Today’s junior and senior high school students are increasingly cyber-savvy, hungering for more opportunities to use technology inside the schools, and eager to participate in genuine collaborative learning . http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/don-tapscott/logged-on-to-learn/article1853529/ Mobile learning technology has been adopted almost en mass by the Net Generation and by today’s so-called “screenagers,” but the vast majority of Canadian public schools remain “locked-down” to the free use of such devices outside of designated rooms or access points.
Why are Canada’s public school systems so resistant to online learning and virtual schooling? Educational futurists may trumpet the “21st Century Skills,” but the regulatory system conspires against any and all initiatives that challenge the status quo, based upon regulations that determine when, how, and where teaching and learning take place. One of the prime obstacles to online learning remains the teachers unions, powerful organizations that exercise hidden influence over everything that happens in the schools. http://www.aims.ca/en/home/library/details.aspx/1862
Recent annual reviews of the state of Online Learning in Canada have demonstrated that the rigid structuring of schooling constitutes the greatest obstacle in Canadian provincial education systems. Two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Alberta, are now recognizing the enormous potential of “blended learning” combining regular “bricks and mortar” instruction with expanded online learning opportunities. Ontario has the most disjointed system, managed by a rather diffuse E-Learning Consortium. Of all the provinces, Prince Edward Island has no real policy and Nova Scotia stands out as being the most restrictive when it comes to online learning.
The Nova Scotia Teachers Union, representing 9,800 teachers, staunchly defends the provincial Collective Agreement, a 191-page contract, which spells out, in exacting detail, the number of days of instruction, school day hours, class sizes, and every aspect of school working conditions. http://www.ednet.ns.ca/pdfdocs/collective -agreements/teachers_provincial_agreement_english.pdf Most of these hard-won rights achieved in the mid-1970s essentially put teachers ahead of kids in the system.
Like most Canadian teacher unions, the NSTU is dead set against “Virtual Schools” and defends classroom “seat-time” rules which limit online learning to a supplemental role in the P-12 public system. When information technology innovations arise, the union instinctively resists the introduction of “lighthouse” Information Technology programs because of concerns over the “digital divide” and the system’s inability to guarantee “equality of service “ for all students. http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/society-societe/stories-histoires/story-histoire-eng.aspx?story_id=139
Technology may be transforming our everyday life, but Nova Scotia public schools are lagging in fully embracing the potential of the Internet and in integrating online learning into the system. E-learning courses and programs as well as virtual schools are popping-up in Ontario (Virtual High School) and British Columbia, but remain few and far between in Nova Scotia’s school system.
At the elementary and secondary school level (P-12), regular “brick-and-mortar” schools are acquiring computer hardware and software, connecting them to the Internet, installing wireless networks, and offering in-service training in ICT (Information Communication Technologies) to both novice and experienced teachers. http://www.ccl-cca.ca/pdfs/E-learning/E-Learning_Report_FINAL-E.PDF
In spite of provincial law and regulations, distance education student enrolments are holding their own, given the limits imposed by structural impediments, regulatory constraints, and budgetary restraint programs. The infrastructure in a surprising number of public schools now enables Internet access, student portals, digital libraries, and networks that support laptops, handheld and other portable devices.
The province of Nova Scotia has initiated and is developing a highly centralized , province-wide online learning program – the Nova Scotia Virtual School (NSVS). http://nsvs.ednet.ns.ca/m19/ It provides a central course management platform and delegates to the eight school boards the responsibility for providing course content written by practicing classroom teachers.
Since Nova Scotia has tended to lag behind in providing province-wide high speed Internet access, concerns about the urban-rural “digital divide” exert considerable influence on educational policy-making. Although Nova Scotia has no P-12 distance education legislation, it is heavily regulated in the Teachers’ Contract with the NSTU.
The Nova Scotia regulatory regime pays utmost respect to negotiated teacher rights. Some 11 specific clauses in the Agreement limit the provincial government’s freedom of action in providing online learning. All online instructors must be certified teachers, employed by the public board, and are protected by provisions limiting their number of instructional days and working hours and guaranteeing them personal days as well as dedicated preparation and marking time.
Distance education is treated like a regular in-school program with supervisors, dedicated facilities space, and class groups limited to 20-25 students. A provincial Distance Education Committee, with teacher union representation (four of 8 positions) exists to address “issues surrounding distance education.”
Online learning has a world of potential for promoting freer, more open access to the Internet and opening the door to new innovations taking better advantage of “e-Learning 2.0.” Here again, Nova Scotia exemplifies the defensive reflex. Virtually all NS e-learning programs consist mainly of instructional packets, delivered to students as teacher-evaluated assignments. Newer e-learning opportunities for students are few and far between, even in urban schools.
Social learning with Facebook and Twitter also remains extremely rare across Canada, as is the use of social media software such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, and virtual worlds. Few traditional classroom teachers use social networking unless they are communicating with their own professional colleagues. http://www.themarknews.com/articles/2368-should-schools-friend-facebook
Virtual schools are on the horizon and offer a glimmer of hope for realizing the enormous potential in meeting the needs of today’s learners. With education authorities and unions acting in collusion with one another, the sky (in cyberspace) has definite limits for kids.
What’s the real source of resistance to Online Learning in Canadian public education? Do education authorities see the contradiction in supporting “21st Century Skills” initiatives while maintaining restrictive regulatory regimes? What will it take to unlock and tap into the full potential of online learning and virtual schools?
Everything you need to know about the future of learning can be said in two words: Khan Academy. here is the link. http://www.khanacademy.org/ Over 85 miilion lessons views online! They can made all the rules at school boards, they can negotiate any contract they want, but they cannot get around free,online access to this wonderful teacher! You can google Salman Khan and find lots of info on him, interviews, videos, etc. Enjoy!
“What’s the real source of resistance to Online Learning in Canadian public education?”
– not enough new teachers who can best instruct and educate using new media. Too many “seasoned” educators reluctant and or unwilling to take the new tech. leap.
– it bring education TO the student, not the other way around, which serves to really deliver the education a students needs geared to his/her own needs, vs. trying to squeeze another student into the already busy day of classroom teachers.
– teacher unions who see this as weakening their monopoly.
“Do education authorities see the contradiction in supporting “21st Century Skills” initiatives while maintaining restrictive regulatory regimes?”
– no they don’t.
“What will it take to unlock and tap into the full potential of online learning and virtual schools?”
– continued move toward more choice within and outside of the public education system.
– real-time Canadian success stories
– proof of an educated graduate and parents satisfied with the effort of both student and school.
1) Virtual schools you mean your teenager stays at home in his pjs while mom and dad go to work and he does his school work from his room. Somebody does not know teenagers.
2) Who can verify that the student is actually the one doing the work?
3) tests and exams, classroom presentations, etc ya that really works.
VS is not popular because the population does not want it yet. There are far too many bugs to work out.
Education is a contact sport of instant reactions. It is also a critical socialization where boys and girls, different races, etc learn to get along. Im sure the virtual choir or the virtual basketball team or the virtual prom is a lot of fun.
Distance education can be radically enhanced as can homeschooling, kids get helpin evenings, most kids use the internet for all essays and classroom powerpoint presentations. Teachers give assignments based on the internet but schools cannot keep up with the cost of tech demands.
Yes unions will preserve the ratios that every 25 kids in virtual school generate one teacher because teachers are still required to monotor and assist students. Anyone who thinks that virtual education will eliminate or ven reduce the number of teachers required had better think again.
Khan Academy is a very interesting and welcome development. It shows how utube and the internet can assist learning but every Khan classroom also has a teacher to date, public or private.
Parents will soon find that “working at your own speed” ( a very liberal Deweyist pedagogy from the 1960’s) will soon generate huge numbers of students “going nowhere at their own speed”.
Somehow reformers are under the illusion that you show kids what to do and they actually do it without daydreaming or goofing off or wasting time or foot dragging. Wake up it does not work like that and never has. Kids need to be pushed cajoled bribed and threatened to actually get them to work anywhere close to their optimum speed.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0504/p11s02-legn.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/report-details-problems-with-full-time-virtual-schools/2011/10/24/gIQAPbuqFM_blog.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html. Even Bill Gates kids watch Khan Academy videos!
Bill Gates gave Khan a ton of money because they are both technology pushers.
The tech industry has a huge vested interest in schools buying technology. This is why every program and purchase must be seen through the prism of conflict of interest. This is the main reason the big tech companies seek out shills to tout their products. The potential for ‘white elephants’ is gigantic.
Guess what, the corporate reform movement has a big problem. They don’t believe in more money but they do believe in more technology (more money). Naturally, the most sinister of the corporate reform types Terry Moe for example posits the position that “we must raid the teacher budget line to get the money for technology in order to bust the unions”. You think the unions can’t read? Naturally this provokes the unions to seriously examine and slow down tech introduction. Duh.
Could you provide the source for the quote attibuted to Terry Moe, please? I’d like to read the entire piece.
I hope the issue of technology in education isn’t being determined entirely by self-interest of the various players.
Online schooling is spreading so rapidly in the United States, Doug, that it is now a major public policy issue in the education world. You posted The Washington Post story by Valerie Strauss (October 25, 2011) referring to the growth pains being experienced in “full-time virtual schools.” What you missed was the report on how extensive online learning has already become across the United States.
Millions of public high school students are taking at least one course online, far more than the Canadian figure which is estimated by Dr. Michael Barbour to be between 175,000 and 208,000 students engaged in K-12 distance education. (Correction)
Virtual education is expanding all over the U.S. Forty states now operate or have authorized virtual classes for public K-12 students, and a growing number of states are mandating that public school students take at least one online course, including Florida.
In 27 states,full-time “cyber schools” are now operating, including scores of virtual charter schools. More than 200,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, and more than 30 percent of the country’s 16 million high school students have been enrolled in at least one online course.
The American report, entitled “Online K-12 Schooling in the U.S.: Uncertain Private Ventures in Need of Public Regulation” and released by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, does identify some legitimate concerns that virtual schools are too often subject to minimal oversight and the lack of much research showing that cyber education is an acceptable full-time replacement for traditional classrooms.
It’s quite legitimate to raise questions about the quality of the whole school online programs, but that’s not the issue up here in Canada. We are still only at the experimentation stage and almost all of our programming consists of one or two elective online courses.
We are, simply put, being left behind when it comes to tapping into the potential of online learning, preferably “blended” with or integrated into traditional school programs.
Paul, your initial estimate of 50,000 was way to low; it is much closer to 200,000 now or about 5% of the K-12 population.
I’d also disagree with the statement:
“We are still only at the experimentation stage and almost all of our programming consists of one or two elective online courses.”
Many of the opportunities that are available are much more substantial than that. I’d also argue that with almost two decades worth of experience under our belts in this venue (and longer if you assume that the lessons from telematics and other forms of K-12 distance education are somewhat applicable), we are well past the experimentation stage.
I stand corrected on the numbers of Canadian students enrolled in K-12 online education.
If the figure is as high as 200,000 in 2010-11, then the previous estimates in the iNACOL sub-reports must have been way off the mark. I did notice, however, that the various Canadian jurisdictions seem to use different yardsticks to measure online learning. Hopefully, the new iNACOL definitions will help to provide a more common set of terms allowing for more accurate assessments of online penetration.
Your frame of reference is Newfoundland, which is the recognized leader in online learning. I totally agree that Dr. Dennis Mulcahy and his MUN team deserve credit for pushing the envelope. Having said that, my research in Nova Scotia and Ontario simply does not support your rosy assessments. In Ontario, the whole system is so fragmented and uncoordinated that it has no cost controls and falls far short of being exemplary. You should also pay much more attention to the Ontario Virtual High School and its success outside the system. It’s the potential lighthouse program for that province. Consider this: True ground-breaking initiatives tend to come from outside the system, particularly in Ontario.
