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 I should not be forced to leave my new technology at home to use (in most cases) out-of-date school technology.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: 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.

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."

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: Inspecting the Inspectprate--Why Not Start with Online Schools

In his "The Quick & The Ed" blog, Education Sector Managing Editor Bill Tucker launched a debate about reviving the traditional of physical visits to school campuses as a part of an accountability program.
It's done in England, Tucker says, but he wonders, would in work in the United States?
Needless to say, this concept has stirred up some dust.
"The problem with big new ideas is often the very thing that makes them appealing: they are disruptive towards the status quo, making them extremely difficult to either imagine or implement. And, in the context of state accountability systems, school inspection is a big idea," Tucker wrote.
"Nowhere are our current oversight and school accountability systems more lacking than when it comes to assessing the performance of online and other alternative schools. While test score data and measures such as adequate yearly progress (AYP) have limitations for all schools — particularly those serving disadvantaged students — they are even more problematic for virtual schools operating on competency-based and other alternative educational models," he continued.
Tucker understands that it is impossible to physically visit an online school, but he does have some ideas on how to "balance accountability with innovation. Click here to find out more.

Guest Commentary: Bryan Setser's Advice to Governors with State-Led Virtual Schools

Bryan Setser is well known in the virtual education community. He is the former leader of the the North Carolina Virtual School. He has won numerous national awards for his work developing and expanding online learning opportunities. Currently, he is  CEO of Setser Group which focuses on cultivating blended learning programs; guiding leadership coaching and evaluation, and promoting new school model design.
Recently, Setser wrote an article "4 Steps for Governors to Turn a State Virtual School Into Services Provider," which boldly asked, "Who will be the first Governor with the guts to turn their state virtual school into a virtual services provider?"
"The services could be virtual district/school incubation, professional development, light virtual services, and consulting (coaching and training). Work with the legislature could re-organize the funding streams to provide more local control with incentives to utilize new technologies and funding models," he wrote.
Click here to read the steps Setser believes need to be taken to make this shift happen.

Guest Commentary: Commnwealth Foundation CEO Says Schools in Pennsylvania Prove Competition Works

The Allentown Morning Call recently published an op-ed written by Matthew J. Brouillette, president and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based free-market think tank
In the article headlined, "Competition for Students Will Improve Education," Brouillette wrote, "In Pennsylvania, family demand for spots in cyber schools has skyrocketed, with enrollment exploding from zero students a decade ago to nearly 28,000 today. In response, several school districts now offer their own online learning programs. Cyber schools, charter schools and scholarships funded by businesses are restoring opportunity and a future for children once left behind."
"Instead of a one-size-fits-all system of education," he continued, "we need to fully embrace an education marketplace where choice and competition is the rule rather than the exception."

Click here to read the entire article.

Guest Commentary: Could Open Education Resources Widen the Digital Divide? (video)

First, a hat tip to Education Week's Digital Education blogger Katie Ash for pointing to this.
Justin Reich, a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has posted a video about his research open education resources (OER) and the impact on education equity.
Common wisdom would lead one to think that OER, combined with mobile devices, expansion of virtual education and other online learning opportunities, would go a long way to closing the digital divide.
Reich says his research doesn't point to that result.
Click here for Reich's video on his work and to learn about his Jan. 17 presentation, which will be webcast live, on whether OER actually might widen the digital divide.

Guest Commentary: The Fordham Institute on the 'Cost of Online Learning'

The Thomas Fordaham Institute is a nationally recognized organization that supports research, publications, and projects involving in elementary/secondary education reform.

Currently, it is sponsoring a series of reports on policy directions and guidelines for the virtual education movement.  So far, these papers have looked at quality control, the role of teachers and school finance. 

Now the institute has issued the much awaited report on the cost of online learning.

From the statehouse to the courthouse to the boardroom to the playground, this is going to get the virtual education community talking.  For years, online learning has been sold to lawmakers as a low-cost alternative to traditional bricks-and-mortar schools.

