Teacher education

I was checking the website for the new Georgia Virtual High School (see http://www.GAVirtualSchool.org/ ) A few weeks ago and in their virtual library that had a link to this article: Telling the story of Online Learning: What people do not understand, Dont support (see http://www.sreb.org/programs/EdTech/onlinestory/onlinestoryindex.asp ).on average 92 percent! I’m calling his parents to tell them soon, we finally found the key to the future of their children math. - Henry Chandler, a teacher, Virginia what does teaching online look like?

More directly, what does teaching in a virtual high school look like? What does the teacher do in a synchronous teaching environment in a virtual high school? What does the teacher do in an asynchronous teaching environment in a virtual high school? Looking forward to your thoughts

Tags: virtual school , cyber school , high school , education

Note: I started my comprehensive examinations this past Monday (04 July 2005) and will be engaged in that for most of the next six weeks. While I already have entries pre-written for this period of time to keep a regular flow of content coming, the frequency may decrease slightly (depending on how tired I am at the end of the day and how much I can actually think about something other than my comps questions. I will be posting information about my comprehensive exams at my other blogs, Breaking into the Academy , so you can visit there to see the nature of my questions and any public discussion I attempt as I try to talk out my ideas.

Next week I’ll be here giving a presentation about this blog and the Forum’s website .

I’ll post the presentation once I’ve given it, but this is just to explain why the tumbleweed around here may be a bit thicker than usual at the start of the week.

In the meantime here’s a video from the QCA about initial teacher training:

And here’s one about taking risks with the curriculum which repeats some of the messages from the above video, but adds more depth:Filed under: Uncategorized

Chasing the chemical demons.

Dr John Ramsey, ofSt George’s Medical School in London, writes about legal highs on the BBC website:

While the government consults its advisors on the harms caused by cannabis and ecstasy and then disregards the evidence they produce, UK based websites and high-street “head” shops are exploiting the naivety of young people by marketing to them chemicals never before used as drugs.

Read more here and people’s reaction to his views here .

Filed under: legal high

links for 2009-02-18.

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Young People in Cumbria 2008 « Drug Education News says: 18 February, 2009 at 1:20 pm

[...] People in Cumbria 2008 Earlier today I saw a story about young people and alcohol in Cumbria which said there was a survey of 2,000 young [...]

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DCSF Ministers.

Confirmation of the new roles that Ministers at the DCSF will play:

Delyth Morgan’s principal policy areas include safeguarding and child protection, drugs and alcohol, sport and healthy eating.

Sarah McCarthy Fry’s principal policy areas include admissions, 14-19 reform, the National Curriculum and SEN.

Filed under: Government

I actually got this off the Humble ISD website. A little shocking, I thought the first time we would see any boundary proposals would be at the upcoming meetings. Sorry I did not have time to look into each of these yet, I’m out of town (in Indianapolis, Indiana) visiting my dad. Also, my little laptop will not let me visit anything pdf, for the moment, gotta work on that. But, here is the information I got for you to look into. Any insight, please clue me in, and I will certainly follow up on this as soon as I can.

Work is underway to develop boundaries for Summer Creek High School (SCHS), which will open in the fall of 2009, and for Middle School #8, which will open in the fall of 2010.
SCHS is located in the Spring Trace area south of the West Lake Houston Pkwy. and is expected to provide relief for Atascocita High School and for Humble High School.

M iddle School #8 is located north of the Sam Houston Parkway and east of the railroad tracks, just west of Summerwood. MS #8 is expected to provide relief for Atascocita Middle School, and possibly for Humble and Sterling Middle Schools.

T he Population and Survey Analysts (PASA), the demographic firm, which has been working with Humble ISD since 2004, provided proposed boundaries and enrollment projections for SCHS and MS #8, which were used by the Citizens Boundary Advisory Committee (CBAC) as a starting point in their deliberations regarding boundaries.

I n the spring of 2008, the CBAC developed 4 other possible options for boundaries for SCHS and MS #8.

T he boundary option developed by PASA and the 4 options developed by the CBAC will be presented to parents and patrons in order to gather input regarding each of the options from those who may impacted by the boundary changes. The meetings will be held at Atascocita High School (Monday, Sept. 8), Humble High School (Thursday, Sept. 11), and Humble Middle School (Monday, Sept. 15). All meetings will begin at 7:00 PM in the auditoriums of the schools.

F ollowing the community input meetings, the CBAC will present its findings and recommendation for boundary changes to the Superintendent, who will, in turn, present his recommendation to the Board of Education. It is the responsibility of the Board of Education to approve boundary changes.

Don’t forget to view these:

Humble ISD Home | Quick Comparison of options | Pros and Cons of each option

I received this message from Julie Heon via the AP Small Schools listserve. As she was describing the Virtual High School, I though it was worthwhile to post here.

We have used Virtual High School for three years and are quite satisfied. The quality of the instructors is very high, and they communicate very well with our students. Our state has formed a consortium and contracted with VHS in order to negotiate rates.

A very few students have taken AP Bio or Stats. The results on these AP exams have not been as high as in-school AP courses. But the students were satisfied to have the experience.

Online courses have worked for our students who have the capability and responsibility to work independently. We offer them time at a computer at school or they can work at home. Our coordinator for online courses is a guidance counselor who gets regular/bi-weekly progress reports on each student. This helps to prevent a student from getting too far behind before someone at our school intervenes.

Julie HeonDirector of Curriculum & InstructionPembroke Academy

I include it here because I believe it outlines a number of the things that I have often argued about the current state of virtual schooling.

For example, the students in the virtual courses did not perform as well on the standardized exam as students in the classroom courses (and the AP exams are pretty good standardized exams, as far as standardized exams go). The students have to “have the capability and responsibility to work independently”, characteristics of the typical adult learner and not necessarily of the adoloscent learner. The need for access to a cmputer at home or additional access at school.

Is it possible to design a virtual school experience, where students can have the same level of success as their classroom counterparts, which is accessible to students of all abilities and all socio-economic levels?

Tags: virtual school , cyber school , high school , education

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