The notion that the Nova Scotia Teachers Union is spearheading online learning is hard to swallow to those of us closer to the ground in this province. Do not be fooled by that “21st Century Skills” consortium because they do not ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to liberating the public schools from the strict regulatory regime thwarting genuine virtual schools and school-based initiatives. In a shrinking NS system, the NSTU is focused on protecting jobs and online learning is viewed with real trepidation. Many schools remain in “locked-down” mode and cost constraint is a convenient excuse. Most of the school computers are cast-offs and cannot meet the growing demands for access, graphics, or connectivity. Virtual schools are seen as the devil incarnate or a Trojan Horse for privatization. Putting your faith in the IT gatekeepers in Nova Scotia is unwise because they have such a stake in the system of their own creation – a centralized, managed, and rationed system of online learning.
You are difficult to fathom because you do not seem to recognize who your real allies are in unfreezing the bureaucratically-driven provincial school systems.
Paul, on the estimates. The first to provide any estimate was the Canadian Teachers Federation in 2000, who estimated there were approximately 25,000 K-12 students enrolled in one or more distance education courses .If you read through each of the reports you’ll note that I don’t make any estimation in the 2008 and 2009 report – simply because I wasn’t able to get reasonable numbers from all of the provinces. However, if you were to add up what I did know at the time there were ~87,000 in 2008 (based on numbers from NL, NB, QC, BC, and YK) and ~145,000 in 2009 (based on numbers from everyone except ON and NV). The 2010 report came right out and indicated that I estimated there to be 150,000 and 175,000 students involved in K-12 distance education in Canada. Similarly the 2011 report indicated that based on the numbers I was able to collect, there were 207,096 students engaged in K-12 distance education. So I have no clue where your 50,000 number comes from.
In terms of Newfoundland, Dennis Mulcahy hasn’t published a lot in this area. In fact, he probably only has six pieces on this aspect of rural education (four of which I’ve co-authored with him). Ken Stevens and Elizabeth Murphy are the leaders in this area at Memorial, although due to the output from the CURA project that they received folks like Dale Kirby, Jean Brown, Tim Seifert, Bob Crocker, Dennis Sharpe, Dave Philpott, and Trudi Johnson would all be included in that list of published K-12 distance education researchers.
Finally, I didn’t say that the NSTU was “spearheading online learning”. I included the NSTU contract in a list of examples where teachers unions have recognized that distance education is a fact of life within the K-12 education system and wanted to ensure that the workload and preparation for those involved in distance education was equivalent to those in the classroom. I think we’d both agree that most Faculties of Education don’t prepare K-12 teachers to teach at a distance, so part of the NSTU contract ensures that these teachers receive the necessary preparation and continued professional development. I think we’d both agree that teaching online requires more time per student than teaching in the classroom (e.g., the CDLI caps their teachers at approximately 80% of a classroom teachers load or most districts participating in the e-Learning Ontario program cap their class size at 25 while their face-to-face courses often have 30+ students), so the NSTU contract also deals with issues of workload and appropriate levels of support for the student at the school level. Please don’t twist my words to allow for your brand of American-style union bashing.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with a centrally controlled system – particularly in a small province like Nova Scotia. That kind of model is working quite well both in Newfoundland and Labrador and in New Brunswick.
What would be useful would be to have evidence from quality studies of the impact of online work on student learning. Currently, in my understanding, the primary push for online courses (I have designed one ) is monetary.
There is also some evidence in the international distance ed field that it may be useful for delivering some basic information that does not need detailed explanation or interpretation as well as a convenient means to involve isolated communities.
So we should encourage but watch carefully.
An historic example was the classrooms without walls movement in the late 1960-early 1970s.
The arguments for these schools quickly became financial and not pedagogical. Staff were not taught how to work in such environments (neither were their students). And a result, open classrooms are gone.
The SQE folks showed a brilliant YOUTUBE video from the TED talks by Malcolm Gladwell.
I am very sympathetic to tech and worked in it since the early 1980s in Toronto, BUT . . .
Watch the video, folks.
The Khan Academy initiative is interesting but beware of magic bullets.
Millions of students are doing one course online because hundreds of boards are forcing students to take one course online under pressure from the tech industry and the tech lobby.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/16/news/economy/teachers_unions_threat.fortune/
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_8_42/ai_n56450704/
There is a videon just can’t find it right now. Teachers read and listen to Terry Moe and then say “no way”.
Of course teachers have been totally replaced first by rado, then by television, then by computers, then by the internet and now by Khan Academy, LOL.
http://hispanicpundit.com/2011/08/26/a-primer-on-teachers-unions-and-education-reform/
[…] Online Learning: What's Thwarting Progress and Student Access … Educational futurists may trumpet the “21st Century Skills,” but the regulatory system conspires against any and all initiatives that challenge the status quo, based upon regulations that determine when, how, and where teaching and learning take … Source: educhatter.wordpress.com […]
When a guy in the corporate reform movement like Terry Moe, buddy of John Chubb, declares for the reform movement essentially ” Technology will work far better than vouchers at destroying the teachers’ unions and getting rid of 1000’s of teachers only keeping a few master teachers on videos and ed assistants for the classes”, what do you expect teachers and teachers unions to do? Duh.
Paul, as the author of the annual State of the Nation: K-12 Online Learning in Canada reports, I have to be honest and say that your conclusions that unions are resistant of providing online learning opportunities for our K-12 students is nothing more than the same kind of right-wing union-bashing that we see south of the border. Canadian unions were initially cautious about online learning, as they attempted to figure out what exactly this new model of delivery actually was. As a union, they are obviously concerned about what these means for their members and ensuring that their members who teach online have an equivalent workload to those teaching in the face-to-face environment (which is actually what the NSTU agreement is all about).
This is one example of how the US situation does NOT translate into the Canadian scene, even if Moe and Chubb were more than marginal figures, unless one believes in global conspiracy theories.
Sorry, not my gig.
On the other hand, we have a history of “latest magic bullet” before.
How do we avoid the scylla of faddism
or the charybdis of cynicism?
By using the killer APP of the 21st or any century; namely,
qualified, competent, and supported teachers with school and board admin to match and informed parents willing to help and suggest.
by using the killer APP of the 21st or any century; namely, qualified, competent, and supportive teachers with school and board admin to match and informed parents willing to help and suggest.
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could someone please translate?
Steven, I think what John Myers is saying is that the real solution lies in qualified, competent teachers who are supported by qualified and competent school administration and district/board administration. And that informed parents who are willing to roll up their sleeves and become part of the process (as opposed to simply taking little Johnny’s or Jill’s word for everything and blaming the teacher for their child’s failure).
Can’t say I disagree with the man!
As I have said before, teachers have already historically been totally replaced by radio, by TV, by video, by computer, by the internet, ….
Does nobody read history?
that makes you a label Doug.
http://educationnext.org/edblog/
Teachers do not want a “Screen Actor’s Guild” type of union. You can see how the tech pushers (technology companies by and large) who stand to reap mega profits from a tech takeover in education (and health, E-Health anyone) are frustrated. Teacher, ALL teachers, abhor a “star system” where a few become master teachers and the rest become the equivalent of ed assistants. That model has existed for decades, super teachers doing lessons on video tape) the others follow up. Nobody needs U-tube to make it happen. It has flopped.
Bill Gates is just dying to get all standardized testing done and evaluated by computer and gets angry when educators point out that only multiple choice, the worst form of education, works well on computers and we have had scan-tron for years to accomplish this task.
It’s called Youtube, just FYI. Considering that the IPad is now one of the biggest gifts for babies this Xmas, I think online learning is here to stay. There will always be teachers in classrooms too. It just makes the whole educational experience better and takes it to a higher level more quickly. And your point about the social aspect of school and the sports and the clubs is a good one, kids need those.
I think everybody knows that:
a) there will be more on-line education in the future.
b) There will be teachers in schools for many years to come.
The proper balance is the debate. There is no need to hothouse or speed this up. It will evolve naturally. With education technology, the faster you move the more frequent and expensive are your mistakes.
Social learning with Facebook and Twitter also remains extremely rare across Canada, as is the use of social media software such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, and virtual worlds. Few traditional classroom teachers use social networking unless they are communicating with their own professional colleagues.
Your data??????????
I didn’t think so. A link to your own article does not constitute data.
Both those statements are simply false.
Wikis have been in common use for years.
Some schools require all teachers to have a classroom blog.
Social networking (such as “friending” students on Facebook) is regulated by some common sense and professional practice to prevent abuse, and this restriction is supported by most parents and staff. Nevertheless, at the high school level, students and staff can and do create Facebook “group” pages about an issue or a classroom area of study. These provide opportunities to share discussion, photos, videos, links and much more. Note that the students need to be 13 or older.
Now, podcasts and other applications are frequently out of reach of low-SES schools. The lack of availability of technology even for students whose IEP specifies it must be used means there is very little available on a regular basis to students. THIS, not some union conspiracy, explains why Canadian students have less involvement in many kinds of online ventures, including virtual learning programs.
The U.S. has a penetration of technology in the classroom that is ten to twenty times greater than ours, funded in large part by private donations and corporate sponsors. We do without those income sources. Nevertheless, you will find all these bells and whistles in wealthy schools. A colleague (not in TDSB) whose school reported at a school council meeting that they needed another computer lab had a parent reach into her bag and immediately whip out a chequebook and write a cheque for fifty thousand dollars.
Not happening at Jane-Finch.
I find it wryly amusing that “reformers” often bewail the lack of A,B or C in the schools, but they have never costed the things they claim are so important nor developed any plan to pay for them.
LACK OF ACCESS is why many Canadian students do not now, and will not in the near future, be participating in the glories of internet-based learning. Staff do, however, go to great lengths to make the best possible use of the technology we do have, and introduce students to useful learning tools and communications media.
As for the Khan Academy videos, they are another tool with potential to help students. Are they some revolutionary new development? No. They are not interactive. Students learn through interaction, not passive viewing. Exchange and discourse are needed, and the Khan videos do not provide that. They could of course do so in a classroom setting where the teacher stops the video segment and the class can discuss the procedure.
One-way internet communication is basically the same as the old laserdiscs of the 1980’s or TV or film presentations. Good resources, but no replacement for live instruction.
Great catch TDSB! Well written and on the money!
Because most education, 95% roughly in Canada takes place in public schools, equity is a paramount concern. “The gap” in achievement is one of a handfull of critical issues. The ‘digital divide” is a major part of this issue. Public schools then naturally take a position ‘close to, but not exactly’ nobody can move ahead with this until everyone can move ahead with this.
George Abbott Minister in BC is being pummelled because he wants innovative cell phone and ipad friendly classrooms in BC public schools. Parents and BCTF are saying “I guess you will be supplying the phones and ipads then George?” Ooops.
The AIMS report has come out, with the rankings of the individual high schools for the Atlantic provinces. Take note concerning Newfoundland and Labrador, and the top 50 schools, and the relationship between long distanced education, schools fully connected with all the bells and whistles, and access to on-line learning via through many portals on the web, in-house as well as hand held devices. What Paul describes for Nova Scotia, it sure sounds bleak for student’s learning, and especially for Nova Scotia’s rural students.
http://www.aims.ca/en/home/reportcards/ACHSRC/RC9.aspx?mid=52
The top 50 high schools in NL, 80 percent are rural schools. Rural schools that share one characteristic, which is access to technology, schools fully connected, and the long distance education, as well as on-lined tutoring, and there is free use of all sorts of technology in our rural schools, including the day to day operations of a school, where the heating of a school is controlled by a central office 400 ks away. Communication takes place via through the Internet, for teachers and principals, and for students the held held devices rule their kingdom, and all the apps that come with it. Kids no longer carry dictionaries, when there is a dictionary app handy, at no increase cost to the monthly cell phone bill. The local high school, that my youngest attends is in the top 25 schools, and is the top school in the region that has the best technology and well-equipped school to take advantage of 21st century technology and incorporate it in the classroom.