But virtual charter management companies--non-profits and for-profits--often say that states can't whack per pupil funding just because the kids aren't in a classroom. A quality education still demands a quality expenditures.

Last year Georgia went on a roller coaster ride over the per pupil expenditure for virtual charter schools. The aftershock of a Georgia Supreme Court decision on the matter is still be felt, and dealt with, in the Georgia Legislature.

With that as a back drop, the Fordham Institutes's paper, "The Cost of Online Learning" enters the scene. It says:

"In this paper, the Parthenon Group uses interviews with more than 50 vendors and online schooling experts to estimate today's average per-pupil cost for a variety of schooling models, traditional and online, and presents a nuanced analysis of the important variance in cost between different school designs. These ranges—from $5,100 to $7,700 for full-time virtual schools, and $7,600 to $10,200 for the blended version."

Click here for a copy of the full report. Also check back with Liberating Learning as we  look in-depth at the report and provide detailed coverage on the reaction to the report's findings from the online learning community.

Guest Commentary: Georgia Public Policy Foundation Says Expanding Digital Learning Opportunities Should be on Legislature's Agenda

Kelly McCutchen is president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a research and education foundation dedicated to limited government, private enterprise, and individual responsibility. In a recent op-ed article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, McCutchen outline some of the issues the Georgia Legislature should tackle this term in order to "reshape state government."
Digital learning was on McCutchen's agenda.
"Digital learning is poised to fundamentally transform k-12 education over the next decade," McCutchen wrote. "Georgia must embrace this chance to remove barriers to a stellar education for poor- and middle-class students, starting with restoring the state’s ability to offer educational opportunities that don’t trap children within local school system borders."
Click here to read the complete article and learn why McCutchen  would like to see the Georgia Constitution amended to help the growth of online learning.

Guest Commentary: NYT's Online Debate 'The Frontier of Classroom Technology'

If you are part of the virtual education community, there is no doubt that the New York Times ongoing series of stories "Grading the Digital School" has come up as a subject of conversations.
Proponents of the series say the Times is shining a light fair on issues in online learning world. From for-profit companies that are entering the arena to where some of the children of Silicon Valley's Tech elite go to school (a Waldorf school that frowns on even letting the kids of the tech-savvy watch TV.)
Critics of the series aren't so kind. In a recent blog post titled "NY Times Declares War on the Future," Liberating Learning Blog contributor Tom Vander Ark wrote, "The New York Times has launched a full on war on education technology—except for when it’s in their own benefit."
"I cancelled my subscription to the Times. It was the paper of record but it’s just another pandering tabloid," Vander Ark concluded.
In an online opinion forum called "The Frontier of Classroom Technology," the Times takes a 360-degree look at edtech. Six "debaters" represent a variety of views on the intersection of education and technology. For example, Paul Thomas of Furman University calls a lot of edtech "a misguided use of money." Will Richardson, author of "Personal Learning Networks: Using the Power of Connections to Transform Education" writes, "Our kids are stuck in a paper-based, local-learning system that doesn't acknowledge the global, networked, always-on opportunities that mobile access affords.
Click here to read the forum and the more than 140 responses to debaters.

Guest Commentary: Alliance for Excellent Education Revisits its 'The Digital Learning Imperative'

Researchers don't often go back to their published work to see if their predictions came true. But that's exactly what the Alliance for Excellent Education did.

 Founded by former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, the Alliance published "The Digital Learning Imperative" in 2010. It contained bold predictions and prescriptions for the future of virtual education.

Wise would go on to join former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in launching Digital Learning Now, an advocacy group that has developed model legislative strategies for expanding online learning opportunities.

Two years after the publication of "The Digital Learning Imperative," the  Alliance for Excellent Education returned to the original report. In the 2012 version, researchers revisit state education budgets, teacher quality and the impact digital learning has made, and can make, on education and public policy  in the future.

The researchers also take a second look at some of the original assumptions. In some cases, they broaden definitions of digital learning (blended learning take an important step into the spotlight).

