(Back when Ben Carson was a leading GOP presidential candidate, he talked about education in an interview with Campbell Brown, and I drafted this blog post. Today Carson is no longer getting as much attention, but his views on education and online learning remain instructive for their implications about how educators and advocates talk about online learning.) Early in an interview with Campbell Brown, GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson gets this question exactly right:
Read More(The following is excerpted and slightly adapted from Keeping Pace 2015) A previous post looked at the digital learning landscape generally, and in particular traced the roots of today’s online and blended learning to both distance education courses and classroom-based computer-aided instruction. Subsequent posts will explore key sectors across K-12 public education. These definitions, sectors, and categories are not naturally and clearly delineated, and as such Keeping Pace imposes taxonomy on a discipline that is indistinct and chaotic.
Read More(The following is excerpted and slightly adapted from Keeping Pace 2015) Roughly 20 years has passed since the World Wide Web began to be used widely, and indeed the oldest K-12 online schools and programs are between 15 and 20 years old. These examples include the Laurel Springs online private school, which dates to the early 1990s, the Virtual High School, launched with a federal grant in the mid-1990s, the Florida Virtual School (FLVS), which grew out of a Florida Department of Education grant to two districts in 1996, and several small district online schools, such as the Monte Vista Online Academy in Colorado, which launched in 1997.
Read MoreBack in September, iNACOL hosted a “teacher talk” webinar by Chris Aviles, a teacher at the Fair Haven school district in New Jersey. I’ve never met Chris, but his webinar, website, and twitter feed all show experience, energy, and a solid grounding in reality. His blog post titled “the makerspace is doomed” struck me as right on target in calling makerspaces “shop class 2.0” and predicting that they are a fad that will soon fade.
Read MoreIn Keeping Pace 2015 we include some basic numbers about education that many people know, but are sometimes overlooked. These include the facts that the U.S. has about 100,000 public schools, 60 million students (depending on whom is counted), and 3 million teachers. (Click on images to enlarge.)
We also include some numbers that describe the size of the U.S. education market:
Read MoreWe released the Keeping Pace 2015 print report at the inacol symposium a couple of weeks ago, and the pdf is now available for download as well. A report that is more than 120 pages long is difficult to summarize in one or a few blog posts, but here I’ll summarize a few key ideas that we explore in more detail in the report. Key findings of Keeping Pace 2015 include the following:
Read MorePrevious posts have explored the importance of teachers to online and blended learning enough times that regular readers may be tired of hearing about the misconception that teachers aren’t important in digital learning. But there’s another misconception that I think is common, although I have only anecdotes and observations.
Read MoreIn addition to the main points about the recent iNACOL symposium discussed in a recent blog post, another highlight was listening to educators from many of the schools discussed in our proof points series. We had leaders from Spokane, Salt Lake City, Washington DC, Randolph and Middletown (New York), Horry County (South Carolina), St George (Utah), Poudre (Colorado) and Putnam County (Tennessee) take part in two separate discussions.
Read MorePeople who study, practice, or otherwise think about digital learning often tend to get their news and information on the topic from a few education-specific sources, including iNACOL, EdSurge, Getting Smart, and others. Authors on these sites, blogs, and related white papers know they are writing for an audience that tends to be fairly knowledgeable about digital learning, and is often biased towards believing that digital learning is—or at least can be—a positive element in education. Given the confirmation bias that can result from this approach, it’s especially valuable to note articles from general media sources.
Read MoreThe annual iNACOL conference wrapped up yesterday, and it’s worth noting some observations while they are fresh. One person’s experience in a conference with more than 3,000 people and over 200 sessions is a highly limited view—so all observations should be assumed to start with a “FWIW.”
Read MoreA recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Students, Computers and Learning, questions the value of using computers in education. The report is illuminating and important, but some articles and blog posts covering the report, such as Time to close the laptops - and improve learning, get the key findings wrong. A closer look reveals why. The OECD report compares PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores between countries with different levels of computer use.
Read MoreThe Evergreen team will present several times at the iNACOL Blended and Online Learning Symposium in Orlando next week, and we hope you'll be able to join us for one or more sessions. The 2015 annual Keeping Pace report will be released at the Symposium. Evergreen researchers will present findings at 9:45am on Monday, November 9, and then we will have a discussion about report findings, the general state of digital learning, and some important myths and realities at 2:05pm.
Read MoreToday we and the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation released the final set of case studies in the series Proof Points: Blended Learning Success in School Districts, which examines blended learning efforts in traditional school districts, and the correlated improved student outcomes. Regular readers may recall that we originally released six profiles in April, and another three in June.
Read MoreAmong the common misconceptions in education is that students are comfortable with technology, and therefore implementing blended learning doesn’t require helping students make the transition. For example, a 90 second Google search returned this quote about students and technology: “Many students have grown up around technology and feel comfortable with it. Don't be embarrassed that they may know more about technology than you do. Welcome opportunities to learn from them.”
Read MoreAn earlier post reviewed the recently published District Guide to Blended Learning Measurement from The Learning Accelerator, and promised a follow-up post regarding the distinction that the guide makes between research and evaluation. This distinction is important, for reasons explained by Richard Culata and Katrina Stevens of the US Department of Education:
Read MoreThe Learning Accelerator has just released its District Guide to Blended Learning Measurement, which provides a useful framework to districts thinking about how to determine whether their digital learning efforts are yielding results. Educators and blended learning advocates are increasingly stressing the fact that technology should be implemented only with clear educational goals in mind, and that these goals should be well-defined and measurable. In most cases, the technology should not be considered until educational goals are established. Schools that put technology first all too often find themselves with tablets in search of a problem to solve.
Read MoreThe headline is attention-grabbing: How High Schoolers Spent Their Summer: Online, Taking More Courses. But the article is disappointing because it has no data; instead it consists of a series of anecdotes about New York-area students taking massive open online courses (MOOCs) in order to bolster their college applications—and often not completing them. Stories such as the one about the student taking online courses while traveling with his family around Italy are mildly interesting but would have been more noteworthy five or ten years ago than they are today.
Read MoreThis blog post was co-written with my former Evergreen colleague, Stacy Hawthorne of Hawthorne Education. The previous blog post (The J curve describes why the transition to blended teaching is hard) generated some conversations about what schools that are implementing blended learning can do to help teachers with the transition. A participant at the Idaho conference that spurred my thinking on this topic raised a similar point when she tweeted “Teachers who engage are the key! How to do this with online options is the question.”
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