Online schooling is a way of life here in NL, and one of the reasons why the the first top 5 high schools in NL are rural schools. Rural students now have access to courses, the core subjects that once upon a time, a student would have to wait, for a demand or a qualified teacher to teach the courses. As well as independent courses online, that are not core subjects, but are part of the qualifications for a grade 12 diploma. The online core subjects are done at the school site, and each student has ear phones and a mike, and the technology that will tell the long distance teacher who is away from their desks within seconds. The students also have access to the supplementary material of the core subjects, studying material anywhere and at anytime. For independent courses online, have open access anywhere, anytime, and is done usually outside school time. Courses taken online, are when there is low demand for the course, and sometimes there is no qualified teacher at the school.
It has open up the world for rural students in NL, and access to courses that many rural students would not have access in the past. I also believe it is the reason why rural schools in NL, are beating the urban high schools hands down, in not only receiving higher grades in the public exams, but on a whole, graduating with higher averages than their urban counterparts. Rural schools may not have fancy gyms, all kinds of sports and school club activities, and a full slate of teachers, but thanks to government policies over the last decade, technology, high speed access, the bells and whistles, and a full slate of on-line courses, rural schools in NL are beating their urban counterparts hands down, when it comes to achievement in the core subjects.
As for the teachers in the local high school, some are traditional teachers, others take full advantage of the digital technology. to allow a deep understanding to happen, especially with the how-tos in chemistry, biology, physics, and now grammar. My youngest came home informing me, of the new site that the teacher was urging the students to used, the same site that my youngest spent 10 to 15 minutes daily, on this pass summer for grammar lessons.
No one is forcing students to take one online course in NL, and no one is forcing teachers to used technology. The infrastructure was built, and the users came and partake. Mind you, it was built without the big guys, long distance courses without the big guys, and digital technology became a solution to a province that is dealing with vast geographic landscapes, and a scattered population. Very popular with one and all, and I can see virtual schools being opened up in NL by the education ministry in another 10 years or so.
Ya like AIMS is a neutral source like the Fraser Institute, Pioneer Society and CD Howe. LOL.
😉
Well…
Who actually qualifies as a “neutral source” on just about any issue being raised around here? 😀
The only truly balanced sources in Canada are the Toronto Star and the CBC.
;-D
now there`s a funny-the Star prints what the schools what them to print-balanced-more like unbalanced.
All that data from AIMS, comes from the horse’ mouths – the high schools who are participating.
In BC – “But some schools are way ahead of the curve. By using technology, giving students the opportunity to choose what they want to study, or even just allowing teachers to deviate from the curricula norm, these schools have already taken education to the next level and waiting for the ministry to catch up.”
http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/11/15/Schools-Of-The-Future/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=151111
“”The way we access and interact with information is different. If you look around you, you don’t see students standing by the bookshelves and accessing books, they’re all on computers, and that’s what they tend to gravitate towards. It’s up-to-date, latest information, whereas some of these books are older than I am.”
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‘”We spent time going through the nuts and bolts of grammar, but that’s really boring, and that’s where [the iPad] comes in, that will let them use their tactile senses, will let them use searches in the classroom just to kind of enhance their learning,” says Francom.
“They’re working, they have control of their education, they have control of their learning, and it’s a lot more engaging for them.”
It’s not just for English, either. There are iPad apps for science, math, and social studies — the basic essentials of a good education according to the ministry of education.
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“But the students at John Oliver are not so lucky. Unlike previous years where Digital Immersion students would lease the laptops from the school, kids were expected to buy them this year at a heavily subsidized price of $1,000.
“We tried to supplement it through the fundraising initiatives that they put forward. So although they put $1,000 forward for it, it usually comes out paying about $600 for it by the time all the fundraising comes round and we give it back to the kids,” explains principal Gino Bondi.
The iPad Literacy class got their technology at a steal through a two-for-one deal from Apple, paying $250 per device, and the transformation from a library into a Learning Commons was made possible by donations from John Oliver alumni, money from Parent Advisory Council casino nights, vending machine money, and GST rebates, all at a cost of about $115,000. ”
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“Whatever the plan for the future of B.C.’s education system, districts not pleased with second-hand technology from government and corporations will need to foster creativity not only in their students, but in their school trustees who will be forced to think outside the box to find the funds to supply schools with the tools students need to be prepared for the 21st century workforce.”
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Wonder what is wrong with the purchasing department of the education ministry and boards? Perhaps they should look at NL, and their deals when looking for hardware. There is even a floating science lab out in the North Atlantic and within a few years, senior high school students will have the opportunity to take a few classes on the floating lab. Right now reserve for the North Atlantic college students, but I bet the high schools close by, are enjoying it as well. As for i-pads, not on the NL’s menu, but I bet the purchasing department, could get i-pads a lot cheaper than a thousand dollars. Every teacher has a lap top, and is replace on a regular basis, and what is wrong with other provinces, that cannot provide for their teachers? Once upon a time, equipment was refurbished, but not anymore, and all refurbish desktops and laptops are now sold to the public of low-income. It is not so much the boards, but an active group of people at all levels throughout the government, and the different departments working together to ensure schools are fully equipped, with 21st century technology. Now my only complaint, not enough being done for the SE children and in particular the software end, to match the vast learning differences that cross the span in this group. As well as providing reading material in the various e-formats, including audio, with the devices. Would be very nice, as it has been shown to improve fluency in reading, and vocabulary. At the moment, student owned devices are allowed to be used at the school, but the problem is the reading material in the various e-formats. Or the lack of it. .
Would we tolerate a situation where rich kids bought their own new textbooks and poor kids were supplied with used books and they had to share?
Laptops ipads and smart phones are the new textbooks. If the government decides that it want to use them, they must supply them to all kids. It could actually be cheaper. Gov’t buys in bulk and gets super discount.
Many science text are $100 a pop.
The progressives are quite aware that “virtual schools” are a Trojan Horse for privatization through private virtual schools.
http://www.thenation.com/article/164651/how-online-learning-companies-bought-americas-schools
Gee I wonder why they resist?
Looks to be mostly a war between lobbyists on the corporate side and lobbyists fighting to keep the status quo. Are well financed corporate lobbyists any more objectionable than well financed union lobbyists? They’re both pushing their own agendas.
As always kids are the victims when adults fight.
I think you’ve got your answer John L……next poster confirms it.
Exactly like the lobbyists fighting against healthy food in American school lunch programs because they sell frozen pizza and French Fries.
All I care about is that people “consider” the fact that the push for tech has a corporate demand behind it for government sales and a political demand behind it tied to privatization.
No wonder progressives fight back.
Education Reform in action:
Twenty years of reform efforts and programs targeting low-income families in Chicago Public Schools has only widened the performance gap between white and African-American students, The Chicago Tribune reports. Across the city and spanning three eras of CPS leadership, black students have lost ground to their white, Latino, and Asian classmates, according to a new analysis by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. This growing deficit surprised researchers, considering strides African-American students have made nationally over the same period. When Mayor Richard Daley took control of the school system in 1995, it triggered a wave of reforms aimed at improving student proficiency in the worst-performing schools. Then-schools chief Paul Vallas set minimum achievement standards on tests, held back students who failed to perform, and placed schools on probation. Later, then-school CEO Arne Duncan launched reading initiatives in high-poverty neighborhoods, implemented literacy screening tests in early grades, and closed dozens of underperforming schools in predominantly poor black and Latino communities. Yet only one in two African-American students graduates from high school in Chicago. “It has certainly been shocking to us to discover there has been progress in some areas, but without equity progress shared equally among all the students,” said Marisa de la Torre, a researcher on the report.
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Then-schools chief Paul Vallas set minimum achievement standards on tests, held back students who failed to perform, and placed schools on probation. Later, then-school CEO Arne Duncan launched reading initiatives in high-poverty neighborhoods, implemented literacy screening tests in early grades, and closed dozens of underperforming schools in predominantly poor black and Latino communities
Shades of Steven Brill — notice the complete absence of discussion of curricula or instruction in these “reforms.” Paul Vallas is another of those Whole Language nazis (like Rhee, Klein, that Rhode Island supt.) so beloved of “reformers.”
You want a sure way to hold back the children of African descent? Force them to learn to “read” without a strong phonologically-based approach. High failure rates are as assured as sunset in the West. NICHD research found their samples of white, Asian, Hispanic and Black children matched on IQ and RAN (rapid automatic naming), but Black students showed a significantly greater need for explicit phonologically-based reading instruction or they were at high risk for reading failure.
It’s almost enough to make one wonder if there isn’t a plot to keep the black kids down. However, I never vote for conspiracy until I have ruled out (a) ignorance and/or (b) stupidity.
A combination of the two is probably sufficient to explain the phenomenon.
Check out the work of black U.S. educator Lisa Delpit, especially her seminal book, Other People’s Children
TDSB has hit the nail on the head.Illiteracy due to lack of research based phonological systematic teaching is a sure way to produce failure.You can`t get people to make sure research is honoured,have you ever..?Linda Siegel at UBC HAS CALLED IT A FORM OF CHILD ABUSE.
The article in the Globe today scared me,re abotiginal education,through a desire to succeed,they`ll find ways to succeed and the right instruction that opens the world of literacy for their children,certainly more white men ruling over their children won`t enhance their success,same as afrocentric..they want it because of the lack of success these people have offered their children and the deafening lack of concern for results.
Don`t get me started.
As John L has so astutely observed,when the elephants fight,the grass gets trampled.
The digital divide is an interesting factor in the race to centralize.
http://www.wiredacademic.com/2011/09/the-economist-magazine-visits-the-khan-academy-in-action/
Preventing on line learning is another way of preventing opportunities for rural communities. It enables the centrists to maintain that the “rural community” is the problem – not the management of the system.
It maintains de-skilling and out-migration.
As usual, exceptional teachers with a solid perspective on adapting to the needs of students, need to work around the protective shield of the progressive system.
I agree with you Steven.
There is a process in Canada called “urbanization” and “rural depopulation.” I is an organic free market process. There are a few solutions.
1) Boarding school Mon-Fri.
2) Very long bus rides
3) Keeping tiny schools open with a community use philosophy
4) Home schooling
5) Technology with one central “rural teaching school” using the internet, DVDs, whatever with just a local teaching assistant.
6) Various combinations of the above.
Frankly the philosophy I supported on the Toronto board for very small schools was we asked the parents if they wanted to keep it open. If necessary we had a vote but with an open boundary policy, they made their own choices.
The fact is that eventually decisions need to be made, not just complaints.
Oh Doug, I don’t know whether to laugh at your illusions of the rural/urban divide, or get angry at your audacity of your comments on an organic free market process. Than to go on to suggest Finland, a homogeneous population for the most part, advocating once again their education model as the model to copy. Sorry, the world’s technology has far advance and made the old ways of doing things redundant as well as leaps in knowledge and advancements in the world of learning, to rendered the old ways of an education system model and structure to its knees, including Finland’s system.
It will happen, and in another 5 years or so, the newly minted teachers will be the advocates for change, calling for an overhaul of the education system, with or without the union. The newly trained teachers in about 5 years from now, will be the first ones who have been throughly douse and raised in a world from youngsters in the new technology age and knowledge. I even suspect, teachers faculties will have a tiger on their hands, when teacher students are questioning the wisdom of the pedagogy, based on their own experiences going through an education system, that is loath to change.
“Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction” an article of what the future may be like for teachers.
Click to access 20111116_TeachersintheAgeofDigitalInstruction.pdf
“Something’s got to give: Necessary shifts in public policy. Employing digital technology to transform the teaching profession in ways that benefit students holds enormous promise. That promise will likely go unrealized, however, without significant changes in public policies and management systems, in the allocation of funds, in the technology infrastructure, and, perhaps most importantly, in the level of will and demand for better student outcomes. Here we outline a vision for how these changes can be realized.”
