," he continued.
"The common thread of criticism from the Pennsylvania School Board Association, teachers unions and increasingly from individual school districts is that the school district has no oversight or knowledge of the inner workings of the cyber charter schools that take away students and money.
"In a time of tight budgets and subsidy cuts from the state, superintendents are looking for ways to generate additional income. As a result, Pennsylvania cyber charter schools have become an easy target," he added.
Click here for the complete article.

Guest Commentary: Education Week Quizzes Khan Academy Creator

Salman Khan, a MIT and Harvard Business School grad, was working as a hedge fund manager when he began posting videos on YouTube six years ago to tutor young family members in math. That led to the 2008 creation of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization that has built a free, online collection of thousands of digital lessons (nearly 3,000 of them created by Khan himself) and exercises in subjects ranging from algebra to microeconomics. Education Week Staff Writer Lesli A. Maxwell recently interviewed Khan. about the evolution of the academy and its potential for changing K-12 education.

Click here for the complete Q&A.

Tom Vander Ark: Edtech (hearts) Common Core Standards

Lifting the lowest 30 state standards to real college and career readiness levels isn’t the only benefit of the Common Core.  The new standards unleashed a timely wave of investment in digital content.
In addition to the passing of textbooks, we’re watching the end of the first generation of flat and sequential digital content.  The timely introduction of the Core is accelerating the introduction of engaging and standards-aligned adaptive content.
Click here to read about some of the edtech start ups who are betting on Common Core to help them grow.

Michael B. Horn: Bright Spots Shine in Blended, Online Learning (Video)

A month has passed since the first-ever national Digital Learning Day. Given the excitement generated from teachers and others tuning in to the National Town Hall meeting and given today’s National Leadership Summit on Online Learning up on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. that iNACOL sponsored, I thought it was worth noting some great examples that weren’t highlighted during the day’s festivities.
To our friends in the field, these examples are familiar, but they remind us that what is so exciting about technology is the power that it holds to move our education system toward a student-centric model of learning where students can move at their own path and pace to boost student outcomes.
Click here to watch some videos of exceptional online learning programs