New York Online High Schools

Owl e-learning alliance announced in New York

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:43:22 +0000

An online learning initiative has been launched by Jamestown Community College (JCC) and five partner institutions from the State University of New York (Suny).

These are the community colleges of Erie, Finger Lakes, Corning, Genesee and Monroe, which together form the Online Western New York Learning Alliance (Owl).

All of these organisations have received full accreditation from the Middle State Association of Colleges and Schools and have been authorised by Suny to offer online degrees in certain subject areas.

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Virtual high school expands students horizons

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:55:08 +0000

The program is called Virtual High School. Based in Maynard, Mass., the nonprofit corporation was founded in 1996 and offers more than 200 elective courses to advanced placement and honors students. Those courses include forensic science, oceanography, and pre-veterinary science. The organization is funded by corporate sponsors and education partners like Salesforce website, Constant Contact, Plymouth State University and Framingham State College. The school district pays for the courses, which cost $6,750 per semester for 25 seats. The district also pays one-time fees of $1,500 for the training of the on-site coordinator and $3,500 to train each teacher. Places are limited, and seniors have priority, but juniors can apply for any spots that are left over. When the program was introduced in Westerly two years ago, 11 students took classes. Last year there were 16, and this year, there are 38. During their “virtual” period of the school day, participating students go to the library, log on to their class web pages, read the class material or do an assignment, and then upload their work to a teacher who might be thousands of miles away. Class work is distributed a week at a time, and students, teachers and Toscano can log in to check assignment and exam results

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Building Schools Out of Clicks, Not Bricks

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:42:02 +0000

“At first a lot of professors didn’t trust virtual education,” said Sergio Martinez, from the University of Cantabria . With 120 courses now online, the university, though one of the smallest in Spain, gets more than 96,000 visitors a month to its Web site from all over the Spanish-speaking world.

The international reach of the movement was underlined by Dr. Daniel, who said that initial concerns that the traffic would all be from richer countries to poorer ones have not been borne out. “Instead we see a course on tropical medicine from Nkrumah University in Ghana being adapted by the University of Michigan,” he said in an interview after his speech.

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Drop In! Top Schools From Berkeley to Yale Now Offer Free Online Courses

admin — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:52:34 +0000

Research suggests that online learning can be just as effective as classroom learning. In a 2009 report based on 50 independent studies, the U.S. Department of Education found that students who studied in online learning environments performed modestly better than peers who were receiving face-to-face instruction.

When it comes to creating open online courses that reflect the classroom experience, however, it pays to be a professor of computer science. Coursera’s founders are well equipped to solve problems such as automatic grading, peer grading and 1,000-student class discussions that make an online class size of 100,000 students manageable.

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State Superintendent Mike Flanagan touts Holland Public Schools

admin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:50:24 +0000

Flanagan said he was impressed with the foundation of the school that allows students to move at their own pace and take advantage of virtual learning opportunities.

“This allows them to reach incremental goals,” Flanagan said. “They’re going to be successful. We can see it right before our eyes.”

He even shared with the students a little about his own upbringing in New York and how he had to transition to living in the suburbs and didn’t fit in very well with the other students.

VR Tech Director Deb Feenstra was happy to see Flanagan spend time hearing about her students’ experiences and successes at the 173-student school.

“He talks a lot about virtual learning” Feenstra said. “You hear a whole lot about it, but I’m glad he got to come in and see who we are.”

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In the schools: Students wear red on Valentine’s Day; students attend global classrooms

admin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:18:42 +0000

SOUTH ORANGETOWN – The South Orangetown school district offered 25 students in the middle and high school the opportunity to attend Virtual High School Global Consortium, an online education program offering over 200 full semester courses in arts, business, English language arts, foreign language, life skills, mathematics, science, social studies and technology. The VHS offers courses to students from grade seven through 12 in six-month terms. The participating students submitted essays, responded to surveys, posted assignments, and responded to other student posts in order to receive satisfactory grades. Some of the courses chosen by the South Orangetown Middle School students included business fundamentals (Kyle Fuller); sociology (Livy Vartels); mythology, followed by a second term of animations and effects (Sienna Perry); screen writing fundamentals (Jarrett Morley); American popular music from the American Revolution through the 1980s (Skylar Karzhevsky); and animation and effects, followed by a second term of advanced Web design (Ean Waetjen).

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New virtual classroom system debuts at Notre Dame Academy

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:20:02 +0000

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – GRYMES HILL – High-school students and faculty at Notre Dame Academy are preparing to embark on a new learning frontier. The school has taken a step into the virtual classroom with the launch of the online digital learning system, “Fronter.”

Coinciding with the first annual national “Digital Learning Day” on Feb. 1, Notre Dame officially went online with its Pearson Fronter Learning Management System, giving students, teachers and parents the ability to access school information and classroom materials.

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Traditional School vs. Virtual School

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:58:17 +0000

But about 250,000 American students attended virtual schools last year. They saw their teachers on their computer screens rather than in person. They didn’t have to wait for the bus or get locked out of their lockers or have the excuse that they left their homework at home. But they also didn’t get to see all of their friends, have a class discussion in the same way, give a report to their class or interact with a smart board.

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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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Students of Online Schools Are Lagging

admin — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:06:56 +0000

The number of students in virtual schools run by educational management organizations rose sharply last year, according to a new report being published Friday, and far fewer of them are proving proficient on standardized tests compared with their peers in other privately managed charter schools and in traditional public schools.

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