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Pace Unveils Virtual Classroom

admin — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:52:34 +0000

PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. – Students in Pace University’s education degree program will now be able to practice their teaching skills in front of a classroom of students on a daily basis, while never leaving the Pleasantville campus.

The classroom won’t be filled with actual students, but instead virtual ones through the fully interactive TeachLivE Lab.

“This is a great tool because a student can go practice in front of a classroom and if they don’t do so well they can say to themselves, ‘alright I’ll just try to do better tomorrow’,” said Education Professor Brian Monahan. “As opposed to the embarrassment of performing poorly in front of a real class and going home crying.”

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Exam success for youngsters in care

admin — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:57:07 +0000

The role of the virtual school is to pull together all people involved in the child’s life, such as teachers, carers and social workers, to ensure the young person is progressing and is consistently exceeding their targets.

Ofsted recently judged the education of children being fostered in the city as “outstanding” and said this was largely due to Sunderland Virtual School.

Councillor Paul Stewart, chairman of children, young people and learning scrutiny committee, said: “The committee acknowledges the excellent work that has been and continues to be achieved with looked-after children in the city.

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Weekly News Roundup

admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:11:55 +0000

Pearson, the world’s largest education company announced this week that it had acquired Connections Education, an online virtual school provider. About 40,000 students in 21 states attend the schools, which are funded by the states and districts and free to parents in places where virtual school counts as a public education.
On Monday, McGraw-Hill announced that it would be splitting into two companies. One would focus on its education division, now second only in size to Pearson, and the other would handle the company’s financial business, including its ownership of Standard & Poors. On Thursday, the company announced it had led the investment in a first round of funding for Unigo, an online resource for college students. The New York-based startup will now power the student review section of the U.S. News & World Report‘s college rankings.

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Kaplan Bows Out Of Online High Schools, Soon After Getting In

admin — Fri, 20 May 2011 03:56:30 +0000

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Washington Post Co.’s (WPO) Kaplan Inc. is selling its online high school business to K12 Inc. (LRN), just months after buying another competitor to grow the business itself.

Kaplan Virtual Education, which provides online education for grades six through 12, bought Insight Schools Inc. from Apollo Group Inc. (APOL) in February. It is now selling that brand, as well as the schools branded under Kaplan Virtual Education, to K12.

Terms of the deal, which is expected to be completed within 45 days, weren’t disclosed. Terms of the Apollo deal also weren’t disclosed.

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Class Bias, Class Size and Online Learning

admin — Wed, 18 May 2011 01:38:27 +0000

Despite all the spin, there is little or no evidence of positive results for online learning, as a New York Times article pointed out a few weeks ago. And there are lots of counter-examples that should make us worry:

Agora Cyber Charter School, an online charter school run by K12 in Pennsylvania, failed to make Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) in 2007, 2008 and 2009, and had to send a letter to parents announcing its mandated “improvement” efforts.

The Columbus Dispatch has concluded that five of the seven largest online schools in Ohio have graduation rates lower than those of the state’s worst traditional public school district; six of the seven were rated as less than “effective.”

An annual report of for-profit education management organizations concluded that only 30 percent of virtual schools met AYP as compared to 55 percent of “bricks and mortar schools.

The Pentagon refuses to recruit students into the military who have graduated from online schools, since their academic standards are so low.

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Online learning for high schoolers inspires praise, suspicion

admin — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:25:44 +0000

“We have yet to see a vendor who has made the case that students who lack the motivation to do homework, to engage in class, to manage their time efficiently … will be more successful in online learning,” said Samantha Dolen of Palatine, Ill.-based District 211, where only two of 13,000 students take Internet classes.

Still, some observers believe the trend is likely to accelerate. They say revenue-starved schools will find the economics irresistible and will be intrigued by the potential for better results.

“There is no real, robust, state-led effort in online learning yet in Illinois … (but) I can say with confidence that at this time next year, legislators in Springfield will be talking about online learning as a policy priority,” said Collin Hitt of the Illinois Policy Institute.

Internet-based education has grown slowly in Illinois. The state introduced a virtual high school in 2001, intended mainly for students who wanted to take advanced classes their own schools didn’t offer.

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Can Young Students Learn From Online Classes?

admin — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 03:57:18 +0000

School administrators say online courses in K-12 classrooms can give students the skills they’ll need in college and the workplace. Indeed, the presence of online courses in primary and secondary schools is a growing trend across the country.

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Changes Schools Should Make to Better Serve Students: A Student’s View

admin — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:46:35 +0000

As a student at an online public high school, I see my teachers using many of these tools. Many of my teachers have Google Voice as well as embeddable chat tools, so we can quickly get in contact.

Of course, all these changes, big and small, will cost money. Where will that come from? By shifting more content online, we could cut some of the spending that would go toward giant reams of paper and industrial-size printers and copiers. Maybe we could levy a tax on soft drink and junk food purchases, to pay for healthier school lunches. (We could call it “Buy a Twinkie for Yourself, Give a Whole Wheat Sandwich to a Student!”)

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Pilot of new online classes earn mixed reviews from principals

admin — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 05:16:24 +0000

When I talked to Alisa Berger, the co-principal of the NYCiSchool, “transformative” and “life-changing,” were a few of the words she used to describe iLearn. Berger has added four AP classes to her course offerings. For class discussions, her students use Skype to talk to a teacher at another New York City public school, creating in effect a virtual classroom.

Nancy Amling, principal of the Hudson High School for Learning Technologies, which is part of the blended learning pilot, said she’d been able to offer her small class of ninth graders online classes in five different languages. As the leader of a new small school, this frees her from having to hire a language teacher, though she said she’d eventually like to have one.

But principals across the city agreed that schools offering online credit recovery have had a more mixed experience.

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A better recipe for fixing NY schools

admin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 03:09:51 +0000

Fourth, modernize the substance of what we teach. Most schools continue to deliver instruction based on a factory model and on a school calendar from an agrarian era. Students need longer school days and school years, and greater use of virtual learning. At the same time, curricula must place greater emphasis on world history, international economics and the teaching of languages such as Mandarin Chinese.

Cuomo is doing what he must to clean up the fiscal mess created before he arrived. But we should not lose sight of the very real need to rescue those children being denied educational opportunity in our midst. Both are important — and the goals are not contradictory, no matter what the special interests claim.

For the rest of the article, go to A better recipe for fixing NY schools

Cuomo is doing what he must to clean up the fiscal mess created before he arrived. But we should not lose sight of the very real need to rescue those children being denied educational opportunity in our midst. Both are important — and the goals are not contradictory, no matter what the special interests claim.