Just like the other professions, the newly-minted are leading the charge. New doctors, using the i-pad as their number one tool for taking care of their patients, to science and technology students of post-secondary students, being handed i-pads as their main tools to study and learn. Whole new world, where the average citizen using the correct tools, can quickly determined if the water quality is the the same as what is in the official government records. Or at the very least, determined the amount of spin that governments like to used. Yes spin like some used for the future of rural schools. Take Doug’s example, spinning it with organic free market processes, and expecting teachers to remain passive and inert in a system, surrounded by the educrats and law suits of parents.
The use of technology in our schools, is very much dependent on those who work within the education system, which for the most part the system is loath to change their practices to treat the decaying heart of the education system. For the most part, window dressing is the solutions of the public education system, and it really shows in technology. The inefficient use, inappropriate uses of technology, and not using the technology to its full advantage to reach the full potential of students.
Notwithstanding the obvious presence of urbanization Doug, you’re “organic free market process” is more of a third space really – located between the established urban presence, and the regional diversity of Canada, or in my case Nova Scotia.
This region ie “the IT region” has very much contributed to the way we identify ourselves as a global community through a free market reality.
Education is now mobile and negotiable in a different way. The very factors which once contributed to the erosion of rural communities “the going down the road” syndrome, for education as well as jobs, can be alleviated by not over regulating the use of IT or virtual education in the public system. Young people may remain in their community longer for starters by completing grade 12.
The political struggles and the idiology that goes with it when it comes to rural communities seem to usually be a different matter.
It’s not a silver bullet but it is and will make a difference.
Fabulous new book Finnish Lessons taking the education community by storm, Tells how Finland became the world’s best education nation in 30 years by doing the exact opposite of the Corporate Education Reform Movement.
I give Doug’s summary of Finnish Lessons a D but do recommend the book — it’s a thoughtful and comprehensive look (probably much more than most people want to know) at how the Finns set goals, worked incrementally over multiple decades to build the type of school system that would best meet their needs, and how they borrowed ideas from others but shaped them to their own ends. The talking points usually brought up about Finland are only part of the story.
I found it a valuable book with much of substance to offer Canadian education aficianados. I heard Pasi Sahlberg speak a few weeks ago, and while his talk was general he did make some very insightful points about special education, and what the Finns do in that area is one from which we could stand to learn a great deal. For starters, no labeling, no waiting lists, and a proactive, preventive model where students struggling with learning (for any reason) are immediately supported by highly trained staff. In a full inclusion setting, yet.
Technology at the elementary level did not seem to play a huge role. Elementary students have 25 lessons a week for all subjects combined.
Finland has more diversity (and it is increasing) than some realize. They have a large and growing Somali refugee population, for example. Some schools have up to 25% new immigrant students. Not on a par with Toronto, but less homogeneous than the popular image would suggest.
The book has depth and goes into a number of important issues in detail. It is worth study by any serious student of public education, whatever his ideological leanings.
Guess what, the teachers we have today are advocates for technology and you would not recognize an Ontario classroom with white boards, youtube presentations, power point, internet research. There is an entire chaper on why Finland a small country, is exactly the same size as many American states and Canadian provinces that actually control education so the comparison is exact or so say many of the world’s experts because the book is covered with endorsments of education experts from around the world who have been flooding into Finland for the last ten years. Funny the OECD (the western world’s #1 business thinktank) says this is the model but Nancy says no so I guess it is no, LOL.
Corporate reform has failed miserably everywhere it has been tried and its own people like Rick Hess are starting to say “what is wrong with reform”. The thing that is wrong with reform is that its basic philosophy is wrong from the very start.
Reform says TFA no need for special training Finland says MA teachers only, the teacher is the key. I could go on and on. The fact is, nobody is flocking to Chicago where charter schools and closing schools and firing teachers is the mantra because there has been zero progress, zero as it became a reform playground. Same with NYC under Bloomberg. Reform on steroids and they are going backwards in test scores.
The reformers need to lift their head out of the trench and look around. Get out of the ideological blinkers and see reform is failing and anti-reform i moving ahead gangbusters.
BS Doug. Where are the teachers unions and the other arms of education pushing technology, advocating for technology change outside of the public education system, including advocating to promote internet access availability and inexpensive rates. No too busy, pushing for copyright legislation that works in their best favourite, and to profit by it. Where are the teachers unions and other parts of the education system, pushing within, for software that would greatly benefit the students of weaknesses of the 3 Rs? No, too busy fighting with the powers to be, that a certified teacher, along with the 9 other support staff needed to take care of the one student and his learning weaknesses. If not that, too busy watering down the technology, to reflect the dogma and ideology of their pedagogy, and as a result the effectiveness of the technology is lost. Too busy debating on the technology, on the lines of racial equality, gender, and social justice, rather than the effectiveness of the technology to improve learning for all student. Too busy, making up the rules and regulations that hinders technology in the school, and way too busy on making up rules such as no hard balls at a school in Toronto or no wireless at a school. Way too BUSY being the nanny state upon their students, and not enough focus on what are the best ways to increase and improve learning. And finally way too busy, in keeping technology and the data that is streaming out, that tells a very pretty and ugly stories of final outcomes that reflects the lousy practices of the education system, and only serves the best interests of those who work within the system.
Ineffective practices is the bread and butter of the teachers’ unions and their contracts. Effective practices promotes efficient uses of the resources and timely intervention for students, as well as making efficient use of everybody’s time, and not just the selected group or groups. More importantly, far less expenditures being wasted, on time wasted, to cater to the many agendas of the education system. Finland, and no other country can be compared, and for that matter any province in Canada when it comes to anything, except in very generalist terms. Ontario, the have-not province at the moment, who is bringing us the latest in safety in bubble-wrapped students and racial diversity of their teachers.. Than have the gall to pushed their agendas onto other provinces. Rich, and ironic, an education system where the schools are not at all equal in anything, except in inequities cause by the many agendas of the public education system.
All is at fault, and not just the outside reformers, for promoting their agendas and profiteering off the fault lines of the education system, to benefit their interests and not the best interests of the students. That will never be on the agenda, if the unions have their way, or any other special interest groups. One just has to look at the lousy job the public education system is doing with the LD students. Four percent manages to get to post-secondary, and the credit goes to the parents and not the education system, who is loath to remediate these students on the 3 Rs, with or without technology.
And way too busy, in admiring themselves in the mirror, to take notice of the rest of society and their students needs that do not reflect the public education system needs. And then there is some within the education system, that are way too busy, ensuring their blinders are attached to their heads, so they can ignore the realities and look at all things in the abstract. The way their wish it to be, and not the way it is – the reality.
I really don’t think you know what you are talking about. You are all over the map.
Why the poor do badly in school and what can be done about it. Try just the exec summary and then the whole paper if you are interested. I have had many requests after my latest blast.
We know the poor do badly in school but why?
Click to access PB-Berliner-NON-SCHOOL.pdf
http://www.thelittleeducationreport.com/index.html
Where are the teachers unions and the other arms of education pushing technology, advocating for technology change outside of the public education system, including advocating to promote internet access availability and inexpensive rates. No too busy, pushing for copyright legislation that works in their best favourite, and to profit by it. Where are the teachers unions and other parts of the education system, pushing within, for software that would greatly benefit the students of weaknesses of the 3 Rs?
I ‘ll tell you where they are — Ontario. Most, maybe ALL, the licensed software provided to students and teachers by the boards and the Ministry (and many of these programs are precisely targeted at students who struggle with basic skills, as well as students who benefit from enrichment and creative challenge) are licensed due to the efforts of — wait for it — TEACHERS!! Imagine that! Teachers who actually field test programs, try out software (often at their own expense), keep data, run supervised trials, submit proposals for grants, give up evenings and weekends to work with students outside of instructional time to demonstrate the value of the software or IT program, make depositions to the board, lobby trustees and MPPs, and on. And on. And on.
It’s not at all in the purview of the teachers unions to advocate for specific programs for students, but certainly teachers both individually and collectively DO do this.
So sorry you have such awful teachers in NL, apparently. There is a great deal of interest from within the system here (various levels) in obtaining and getting the most value from effective learning programs and tools for students. The problem remains however the ACCESS to technology is extremely limited. Teachers and administrators both make issues about this on a regular basis. So do parent groups. It’s a serious equity issue.
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/18/dont_believe_the_education_reformers/
If anything, than the interested parties in Ontario is doing a lousy job on persuading the government honchos of the finance departments to improve access. The access to the Internet and technology, as well as the schools being wired for the Internet is of the public education system’s making for not using their political capital to influence government policy.
As for advocating, it is not out in the public, and the public has no way of discerning any points being made, no matter how valid they are, when advocating is done on the QT, rather than in an open and transparent way. Ditto for any programs being field tested, and the long convoluted process it takes to move a product from being field tested to actual use in a school. Throw in the speed of products being approved, developed by teachers and others within the public education system, which is lightening fast, compared to the snail pace on products developed outside of the education system,that take years to be approved.
The public has no way of telling how many teachers work the extra hours, to field test products, seek out grant monies, and the other hours outside the classroom, to ascertain that it is for the benefit of the students. It could very well be, climbing the career education ladder rather than any benefits for the students. Not really a open and transparent process, but a real eye-opener if one wants to follow the money. and how educational products are approved.
As for the equity problem, used as an excuse to keep the status-quo, and maintain the power and the so-called expertise. Or otherwise, no one would be reading about the troubles in bubble-wrapping children and complaints about the work force in education not having enough diversity. One would be reading about the successes in students’ learning, as evidence that the claims being made by the education system,or by the individuals are more or less can be seen as the truth and reality. As it stands now, reality depends on what lens one is viewing from, unless one marches to the tune of the public education system and their vision. And I sometimes wonder about the visions of the public education system, that dances to a solitary drummer that is quite different from the rest of society.
The Canadian public is overwhelmingly in support of the excellent Canadian public education system. Don’t confuse your bitter views with the rest of the public.
This is Alberta ? Wow.
http://www.peopleforeducation.ca/pfe-news/edmonton-public-school-board-will-ask-province-to-scrap-grade-3-achievement-tests/
http://asiasociety.org/education/learning-world/what-accounts-finlands-high-student-achievement-rate
Equal education access among students is not a claim NS can make let alone Canada’s public education system.
Boarding schools, very long bus rides and home schooling won’t cut it Doug.
Back to the drawing board.
Most parents who are very much involved in their children’s learning at home do so because of the unequal opportunities evident in the public system.
Resistance to online learning means lack of equal access to tech.
Larger bureauracies mean cutbacks in the classroom; consolidation and centralization mean larger schools and classes -which means lack of immediate feedback.
Which means poorer outcomes.
The future elimination of testing will bring into question student outcomes and subsequetly, ever suspicious assessments for parents to comprehend.
Yup, Freidman is correct – parents do need to be better. However, he may not agree with the real reasons for it.
Sure,I agree,good article.
Poor kids,children who`s parents don`t speak English and kids with a genetic condition called reading disability are not able to do better with the books mom and dad read to them which we know is the most important and effective school preparation condition…you know Doug that we all agree that the average kid is coping and graduating,we`re talking about the kids who don`t make it.
I haven`t posted here on this topic as I don`t know much about it…
The reason the dropouts don’t graduate is poverty. One need to only look at the socio-economics of the dropouts themselves.
When I was on the TBE we kept very detailed data on who went where. In those days HS was advanced (university oriented) general (skilled trades oriented) and basic (unskilled oriented). We had a graph with Rosedal and Forest Hill PSs on one end and Park and Regent Park on the other. Every PS was arranged from one end affluent to the other end poor. On the affluent end 100% of the kids registered in advanced. This declined with SES until we hit the poor end where 60% went into basic. Everyone knew that Basic was essentially a 2 year holding tank until the kids turned 16 and dropped out.
