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 I should not be forced to leave my new technology at home to use (in most cases) out-of-date school technology.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

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.

Digital Learning Day: The Town Hall Meeting

Federal Communication Chairman Julius Genachowski and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are scheduled to be the featured speakers at the Digital Day National Town Hall Meeting, which is being held virtually.
During the meeting, teachers, students, and leaders in the digital education movement from Colorado to North Carolina,and from Texas to Ohio, will discuss everything from blended learning to mastery of subject to the pros and cons of virtual education.
The event will conclude with a look at the Reconnecting McDowell project in West Virginia, a comprehensive, long-term effort to make educational improvement in this home of the coal mining industry.
The Town Hall meeting is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. Eastern, that's 10 a.m. on the Pacific Coast.
Here is a link to watch the event.  A piece of advice: So you don't have to wait to get online to watch the Town Hall, login in 5-10 minutes before the event starts.

Digital Learning Day: The Webcast

If you are on the Pacific Coast, you will have to be up and at a computer screen before the crack of dawn.
But it should be worth it.
The Alliance for Excellent Education is hosting a webcast that will present an in-depth look at important elements of digital learning--leadership, innovation, instruction strategies, effective teaching, and professional development opportunities.
Just in case you miss the morning webcast, sections of the webcast will be re-broadcast beginning at 9 a.m. Pacific (that's noon on the East Coast).
Click here for a detailed schedule of events. Click here for a link to the webcast.

Michael B. Horn: Digital Learning Day Cometh

With the arrival on February 1, 2012 of the first-ever national Digital Learning Day, the disruptive innovation of K-12 online learning—from in blended-learning environments to remote ones—seems to be taking yet another step toward the mainstream.
For over a couple decades, supporters of technology in education have talked of its potential benefits in transforming education. But beyond a set of enthusiastic early adopters, the use of technology in formal education remained largely stalled. Its talked-about benefits remained unrealized at best, as the cramming of computers produced few notable results that scaled.
With the rise of online learning, that began to change. Its growth is rapid and undeniable. Increasingly we’re seeing online learning stretch beyond areas of non-consumption—where the alternative is nothing at all and where disruptive innovations first take root.
Click here to learn more about the goals of the first Digital Learning Day.