Webinar: Launching A District Virtual School: Featuring Tips for Success from Florida Virtual School

If you have a chance, you may want to take a look at this archive, featuring Phyllis Lentz from Florida Virtual School, Director of Global services. It’s amazing how quickly FLVS enrollment has risen. Forecasting into FY 09-10, they’re projecting enrollment of 250,000.

https://blackboard.webex.com/blackboard/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=46096947&rKey=F70741853A79A157

Here are some of the main tips.

Collect data and evaluate program
Hire Good Teachers (e.g. they have evaluation in place to survey potential applicants if they are student learning centered and are team players before they grant interviews)
Communication (e.g. they have policy to have all teachers make personal call to students at the beginning of each semester and also a requirement for all their teachers to call students to check in on them monthly via phone)
Develop policies to provide student success (e.g. 1:1 attention, ability to resubmit assignments, provide teachers with flexible scheduling, self-pacing coursework)
Develop quality online challenging and engaging content to equip students w/ 21st century skills (e.g. in survey of their HS students, they found that they wanted their instructors to integrate Web 2.0 strategies within curriculum)
Invest in Teachers – provide professional development to online staff (e.g. they provide 5 day f-2-f on boarding training for all new staff and teachers participate on average 50 hours of PD)

Ending quotes:
“In 10 years, computer-based, student-centric learning will account for 50 percent of the ‘seat miles’ in U.S. secondary schools.”
“About 80 percent of courses taken in 2024 will have been taught online in a student-centric way.”

If you don’t have time to view the entire presentation, I recommend that you listen to the Q&A section towards a big chunk of the ending part. Pretty relevant to many common online program FAQs she answered directly with her expertise.

Comments

Geotagging

A "wouldn't it be nice" idea that's been around a while is the ability to tag a map with images that are linked to more information about the site. Kelly C suggested it as a way for students to share knowledge about a cultural/historic site or the geographic area they live in with classmates. (right, no addresses!) There are now cameras and even storage media that embed latitude and longitude into images as they are shot. But you don't need fancy new toys to do this. I tried Flickr's geotagging map and it's fun and supereasy. Want to try it? Log in to Flickr http://www.flickr.com Sign in as " techedine " password " wist101 " yea, corny. Click the " You " tab then the " Your Photostream > Map " or Organize > Your Map links. Click the Satellite link in the upper right. Cool view! (you may need Google Satellite downloaded). Images along the bottom of the screen with colored dots have already been droppe...

Avatar Chat

Aloha all, Here's my o wau topic for this week. We all know the power of the Avatar and their popularity with our learners from our A`o Makua courses and I know we have discussed ways to incorporate them into our `Ike Hawai`i classes as well. Well, I can't take credit for finding this resource. Our resident Avatar expert a.k.a. Christy told me to check it out because Avatars can now chat. So please join me in finding out what other engaging and motivating feats these amazing characters can do to help us provide meaningful learning experiences for all our students. You can read about OddCast and their AvatarSpace or go to their Web site and test out some of these features. I'm hoping that this may provide us with a motivating way to get students, in both programs, to participate in some cooperative learning and sharing. Let me know what you think and if you feel this would be a valuable application to use. Mahalo - look forward to reading your responses! Kelly

Zoho Creator

I thought I’d share this web application I came across in my quest to find a relatively simple app to help us manage our mentoring data in the DL Orientation. Our specific needs were that it be a free online database, password protected, had the capability of rapid form development without too much programming knowledge and was easy for the end user to use. The application that met these requirements was Zoho Creator ( http://www.zohocreator.com/ ) a part of a suite of online applications including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, wikis, organizers and more. What’s great about Zoho Creator is that they have an online repository of applications already developed that you can download to your account and use for free. Initially, I tried some of these applications, but it was overkill for our needs. Zoho Creator can do a lot if you know programming and they have a pay model where it allows you more flexibility and features. I think Zoho Creator would be a useful tool for both...

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

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