The high schools in the poor neighbourhoods had huge grade 9-10 sections and tiny little 11-12 sections because so many dropped out. The HSs in the affluent areas had big 9-10 sections but also the 11-12 section was almost as big.
Conclusion? In a city where maybe 20% of the kids were poor, about 80% of the dropouts were poor.
Steven
Equal education access among students is not a claim NS can make let alone Canada’s public education system.
Boarding schools, very long bus rides and home schooling won’t cut it Doug.
Back to the drawing board.
Easy to say NO to everything Steven. What do you say YES to? How small do you expect schools to get before the government or the parents want them closed? You expect a full slate of programs taught by specialized teachers for a school of 50 kids? Good luck with that.
I have seen the closures of schools in Northern Ontario because there were 50 kids and six teachers who simply could not deliver the req’d program.
You cannot expect to live in a very low density community and have all of the emenities of a large community. How is the police, ambulance and fire responce times? How far is the library?
You need to say what you want not just what you don’t want and have people judge whether you are being reasonable or ridiculous.
Doug, you need to look more closely at the numbers. 110 -120 for an elmentary school which functioned for 116 years seems sustainable; or in some cases schools where numbers are 275 for junior/senior combined and sustainable. In some cases enrolement is even increasing.
Consolidation is a race – not an effective logic. It only teaches students to leave.
How far is the library? Too ludicrous to answer.
Your argument about delivering programming may have been credible 15 years ago, but it belies the purpose of IT and online learning accessability today.
Thank-you Steven!! Makes too much sense for anyone looking ahead and not backward…you know like today’s students and their parents.
A feature essay in The Nation (November 16, 2012) raises fears that “Online Learning Companies” are trying to “buy” America’s public schools. It’s an alarmist article, but it does document how fast online learning has spread from one state to another across the United States over the past year.
The Florida Virtual Schools initiative is identified as the critical breakthrough. A brand new education law has expanded the Florida Virtual School to grades K-5, authorized the spending of public funds on new for-profit virtual schools and created a requirement that all high school students take at least one online course before graduation.
“I’ve never seen it like this in ten years,” Ron Packard, CEO of virtual education powerhouse K12 Inc., remarked in February 2011. “It’s almost like someone flipped a switch overnight and so many states now are considering either allowing us to open private virtual schools” or lifting the cap on the number of students who can use vouchers to attend K12 Inc.’s schools.
A map accompanying The Nation article shows the location of 17 American states that have embraced online learning. ( It’s marred by a scary title, but the map does show the extent of online learning advances in the U.S.)
For the full article, here’s the link:
http://www.thenation.com/article/164651/how-online-learning-companies-bought-americas-schools
Online learning is spreading, but I wouldn’t describe it as “privatization” and assume that like Communism it’s monolithic and needs to be contained like some 21st century contagion.
There’s a virtual school right here in Ontario expanding into elementary Paul.
The train is coming and whether on-line learning companies tap a previously reluctant public school dinosaurs, or within the public system itself the opportunities are endless.
To add to that Catherine, people in Alberta and British Columbia have been able to enroll their elementary students in distributed learning programs (the term they use for K-12 distance education) for some time now.
Of course it will get bigger, nothing basically wrong with that. The problems are privatization, quality, legitimacy, reliability, inspection etc.
The scams with on-line learning are already surfacing all over America. Carpetbagging entrepreneurs are tempting to get public money for private ventures of a highly questionable nature and Republican governors are falling all over themselves to comply. They will all end up with egg on their faces as these shoddy fly-by-night operations come under greater scrutiny.
The critical matter is that only public virtual schools and public on-line education get public money. Based of polling and elections, Ontarians will want to keep it that way.
“Carpetbagging entrepreneurs are tempting to get public money for private ventures of a highly questionable nature and Republican governors are falling all over themselves to comply. They will all end up with egg on their faces as these shoddy fly-by-night operations come under greater scrutiny.”
Below is K12 Online Leaning, a company that I have watched over the years growing steadily, to one of the biggest on-line learning for K to 12 in the world. As a parent in Canada,I really envy the American parents that has this option for their children, and so very absent in Canada when it comes to on-line learning. Virtual School in Ontario is the only private option, but the pitfall is whether the credits would be accepted in other provinces outside of Ontario. Tried that route for my youngest, and the credits would not be accepted, and for that matter even in other Canadian online learning operated by the public education authorities in BC and Alberta. I could have had the best of both worlds, allowing the time to work on reading and writing weaknesses of my child at home, without being under the mandate of the outcomes for language arts program operated by the public education system. To go online at school for language arts, at the same time the regular language arts class is in session. In the end the outcomes would remain the same, but what has been learned would be quite different, because resources and curriculum would be different. And so what, if my youngest learns a bit about Americans in the process, knowledge is moot, when reading and writing weaknesses are keeping a student away from the knowledge in the first place. After all there is not much sense in increasing the amount of knowledge that a student must learn, if the student does not have the required foundation in the 3 Rs to learned the material with some ease.
http://www.k12.com/
Video of K12 and the student who struggles.
http://www.k12.com/take-a-peek/family-student-spotlights/video-jackson-morris-focus-on-strengths/
“In 1999, we set out to answer a call. It was a call voiced by a growing number of parents whose children’s needs were not being met by traditional education models. Their children were bored by the pace of the traditional classroom, left behind by the pace of the classroom, or just getting lost in the shuffle. While traditional brick and mortar schools work for many children, they restrict many others for a variety of reasons.
At K¹², our mission has remained steadfast: To provide any child access to exceptional curriculum and tools that enable him or her to maximize his or her success in life, regardless of geographic, financial, or demographic circumstance.
We have become a leader in providing individualized, one-to-one learning solutions to students from kindergarten through high school across the country. These solutions have literally changed lives and opened up possibility for many children. Our biggest fans continue to be parents who are seeking to tap into their children’s unique potential and who have seen what can happen when children can work at the right pace and with the tools, approaches, and content that make learning come alive”
http://www.k12.com/about-k12
Far cry from being carpetbag entrepreneurs, and more like supplying a product to meet the needs of students that the public education system no longer meets and serves the students needs. In Canada, the public education systems are unwilling, and not diversified to be able to meet the learning needs of students, and can only offer one-sized-fits-all versions for their students. Worse, one-sized-fits-all versions suits the best interests of the public education system, and as a result to ensure the one-sized-fits-all remains in our Canadian schools, a regulatory regime under the umbrella of legal legislative to ensure compliance and pseudo-acceptance of the one-sized-fits-all model, as well as ensuring that the Canadian public education system remains the so-called experts, over one and all. No one has to wonder why, the top level educrats the majority sends their kids to private schools, rather than the public schools.
By the way Doug, a lot of egg yolk is still on the faces of the educrats in my local area, for making claims based on their so-called expertise, regarding my child. But there is a time coming, and coming soon, when on-line learning will be coming into Canada, the private type of K12 learning infiltrating the public education systems of Canada. taking over the present online learning systems offered by the school boards. Quality of online learning by the public education system, iffy at the very least. Restrictive would be a better word to describe online learning done by the public education system, which always impacts quality of the onlined programs.
What is really a scam, is the public education system that has morphed into providing education based on the best interests of those who work within the system.
The state of Michigan and particularly Detroit Public Schools, have been declared “ground zero” in American education reform. Virtual schools are very much in the news because two different bills are now before the State House dealing with Charter Schools and Cyber Schools.
The Cyber School bill would lift the state’s cap on cyber schools. There are currently just two cyber schools in Michigan, serving 1,400 students. The bill would also allow online programs to receive the same financial allocations per student from the state as brick-and-mortar public schools. State Senator Phil Pavlov, the bill’s sponsor, has said that the bill aims to get Michigan’s educational innovation up to speed.
Different cyber schools use varying models, but they all of those in Michigan exist online, without a physical institution. They appeal to families who live in remote areas, and sometimes employ certified teachers. Advocates say that families are lining up for Michigan’s cyber school options — a reason to increase their offerings. Pavlov told the Kalamazoo Gazette that the new bill would create “a powerful way to deliver learning in the 21st century.”
Public concerns are being raised by the Michigan teachers union about whether online schools are effective. A recent study produced by the union-backed National Education Policy Center found “serious flaws with full-time virtual schools.” For example, only one quarter of schools managed by large cyber-school provider K-12 Inc. are making “Adequate Yearly Progress” under federal standards. Studies elsewhere have also found the quality of cyber schools to be inferior to those of traditional public schools.
For the full story, see the recent Huffington Post story on Michigan education.
What’s the lesson for us here in Canada? Look what happens when education innovation (full-day online schools) gets ahead of quality controls. Simply put: the teachers union weighs in and we get potential chaos.
A final thought: It pays to be a “later adaptor” when it comes to introducing online learning on a broader scale…
If they are lucky, after a while, they can push out the fast-buck shady operators and have quality public and some quality private operators. I believe one of the problems will be the ‘couch potatoe’ student who has already failed a few courses or years is attracted to on-line because he does not have to face being in class with younger kids but some of these are marginal students and therefore will pull the stats down.
One news item, a good one, in how technology could be used in the schools today.
“For many people, touch-screen tablets are just another gadget; another way to check email, another way to surf the Internet. But for others, the devices represent something else entirely; a way to understand and interact with the world in ways never before possible.
“It takes the pain of difference and brings in a cool factor and allows them to be feeling they’re no different than anyone else,” said Lori Fankhanel, whose son Jordan is one of many children taking advantage of ‘assistive technologies’ to overcome learning barriers.”
Read it on Global News: Global Edmonton | Tablet technology provides new options for children with learning disabilities
Not enough of it being done in the schools today, and what the schools do have, no students want to be associated with the devices that really says outloud to the other students, with bright neon lights messaging out, red alert a student who is different. There is nothing cool about the present assistiveout loud technologies, especially for the LD students.
The other news item, popped up in my google alerts, and a international company that his fingers into the public education systems in United States and Canada via through technology, and online learning, by providing the systems as well as digital material for the schools. Providing material that matches the constructivism and discovered approaches and practices of the public education system. I highly doubt that they should be the ones, to be
spreading awareness and building capability in Learning Disabilities
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/23/4075297/tata-interactive-systems-to-host.html#ixzz1eYSBzOXh
Considering the very nature of this global company is, and comprises over 100 operating companies in seven business sectors: communications and information technology, engineering, materials, services, energy, consumer products and chemicals. The group has operations in more than 80 countries across six continents, and its companies export products and services to 85 countries.
I see Allison Redford new Premier of Alberta is killing testing in grade 3 and 6 and looking to Finland for inspiration to get rid of the cult of accountability and replace it with Finnish ‘public assurance’. Wow ALBERTA who knew?
The International Association of K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) has just released two major reports on the State of Online Learning in the world and here in Canada. Dr. Micheal K. Barbour (Assistant Professor, Wayne State University, originally from Newfoundland) is the lead researcher and, in my opinion, produces reports that present a rather rosy picture of the situation.
The November 2011 international report bears close scrutiny because of the scope of the study and the difficulty in trying to analyze online learning in countries like Canada with 13 different authorities (provinces and territories) responsible for education.
In the case of Canada, British Columbia is the chosen example. That is a peculiar decision because that province is totally unrepresentative of the state of online learning in Canada. Indeed, using BC is downright misleading because it paints a tremendously glowing picture of the state of online learning across Canada.
How do I know? Because I was hired by the Canadian Society for Quality Education (SQE) in early 2011 to conduct an independent study of the Sate of Online Learning in Canada, essentially reviewing past INACOL reports and digging deeper into the findings.
My independent research study, for SQE and the Atlas Economic Foundation, “THE SKY HAS LIMITS”:ONLINE LEARNING IN CANADIAN K-12 PUBLIC EDUCATION” (April 28, 2011) reached significantly different conclusions about the state of online learning here in Canada.
