jeffery heil's List: Online Learing

•   Learning in the 21st Century, 2011 Trends Update highlights the Speak Up 2010 survey data collected from 379,285 K-12 students, parents and educators and illustrates how online learning is changing the classroom paradigm within our nation’s schools.
• Key trends
• Three times as many high school students have access to online learning and twice as many middle school students are learning online, since Speak Up 2007.
• More than 40 percent of students now designate online classes as an essential component of their learning experience. Administrators and parents are increasingly supporting the students’ vision for learning online.
• A growing number of educators are learning online.
• As online learning grows, administrators are shifting their perspective about what it takes to be successful.

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• In the 2001-2002 school year, nearly 80,000  students with disabilities dropped out of high school, according to  the 26^th Annual Report to  Congress.
• Dropouts are  more likely to be unemployed, live in poverty, receive public  assistance, become incarcerated, are unhealthy, and become divorced and  single parents with children who drop out from high school themselves,  according to the report.
• students gave  various reasons for dropping out, which include lack of connection to  the school, a perception that school is boring, feeling unmotivated,  academic challenges, and personal situations, says the  report.
• primary reason    nearly half of the young adults gave for dropping out was that classes  were uninteresting.
• feeling unmotivated or uninspired to work hard was a significant factor  in the drop outs’ discontent with school.
• the “most  academically challenged students were the most likely to say their  school did not do enough to help students who had difficulty  understanding the material
• warning signs that students are at risk of dropping out of school, with  absenteeism being the most common indicator of student disengagement and    a significant predictor of dropping ou
• warning signs include:  low grades, discipline and behavior problems, lack of involvement in  class and school activities, pregnancy, being held back a grade or more,    students who transfer from another school, and those who experience  difficulty with the 9^th grade transition year, says the  report.
• Poor communication between the school and parents was  another contributor to students dropping out.
• Improve teaching    and curricula to make school more relevant and engaging and enhance the  connection between school and work.
• Improve  instruction and access to supports for struggling students.
• Build a school  climate that fosters academics.
• Ensure strong  adult-student relationships in the school.
• Improve  communication between parents and schools.

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• Innovative Educator blogger Lisa Nielsen at Education Nation conference in New York earlier this week.
• I can’t learn from you if you are not willing to connect with me.
• Caring about each student is more important than teaching the class.
• The community should become more involved in schools.
• Our teachers have too many students to enable them to connect with us in they way we need them to.
• You need to use tools in the classroom that we use in the real world like Facebook, email, and other tools we use to connect and communicate.
• You need to love a student before you can teach a student.

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• ‘Visitors & Residents’ principle
• Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement
   by David S. White and Alison Le Cornu.

• This article proposes a continuum of ‘Visitors’ and ‘Residents’ as a replacement for Prensky’s much‐criticised Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants
• We argue that the metaphors of ‘place’ and ‘tool’ most appropriately represent the use of technology in contemporary society, especially given the advent of social media.
• The Visitors and Residents continuum accounts for people behaving in different ways when using technology, depending on their motivation and context, without categorising them according to age or background.

• A wider and more accurate representation of online behaviour is therefore established.

    
• ‘The digital natives/digital immigrants distinction is dead or at least dying’
• Prensky’s distinction between people who are entirely at ease within a digital environment and those who manage to learn to exist but who (in his view) will never be fully competent, has gained enormous currency and, until recently, widespread acceptance.

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• As the use of computing and networking technologies in schools grows, educators increasingly incorporate online tools and resources into their curricula—some even replace traditional classroom interactions with “virtual” courses that take place entirely online
• The number of high school students who are taking online classes for school credit has almost doubled since Speak Up 2008.
• While the number of teachers who have taught online classes has tripled since Speak Up 2008,
• help teachers learn how to effectively leverage online learning to drive student achievement and increase their own productivity.
• 4 percent report that they are learning how to teach online classes in their instructional methods courses.
• hirty-three percent of parents report they have taken an online class for their own professional needs or personal interests

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• Digital utopians have envisioned a world of virtual campuses and “distributed” learning.
• online education has proliferated, from community colleges to the free OpenCourseWare lecture videos offered by M.I.T.
• But the Internet has so far scarcely disturbed the traditional practice or the economics at the high end, the great schools that are one of the few remaining advantages America has in a competitive world.
• One development is a competition among prestige universities to open a branch campus in applied sciences in New York City.
• The school’s proposal
• nvisions a bricks-and-mortar residential campus on an island in the East River, built around a community of 100 faculty members and 2,200 students and strategically situated to catalyze new businesses in the city.
• Stanford’s most inventive professors, Sebastian Thrun, is making an alternative claim on the future.
• He is offering his “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online and free of charge
• His remote students will get the same lectures as students paying $50,000 a year, the same assignments, the same exams and, if they pass, a “statement of accomplishment” (though not Stanford credit).
• Thrun’s ultimate mission is a virtual university in which the best professors broadcast their lectures to tens of thousands of students.
• “Literally, we can probably get the same quality of education I teach in class for about 1 to 2 percent of the cost,”
• “If we can solve this,” he said, “I think it will disrupt all of higher education.”

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• In the year 2000, roughly 45,000 K–12 students took an online course. In 2009, more than 3 million K–12 students did.
• In Disrupting Class,* the authors project that by 2019, 50 percent of all high school courses will be delivered online

• instructor, social director, program manager, and technical assistant.
• wears four pairs of shoes
• Instructor: consultant, guide, and resource provider
• instructors guide self-directed learning in problem-centered environments
• • provide information to help learners complete assignments  
  • suggest ideas or strategies for learning  
  • help learners connect content with prior knowledge.
• Fostering learner-centeredness.
• Structuring problem-based learning and authentic work.
• Providing informative feedback
• Social director: creator of collaborative environments
• Facilitators stimulate learner participation and interaction by using small group discussions, collaborative projects, case studies, didactic learning partnership exchanges, and one-on-one exchanges. In addition, they monitor and participate in discussion forums or conferences to identify misconceptions or guide more fruitful directions
• Program manager: director of the agenda
• many facilitators develop study guides for courses to help ease learners' anxiety and address both content and technical concerns.
• help learners manage their time and avoid information overload
• Technical assistant: model of proficiency
• The ultimate technical goal for facilitators, according to Berge, is to "make the technology transparent."
• the more they can focus on learners rather than technology.
• Ideally, they use a variety of media (text, graphics, audio, and video) to present material.
• instructor, social director, program manager, and technical assistan
• • address the needs of adult learners by guiding self-directed, realistic, problem-based learning experiences  
  • structure learning opportunities in which learners make their own meanings by discovering content on their own  
  • encourage high degrees of participation and interactivity  
  • offer prompt, informative feedback  
  • provide strong leadership  
  • help learners feel comfortable with technology.

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