"Simply slapping a netbook on top of a textbook, however, will not necessarily lead to significant 

outcomes. Critical for learning success with digital learning is developing a comprehensive strategy that  has a foundation of involvement and sustained career training for teachers—not occasional professional development—which concentrates not just on the technology, but also on the pedagogical skills needed to use the technology in teaching and learning," the researchers write.

"Piecemeal, incremental action is taking place in some states to move toward more digital textbooks, for example, or toward 1:1 laptop/device programs," they note.  But without well- thought-out policies that consider quality, the importance of teaching, and the experience of the student, these fragmented efforts will produce no better results than reform efforts of the past decades."

Click here to read the complete report.

Guest Commentary: Plans for Online Ed Initiative in California Gets Fiscal Thumbs Up from State

John Fensterwald is the editorial  muscle behind the Silicon Valley Education Foundation's "Thoughts on Public Education" blog. In a recent post, he raised the curtain on the next act in the state's effort to expand online learning opportunities.
"With a formal title and a favorable fiscal analysis in hand, backers of an initiative to broaden access to online college preparatory classes will begin gathering signatures (on Jan. 4) to qualify for the November ballot," Fensterwald wrote.
California's "Legislative Analyst’s Office and the Department of Finance, in a four-page analysis concluded that the initiative in the long run would create "savings potentially in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually' for local school districts 'if schools experience efficiencies and widespread participation in the use of online courses,' " Fensterwald continued.
Click here to read more of his post.

Guest Commentary: Open Education Resources and Educational Inequality

Audrey Watters is a technology journalist, freelance writer, ed-tech advocate, recovering academic, and a self-proclaimed rabble-rouser at her blog "Hack Education."
Earlier this month, Watters took aim at a  post on the blog "Educational Technology Debate" by Justin Reich on Open Education Resources and the Digital Divide.
"Reich’s story, along with his related research, raises important questions about whether or not the push for more OER is really benefiting all students in the ways that we pat ourselves on the backs, thinking that it is," she writes.
"Everyone benefits, yes. But in practice, Reich argues, not everyone benefits equally, nor in a way that’s going to close any sort of achievement gap. Rather, more affluent students may actually benefit disproportionately from OER, in part because both teachers and students have the time and the technological capacity to do more with the material," Watters adds.
Click here to read more.

Guest Commentary: A 10-Year Update on Tech & Education

Interactive Learning, a web site is dedicated to demonstrating how schools can use technology for teaching and learning, recently published an excerpt from "Technology in Schools: What the Research Says – A 2009 Update,"  a report issued by Cisco and the Metiri group, and written by Cheryl Lemke, Ed Coughlin, Daren Reitsneider.

The authors ask some provocative questions. 

"Have we over-promised and under-delivered with technology? A recent report suggests that the lack of dramatic results attributable to technology in schools is not the fault of the technology, but rather the lack of systemic changes needed to accommodate the technology, writes Jim Rosso, who authored the Interactive Learning overview.

"After three decades of technology in the schools, some people are expressing concern about the lack of transformative change that has resulted. As the report states, 'The reality is that advocates have over-promised the ability of educators to extract a learning return on technology investments in school,' " Rosso writes.

Where did virtual education advocates go wrong?

"The error was in underestimating the critical need for the system changes required to use technologies effectively in learning," Rosso attributes to the report.

Click here to read more about this thought-provoking report.

Guest Commentary: Michael Petrilli Praises 'Performance Pay--for Online Learning Companies'

The virtual education community continues to be abuzz about a New York Times article on K12 Inc.
Michael Petrilli, executive vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, recently took aim at the Times article in a piece for the Education Next website.
"Whether you consider yeserday’s New York Times article on K12.com a “hit piece” (Tom Vander Ark) or a “blockbuster” (Dana Goldstein), there’s little doubt that it will have a long-term impact on the debate around digital learning," Petrilli wrote.
"Just as these criticisms aren’t going away, neither is online learning itself. The genie is out of the bottle. So how can we go about drafting policies that will push digital learning in the direction of quality?" he added.
Click here to read Petrill's complete post.