Here’s a brief summary of my findings:
“A comprehensive analysis of online learning, drawing upon recent authoritative research studies, provincial websites and reports, and key interviews reveals that the promise of online learning remains largely unfulfilled in K-12 education. In spite of the tremendous advantages afforded by introducing online learning programs, significant barriers stand in the way of its natural growth and expansion. In all of Canada’s provinces and territories, including Alberta, school choice is rationed or channelled, learning conditions are carefully state regulated, and the delivery of education limited by teacher union contracts. Some private sector virtual schools have recently arrived, but no online public charter schools exist, even in Alberta, the only province with Charter School legislation. Distance education and online learning student enrollments are growing only modestly, given the limits imposed by structural impediments, regulatory constraints, and – in some “have not” provinces – by budgetary restraint programs.”
Dr. Barber’s Canadian Online Learning report is even more skewed than the Canadian section of the international study. In his 2009-10 Canadian iNACOL report, Barber cited the NSTU and its contract as as a clear obstacle to online learning, yet his newest report cites the NSTU as being exemplary… How could it be that the NSTU, formerly described as the prime obstacle.. is now hailed for setting a good example?
What’s my point? The iNACOL reports, prepared by Michael Barbour and his colleagues, should not be accepted as the definitive word on the state of online learning in Canada and perhaps in other nations. It’s still an immature field of educational research and one that is too important to be left to the “techies” alone.
The editorial team, along with the iNACOL leadership, rejected this case study as a part of the iNACOL international case study book because it was felt to contain too many factual errors and to be too ideologically slanted.
If you look at the iNACOL international report, you’ll note that we indicate that British Columbia was selected because it represented the most comprehensive approach to K-12 online learning in Canada (not a representative example). Again, a decision made by the editorial team, along with the iNACOL leadership.
I should also note that on these two documents because of the number of authors we made the decision to list them alphabetically, as opposed to attempting to figure out who contributed the most, the second most, and so on. Attributing the contents of a report that has nine authors (and includes responses from officials in 50+ countries), and the contents of a book that has three editors (and includes case studies written by officials in nine different countries), solely to me it given me much more clout that I exerted in either situation.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/11/23/13virtual.h31.html?tkn=ROVFJjCrjJgrg3Zl3L2xpqD8mVdrakGfZ%2FRF&cmp=clp-edweek
If it is a manpower issue Doug, stop retired teachers from double dipping.
“…..that the promise of online learning remains largely unfulfilled in K-12 education. In spite of the tremendous advantages afforded by introducing online learning programs, significant barriers stand in the way of its natural growth and expansion. In all of Canada’s provinces and territories, including Alberta, school choice is rationed or channelled, learning conditions are carefully state regulated, and the delivery of education limited by teacher union contracts. Some private sector virtual schools have recently arrived, but no online public charter schools exist, even in Alberta, the only province with Charter School legislation. Distance education and online learning student enrollments are growing only modestly, given the limits imposed by structural impediments, regulatory constraints, and – in some “have not” provinces – by budgetary restraint programs.”
Has anyone thought of the negative economic impacts concerning the barriers that are are erected within the public education system, that in the end prevents the spread of new technologies throughout the country? Government barriers to satisfied an agenda within a government department, may indeed reduce pressure unto the government and in turn there is little pressure if any put on the private companies to put in the infrastructure necessary to enable the types of technologies needed for the 21st century. The lack of technology becomes an excuse, to be used as a barrier for expansion and improvement of online learning.
I have observed, whether federal, provincial or at the local level, that progress depends on the agendas of the various levels of the education system, and how technology fits in with the various special interests within. Negative economic impacts in not being efficient, access to information is limited and very dependent on the infrastructure, and taking more time in day to day economic activities. As it stands now, if one pays a bill at the bank day, it now takes 7 days to process, but if one pays electronically, it is processes with 24 hours, and dated on the same day when payment is rendered. A rural school, may take 10 days to processed an order, the payment, compared to an urban school, within 24 hours of the initial order.
There really should be an economic study on the efficiencies of urban vs rural schools, as well as schools within each district. I wonder how much more are the costs regarding administrative activities in rural areas as opposed to urban areas. Furthermore, how high are the costs at schools who are not fully wired as opposed to schools who are wired? The cost of postage, gasoline, time spent on manually doing things, rules that impede efficiency, and if there is a relationship between technology and costs on the plane of the agendas and special interests within the current public education model.
For example, today is the first snow day of the year. If the technology was up and running, the students could have spent their day in front of their computer at home, and for some get out of shoveling snow out of the driveway. No lost instruction time, and the only place shut down for the day is the school.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2011/11/24/b-c-teachers-dream-of-alberta/
Public Assurances, trust educators…
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We know the code Doug. Sounds like School Board Association speak for more autonomy and money which will never reach the classroom. I recall the “Save Grade Two Campaign” in NS promulgating the same altruisms…
You continue to confuse politics with education.
Yeah Doug – the code
If public assurances ever became a reality, watch the law suits rained down on the boards, and the individual teachers, by the parents. Public assurances comes with accountability, with or without testing. and/or greater autonomy for boards and teachers. Public assurances requires partial decentralization of the curriculum, and policies practices related to the schools. Public assurances as describe here on P4E, “Shirley is hopeful that recent developments in Alberta will create a shift in what he calls “public assurance.” In terms of Finland’s educational system, public assurance refers to parents and community members trusting educators, thereby allowing them to focus on teaching and learning, rather than spending time on public relations campaigns or high-stakes testing strategies to assure the public that the education system is working. Moving away from PATs and toward an innovative model of student engagement and focusing on learning outcomes would be the desired outcome for Alberta schools, added Shirley.”
http://www.peopleforeducation.ca/pfe-news/edmonton-public-school-board-will-ask-province-to-scrap-grade-3-achievement-tests/
Instead of spending money on PR campaigns and high-stakes testing, the system will be spending money on the retainment of lawyers, to protect them when they fail the students, by pulling the wool over the parents concerning the achievement of their children.
However the word is that there will be a replacement for Alberta’s achievement tests.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Edmonton+public+school+board+will+province+scrap+Grade+achievement+tests/5683779/story.html
“ATA spokesman Dennis Theobald says different tests could be given to different kids depending on what the teachers feel is necessary. A child shouldn’t have to take a math test if the teacher already knows the student is good at math, he says.
School boards could track and compare schools through sampling. “You don’t have to test everybody to do that,” he adds. “The dumbest thing you can do in testing, frankly, is give every kid the same standardized test … and hope to get something’s that educationally useful out of it,” says Theobald.
If this passes for teaching, good luck to parents trying to figure out how their kids are really doing.”
http://www.edmontonsun.com/2011/11/14/how-do-we-assists
Can you imagine what this line of thinking would bring? The smart students in the near future, will not have the skills and the ability to take tests and exams. And probably claimed test anxiety as their way to avoid all testing in their adulthood. Or the conversation of parents – “My little Johnnie didn’t have to take a single test all year.” Comparing the number of tests, and not the grades, will certainly ensure permanent etching on students’ forehead on all kinds of labels, starting with dumb, the number of tests, and the dumbing down of all students.
The Education Week story on mounting criticisms of Virtual Schooling is not to be taken lightly because it does point out the pitfalls of moving radically in the direction of totally unregulated virtual schooling.
iNACOL, based in Vienna, Va., hosted a recent Virtual School Symposium in Indianapolis and is absorbing many of the recent criticisms of unregulated full-day online learning. iNACOL’s CEO, Susan Patrick, sees a combination of factors contributing to recent criticisms of full-time virtual schools, with some issues having more merit than others.
Ms. Patrick claims the studies that raise questions about the achievement of fully online students may suffer in part because of the methods of measuring such achievement. Virtual school programs designed to help facilitate learning at a nonconventional pace and on a nonconventional schedule may struggle when molded to the confines of seat-time requirements virtual school advocates would like to see abandoned. But she accepts that getting some districts to view virtual education as a method that still needs quality instructors is a problem.
Blended learning is now emerging as the preferred strategy because it retains in-person instructors but reshapes the teacher’s job description with technology integration.
A report from the University of Colorado at Boulder that suggests K-12 virtual education is growing at a rate that is unsafe, considering the lack of knowledge about its effectiveness, also makes clear that the breadth of research on the benefits of blended learning is far greater.
Microsoft Corp. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are taking heat from critics of online education. In response, they are actually looking to channel dollars to blended-learning projects.
The third wave of competitive grants—worth up to $12 million in total—in the Gates Foundation’s Next Generation Learning Challenges program will be awarded to applicants that design new blended-learning models, in part because of a belief that they are more reliable than purely online models for students who are at risk academically.
It’s a dynamic, changing field, and we can learn a great many lessons from the Americans, once again. Plunging into online learning without safeguards for quality instruction can be hazardous to the very children we seek to educate for success in the 21st century. Up here in Canada, we seem to have the reverse problem. Unfreezing the system has to happen before we can even begin to introduce and expand blended learning initiatives.
Paul, I’d be very careful in relying into iNACOL for your research advice. The iNACOL leadership quite often misuse or simply get wrong research findings. You have to understand that iNACOL has neo-liberal/neo-conservative leanings and it quite comfortable situated within the Republican educational reform movement. What that means that is studies that support or appear to support their cause are grossly overstated and those that are negative towards their goals are methodologically flawed. The truth is that ALL of the comparative research that has been done on K-12 online learning to date has been methodologically flawed and is, quite simply, fairly useless.
Education is highly subject bandwagon effects. Radio would revolutionize education, then TV, then, computers, then the Interned and now virtual schools. If the normal pattern ensues, virtual school will become a niche market within education, dominated by the public school system and used for correspondence and distance education uses.
Attempts to ‘hothouse’ this development on behalf of the tech industry usually leads to white elephants that never live up to potential and are soon abandoned.
Look it Doug, I don’t know what public schools you attended, but my school of the youth made good use of television, radio and films. Televisions in each classroom, and the use of radio was used from time to time, to listen to a program on a Saturday morning. I remember watching Prime Minister Diefenbaker in grade 1 to watching the beginnings of televised feed for President Kennedy’s assassination in grade 3. Many more uses, that directly tied in the lessons of the day, except for Kennedy’s assassination, where prayers were said, and classes ended shortly after. I remember that day as clearly as it was yesterday, a cloudy day threatening rain or snow. Not cold, but everything seem more darker than what it should be.
My schools made good use of the then current technology, and there was no debate on what isn’t and what is good educational uses, or taking away from a teacher’s duties. Technology should be part and parcel of what composes the educating of our youth, especially in the 21st century. The computerized technology has brought society a new way to access knowledge, and the key is the knowledge can be access anytime and anywhere. As Paul, has stated, “Unfreezing the system has to happen before we can even begin to introduce and expand blended learning initiatives.”
Without the use of the computer, I am certain my re-teaching and tutoring at home, would not have been as rapid and successful. Within six months, my child was at grade level in math, and in some areas above grade level. As for her writing, slow steady increases, but than again I was starting from scratch, to improve handwriting and formation of letters. Something else, the public education system has dumped eons ago, along with grammar and spelling. Still the schools, do not use the technology at hand to teach the foundation knowledge that is crucial to accessing advance knowledge. Whatever software is available at the schools, is monitored and narrowed access to the software. Almost like the public education system, has an allergy to technology in Canada, and decided that technology will be only used in defined, and narrowed parameters.
When I went to school, technology was to expand our knowledge based. Now technology is being used to limit students’ knowledge base, as well as limiting their foundation knowledge, to defined and narrowed targets.
The biggest elephant in the room, is the dinosaur called the public education system, unwilling to give up their sloppy Dewey philosophy, as well as unwilling to break away from the 19th century industrialized model of schooling.
Evidence by individual anecdote is not evidence that can be generalized.
This is all too often a problem with blogging.
And the media, as well as the PR departments of corporate and public sectors are not a problem when it comes to transparency of all the facts, including what is not working or not working.
Interesting morning on the science of manipulation, and blogs are serving an important role, in showing the many different facets of issues, as well as pointing our the inconsistencies of policies that are declared by our masters as being successful, when in reality they are not successful. PR departments, media and other corporate/public sectors are very interested in manipulation, and the science behind it. Anecdotal evidence is used often by them to present the rosy picture image, and downplayed the negative. But remember,the discovery of new knowledge, starts with posing questions on the anecdotal evidence, and than the hypothesis to confirm if the anecdotal evidence is correct, and if the subject deserves more exploration.
The individual anecdotal could very well be evidence that can be generalized to applied to the whole. However, John, until you walk in the shoes of parents without the insider knowledge that you processed of the education system, let me know, if you do not arrive at the same conclusions as I and many parents have learned, the biggest elephant in the room is the public education system. But more importantly, the anecdotal evidence may very well be correct, and is a real shame, that anecdotal evidence of the negative nature, is not taken seriously by those who have the hidden information and data to change their policies.
Nancy,
Of course we all “make use of” technology. There is a critical faction within the corporate reform movement that hopes to use Virtual schools to “replace teachers and break unions”. A few master teachers will be around and the rest are drones. Pipe dream of the nutters like Terry Moe.
“replace teachers and break unions”.
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Doug, as a parent it is not hard to judge you are being ridiculous.
However, learning initiatives are the objectives of those blogging here and a critical eye towards virtual learning is welcomed and relevant to how Canada proceeds.
What is interesting is how many examples of foundation knowledge have been fostereded through IT/online learning by parents. That’s not a pipe dream; it’s only common sense. Personally, I’m more interested in how skills are developed from this well spring of virtual creativity.
Edited for Clarity and Content
You may find this 2011 Workshop presentation by Dr. Terry Moe of Stanford University of interest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4TkzWcGTxo
Doug, as a parent it is not hard to judge you are being ridiculous.
Don’t listen to me, listen to Terry Moe, (above) a very heavy hitter in the American Corporate Education Reform movement.
http://www.thenation.com/article/164651/how-online-learning-companies-bought-americas-schools?page=full
Doug, the beauty of public education is in the way it continues to evolve in a post modern climate. At times yes, tumultuous, but breaking unions in Canada is useless for students, educators, citizens, and parents to pursue. So dream on. Your enemy is from Oz.
Breaking the ice, however; covering blended learning, virtual ed. and the digital divide are more relevant to the students and parents who are in the trenches today. Not the politics of yesterday.
Get used to it.
So what we need are more details and opinion on virtual education. As a parent I hope they are out there!
What are the barriers?
What are the provincial regulations? Can they be ammended?
Why are the have not provinces not benefiting first? Better yet what about the rural areas experiencing serious out migration? Could they benefit?
If programs are not effective what are the reasons?
What can be done to make them more effective?
Why are seat time requirements anethema to virtual school fluidity (a non conventional pace)?
Who is at risk as a result of all of this?
Who may benefit?
the list could go on and on…
Don’t listen to me, listen to Terry Moe, (above) a very heavy hitter in the American Corporate Education Reform movement.
Not a chance. Parents are looking out and forward, not continuing to circle their wagons amid an unaccountable and unresponsive education system where blob code rues the day…and the educational experiences of too many.
Curiosity Heads to Mars
Is the title of the video to check out, on science and technology.
http://www.ctv.ca/newschannel/
Absolutely true that technology and science is the future, Will I Am speaks wisdom among the naysayers of STEM.
One of the positive aspects of learning via through the web for students, is the exploration of the web and its knowledge. Perhaps dangerous, but with some simple rules of not the kind that is complex in nature (check out complex rules of any school policy), the web and its technology can ignite the curiosity of students, learning for the sake of learning, exploring beyond exploration, and at the end produce students who are independent learners. Independent learners of a different kind, where the education system will have to change to become the purveyors of foundation knowledge. The same foundation knowledge that is crucial and vital to understand the STEM topics, and has very much become a part of our day to day lives.
Blended learning, will emerge whether the unions and the arms of the education system like it or not. The days are gone where students and their learning could be control, and confine to the words in a text book, or of a teacher. Gone are the days, where students learning were confined to grade level, and never moving beyond the grade level. Blended learning ignites the natural curiosity of students as well as ensuring the foundation skills are in place to understand the new knowledge with little difficulty. But it would mean a compete overhaul of the curriculum, outcomes, grade levels, and the current 19th century model of the public education system.
That’s simply naive.
Not a chance. Parents are looking out and forward, not continuing to circle their wagons amid an unaccountable and unresponsive education system where blob code rues the day…and the educational experiences of too many.
Please, if anybody speaks for parents in Ontario it is Annie Kidder and P4E.
Reform ideas crashed and burned in the Ontario election because not one party, even the PCs would touch them.
Alberta, you heard me ALBERTA, is now using Finland as its model under Allison Redford and killing testing in grade 3 and 6 for a start. Opposition to testing has become mainstream.
Alberta’s teachers’ union wish, and as for Redford, a promise made, but promises are broken by politicians all the time. As for P4E, they are cheerleaders of the blob, and as unaccountable for their statements and information as the blob is.
I had to get this one in, on Toronto and the wimpyfying their kids, making it on Saturday Night Live. Technology, brings the news a whole lot closer to so many people.
“On the latest episode of Saturday Night Live, cast member Seth Meyers dropped Earl Beatty Public School into his Weekend Update, a roundup of wacky news items from around the world.
“A school in Canada has banned all game balls including soccer balls and baseballs because the principal thinks they’re causing too many injuries,” Meyers says.
“The safety-minded principal also asked that the custodian install a hinge in the see-saw,” he says, pausing for effect as the studio audience chuckled. ”
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1089899–school-ball-ban-leaves-americans-chuckling?bn=1
On the P4E site, ”
Our local rural high school has fewer than 400 students. There are a number of strategies that the school uses to cope with low enrollment and still offer course selections:
· Not offering particular courses and requiring students to take them on-line.
· Offering certain courses only every second year.
· Combining classes or grades into splits.
Last year school councils from two high schools put together a report and list of recommendations about on-line learning as it affects high school students in this board (Upper Canada DSB). Has anyone else done any evaluation on this?”
http://schools-at-the-centre.ning.com/forum/topics/split-classes-online-courses
What is wrong? Missing information, that would lead the reader to different conclusions.
The missing information: ” The Upper Canada District School is pleased to offer e-learning/on-line learning opportunities to High School students who live within the boundaries of our school board.
In order to find out more about e-learning/on-line opportunities, students should speak to their home school guidance counsellor.
In order to view a listing of courses that are available, please visit the following site:”
http://www.ucdsb.on.ca/programs/Pages/OnLineLearning.aspx
The second piece of missing information: “What is the Ontario eLearning Consortium (OeLC)?
School Boards collaborating to optimize success for all learners through elearning opportunities, emerging technologies, and innovative practices.”
http://www.oelc.ca/
One would have the impression in Ontario, if one use the P4E as their main source of education info, that Ontario schools is still in the infant age when it comes to e-learning. Now my question is, why isn’t the boards jumping on board instead of ordering studies, to study e-learning?
Still not a snowball’s chance in **** that the future of education lies anywhere close to your spin. Puppets don’t lead Doug, they get their strings pulled.
The best medicine for your spin is the continuing education and empowerment of parents and the choices they have – AND they do have them. They include the most personalized education ever now – on-line education. I laugh at how parents and school councils were pushed into raising millions for computers in classrooms and it’s the one thing threatening the classroom as we’ve come to know it. That that bothers you than it does me isn’t surprising
Naive eh Doug?
How do a couple of former fish merchants transform themselves in the 21st century?
And how do a dozen hot cross buns become eight hot cross buns in the 21st century?
Answers to both is the technology route.
For the former fish merchants – “Clients choose Bluedrop because we offer excellence in design. Our creative, fresh thinking and strong technical skills are evident in every project we undertake. Our commitment to such design excellence is crucial—our clients are relying on e-Learning to facilitate changes in attitude and behavior as well as deliver the prescribed learning. Clients trust Bluedrop because we understand what e-Learning is and what it is not—it is not on-line reading or appropriate for all situations. It is not linear or one dimensional. E-Learning is about an excellence in design that connects people to the material and inspires them to learn in an active way. When e-Learning is engaging—people learn.”
http://www.bluedrop.com/what-we-offer
“VANCOUVER, British Columbia–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Serebra Learning Corporation (“Serebra”) (TSX-V: SLC) (Pink Sheets: SLCFF) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Blue Drop Inc. (“Blue Drop”) and Rizbollo Holdings Limited (“Rizbollo”), which provides the terms pursuant to which Serebra and Blue Drop will combine their businesses and assets. Upon completion, the transaction will constitute a reverse take-over of Serebra by Blue Drop, with the resulting company to be renamed Bluedrop Performance Learning Inc. ”
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20111125005390/en/Serebra-Enters-Business-Combination-Agreement-Blue-Drop
Using today’s digital and computerized technology, what was 12 hotcross buns in the 20 the century has morphed into eight two-bite hot cross bun, using the raw ingredients of 6 hotcross buns. But paying for a dozen hotcross bun.
E-learning is becoming an investment in today’s investment portfolios, as well as being profitable. Blended learning is the call from such companies, as the next step in adult learning, and it is a matter of time, for children’s learning.
As for the hotcross buns, technology has paved the way for paying more and get less as a reality for the consumer, and especially consumers who remembers the good old days, where a dozen = 12, and they were not two bite ones. Welcome to the world of fuzzy math, that allows acceptance of the broader society to pay more and get less.
Michael K. Barbour is becoming the Michael Fullan of Online Learning, but his fully-funded iNACOL reports deserve closer critical scrutiny, especially from the funders.
Who is Michael Barbour, you might ask? An Assistant Professor at Detroit’s Wayne State University with a PhD in Ed Technology from Georgia who now lives in Windsor, Ontario, and was trained as a Social Studies Teacher in Newfoundland. http://www.michaelbarbour.com/teaching.htm
Barbour’s latest iNACOL report on Online Learning in Canada (November 2011) at http://www.inacol.org/research/bookstore/detail.php?id=32 is a complete mishmash. It’s cobbled together from a series of reports from IT directors and others inside the system. After identifying Teacher Contracts and regulations as a problem in 2009-2010, he is now singing a different tune:
“A variety of initiatives are driving online and blended learning in each of Canada’s provinces and territories. From teachers’ unions in Nova Scotia fighting to ensure online learning is an accepted method of educational delivery, to Ontario’s College of Teachers creating an e-learning endorsement for teachers or the British Columbia government creating policies to expand the growth and opportunities online learning provides, there are multiple, isolated initiatives happening across the country.”
Yet, strangely enough, he still offers this summary conclusion:
“In order for online and blended learning opportunities to expand for all students in Canada, local government leaders need to create policies to remove the barriers that prevent access to these innovations; universities must provide training and experiences for both pre-service and in-service teachers to use these tools in their classrooms; and administrators need to provide the leadership to implement and support their teachers, these courses, and digital resources in their schools.”
Academic research on Online Learning is in its infancy. That may explain why Barbour’s annual iNACOL reports carry far more weight that they should in the public policy arena.
Since you copied and pasted this comment to my blog, you can read my response to this neo-conservative drivel at http://virtualschooling.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/virtual-schooling-in-the-news-310/#comment-13767.
So, here all along I thought it was neo – liberal drivel we are all guilty of.
Of interest to me is that Barbour cites that over the last 14 years the Canadian federal government has spent little towards research and evaluation in the way of K-12 online learning.
If we are just getting out of the starting gate then funding policies need to be established and ramp it up. Many of those 14 years have seen the erosion of public education system. Barbour points to remote geographical areas that could benefit.
Did the CCL have a perspective on funding for online learning?.
Steven, some of it is neo-liberal in focus, but Paul’s comments are more reflective of the neo-conservative position (at least as described by Michael Apple – who is the source that I use for most of my politics in education knowledge).
To the best of my memory the Canadian Council for Learning did not specific recommend additional federal funding for research into online learning – K-12 or otherwise. But like many recent reports, did hint at the fact that more funding for educational research in general is needed (probably best evidenced by the fact that the federal Conservatives cut all of the funding for the CCL).
If you compare the amount of money that the federal government in the United States has invested in K-12 online learning – both direct investment into virtual schools that came with external evaluation requirements and general funding for research into various aspects of K-12 online learning – it dwarfs the investment that we have seen in Canada (even if you compare the amounts proportionally based on population). If this were the United States, the NSVS that Paul references above would have an external evaluation component built into this new expansion. e-Learning Ontario would have had four or five years worth of research conducted on it.
As it stands the majority of research into K-12 online learning has occurred in Newfoundland (by the folks at Memorial University of Newfoundland and myself) or has been commissioned by the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation.
Nah Steven, we are guilty of poking our noses where we apparently do not belong in. Had a look through the iNACOL site, and came to some tentative conclusions. It appears that the educrats of who’s who, want to manage the change in the digital and technology world concerning education, and in the end transform online learning into a virtual brick and mortars school online.
Not a whole lot of talk on the individualized learning, and how curriculum can be adapted to the student, with the ease of a click of a few key strokes. From my quick review, it bounces back to have the individual students to adapt to the curriculum online, as they are force to do in a school.
Here is the report of online learning in Canada, provided by the one who called Paul a neo-conservative, union bashing, and other sortie of names, but what do you expect from one who owes his present situation and his living in part to the union. Where else can a teacher climb the ladder within the public education system, and partake of profit from time to time.
Click to access iNACOL_CanadaStudy_201111.pdf
Click to access The-Rise-of-K-12-Blended-Learning.pdf
The above link is on blended learning.
However, more interested in John’s little humble project and his take on blended learning. At least he sees the positive effects that blended learning has, but is not talk often at the upper levels in great detail or with the outfits like iNACOL. Blended learning, if and only if the teacher has the control, could shape the student’s learning on an individualized basis, A big if, considering the literature that I have read, is quite content to control the teacher at the school, and shape his duties and responsibilities to reflect the upper levels of the adults, forcing the students to adapt and than the parents. I am convince, if teachers had full autonomy watch math achievement sky rocket, and dare I say in writing, clear coherent sentences forming a paragraph.
Sounds to me, one of the top barriers is the ones who are positioning themselves in e-learning to control the change, so they have their ducks in a row to serve their own best interests, and private agendas. No wonder e-learning is in a deep freeze in Canada, as well as the software and wonderful digital devices that should be in schools as common tools but are not.
“If you compare the amount of money that the federal government in the United States has invested in K-12 online learning – both direct investment into virtual schools that came with external evaluation requirements and general funding for research into various aspects of K-12 online learning – it dwarfs the investment that we have seen in Canada (even if you compare the amounts proportionally based on population)”
Ditto for most education research and in particular the research into children’s learning and how they learned. Also the research departments of Canadian education institutes are also guilty of burying research that does not reflect the current goals, and agendas of the institutes.
Another problem within the education bubble, is very little cooperative work and sharing between private researchers and researchers who work in the public sphere.
Michael Apple’s position is clear to me. However, both sides of the fence participate here as I see it.
There are problems with the loss of the CCL in terms of how co-operation between provinces, territories, and a much needed federal vision on how goals could be achieved are extinguished. Cappon pointed that out. A lost opportunity in my estimation.
In this case online learning is a salient example of what could be achieved if studied, evaluated and fostered by serious commitment between all parties – including unions and the private sector.
I can see the limits to a new and much needed education policy in the conservative era. Limited in the sense that provincialism often goes with accepted standards while the feds go about their business.
Unions are included here – they are not perfect champions of online learning just as the NDP in Nova Scotia has established cuts to the education budget which effect the classrooms directly.
Nancy, I’m not sure how much more research we need into “children’s learning and how they learned”?!? There is tons of it out there, the problem is getting policymakers (and even practitioners) to pay attention to it. Also, I’m not sure I follow the comment “very little cooperative work and sharing between private researchers and researchers who work in the public sphere”? I see university-based (i.e., public) researchers working with thinktank folks (i.e., private) all of the time in the K-12 online learning sphere.
Steven, I didn’t say that both sides weren’t participating. I was stating that Paul’s position represented the neo-conservative view in my opinion. When you questioned it, I also indicated that I saw a neo-liberal view present in some of the comments. Not seeing many liberal or socialist comments, which surprising me a little for a Canadian audience.
In terms of the co-operation and what can be accomplished, I’m not sure we want a one size fits all model. There is some benefits to having thirteen fairly unique systems that can address the political, social and economic realities of their own location. The history of K-12 distance education in Saskatchewan, for example, is very different than its history in Ontario. On the off chance that the needs of folks in Northern Saskatchewan are different than the needs of folks living in the Toronto District School Board. Both areas have online programs, and both are administered quite differently – and I’d argue that’s likely a good thing. In their infinite wisdom, the fathers of Confederation decided that education should be a provincial matter. While I wold agree that the federal government has a role to play in funding research bodies like CCL and providing additional funding for programs like SSHRC and the CRCs, I don’t think it helps us to have a national outlook on this front. The US have a federal Department of Education and that certainly hasn’t helped matters south of the border when it comes to K-12 online learning.
I should also note that Canadian unions have generally been supportive of K-12 distance education. For example, the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association is actually a partner with the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation in that province (most recently evidenced through the CURA grant that they were a part of with Memorial and others). The Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union (NSTU) has more than a dozen clauses in their contract related to distance education. I know that Paul has painted this as a negative thing, but I would argue the opposite. This is a teachers’ union who recognized that this was a need in their province and worked with the government to figure out what was needed for these teachers and what an equivalent work day looked like for those teaching online. Further, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF), the province’s largest teachers’ union, pass a resolution in 2009 indicating that e-learning should be available to all K-12 students. The British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF) has conducted more research into distributed learning in that province than any other body (including the Government themselves) – and the Alberta Teachers Association has also been doing some research in this area. I could go on, but by and large teachers unions – who haven’t been painted into a corner by being told that they are the problem (as has happened in the United States) – have typically recognized that there is a need and even an opportunity to be provided by K-12 distance education and have both encouraged it and worked with governments to try and make it happen in a reasonable, but cautious way.
The research is not reaching the bottom level, and what does reach the bottom level, has been filtered through many lenses. Furthermore, the research that I speak of rarely leaves the dusty shelves of the ministry of education, or the education research centers, concerning such things as reading instruction, math instruction, disability research concerning LD. autism and dyslexia. Quite frankly research that would change the optics and affect contracts, curriculum and instruction where the hidden agendas of the education system rear their ugly heads whenever their pet theories are threatened. Important research of online learning is ignored concerning kids with disabilities. It really peeves me off, that most SE kids are on the road to nowhere learning at two grade levels below, and the only reason why kids are force to walk this march, is their levels of reading, writing and numeracy are weak. I could go on, but as a parent, if it was not for the web, software, and the knowledge that I gained over the years, my dyslexia child would have been force to take that march instead of the detour that I arrange for her. The research pointed the direction to go, and yet I see little movement in the direction of using technology to benefit the students.
As for tons out there, yes – but the stuff that is buried, is the same stuff that would unfreeze the education system, and put them into the 21st century.
Another point, has anyone thought of why Canada’s education system, continues to keep a closed shop when it comes to the research? Why is it not open to the public, as it is in the U.S.? Why do I have to get my news on LD and other disabilities from the United States, or for that matter the latest in cognitive learning?
You’ll have to excuse me but I have developed little trust in governments at all levels doing anything at all in the name of effective funding where education is concerned, and if we’re meaning that to be the education of students rather than the employment of adults.
I don’t believe that the gov’t or public purse it the answer OR the best expertise to deliver effective on-line education to students.
I believe that the private corporations are just as capable and I think that rocks the teacher union world like nothing else.
Catharine, I don’t blame you in trusting the public education to spend wisely. In one of Barbour’s link, an online school from BC, that is private and has a partnership with BC’s education system.
http://www.onlineschool.ca/
Very impress since it has the Saxon curriculum for math. Oh how I wish this was around when my child was younger. I probably would have enrolled my child as a part timer. It even thinks grammar is important, which is so unlike the present public education’s curriculum.
My point is that the online school seems to be well-structured, and easy to navigate. Unlike online learning stemming from the public education system are rigid, and not easy to navigate.
Nancy, I see that you’d make a great Republican spokesman.
Union & Government = evil / Corporation = saviour
And that’s about the level of discourse that you rise to. My rise is hardly due to any union activity. I was a teacher for five years and a faculty member for four and a half years (both unionized), and a post-secondary student for eleven years (non-unionized). I suspect my rise is largely due to the hard work that I put into my research and scholarly output.
You have quite an interesting conspiracy theory when it comes to the realm of academic research. It is so convoluted that it is difficult to follow much of what you say (beyond the “Union & Government = evil / Corporation = saviour” mantra).
I should tell you that the leadership of iNACOL would think it laughable that they haven’t become taken up with blended learning. It is all the rage with them (has been for about three years now). They’d also find it quite laughable that you accuse them of being an agent of the government and its attempt to stifle the development of K-12 online and blended learning. In the United States, those critical of iNACOL actually argue the exact opposite, that it is a laptop of the corporate interests attempting to privatize public education.
Heritage Christian Online School is an online independent school in British Columbia. Independent is the classification that BC uses for private schools. There are about a dozen of them, although Heritage is by far the largest. They receive 50% of an FTE per student enrollment. The face-to-face schools make up the remainder of the funding through charging tuition, but in order to compete with the public online schools the independent online schools aren’t able to charge any tuition. Often it is their face-to-face tuition paying students that subsidize the online ones.
And Catherine, I see that you’ve also adopted the “Union & Government = evil / Corporation = saviour” mantra. So nice to discuss these serious issues with folks that can’t see past their own ideology.
A recent opinion of labels brought out the view that labels exist but should come with warnings.
The CCL was a canary in the mine shaft for the future of public education. Dr. Cappon drew conclusions on the future of Canadian education which would upset anyone content with a one size fits all system. I would not conclude his views are reflective of neo- conservatism – just sensible.
It is very debateable which provinces are doing a good job managing their public education system, – the fathers of confederation did not anticipate school boards or collective bargaining. For example in Nova Scotia the social democratic government has implimented cuts which one would normally associate with a neo-consevative agenda.
Re: the US fed department of education – if the US Federal government’s direct investment into Virtual schools that came with external evaluation requirements and general funding for research for Virtual Schools, far exceeded that of Canada; then why suggest the US Federal Department of Education has not done much for K-12 online learning?
I would like to see more cash put toward K-12 online learning, especially as it may address some of the inequities in the rural communities experiencing serious out migration. No one wants to see limits put on our children’s learning potential.
Steven, I didn’t say the CCL views were neo-conservative. The only one that I have described using that label in this conversation was Paul. Also, I don’t recall suggesting the US federal government doing little for K-12 online learning, but I do recall suggesting that the Canadian federal government had done little on that front. Finally, I don’t advocate a one size fits all approach province-by-province. I even used the line somewhere in this conversation that the needs of students in Northern Saskatchewan would be different than the needs of students in the Toronto District School Board. Between you and Paul, I’m getting an awful lot of words put in my mouth that I neither said nor support.
I fully agree that we need more resources put into the system so that all students have the opportunity to be successful. But I don’t believe that necessarily means money into K-12 online learning, If you look at rural Newfoundland and Labrador as an example. Right now the CDLI only offers academic and advanced level courses at the secondary level. In their study of three coastal Labrador communities, Mulcahy, Dibbon and Norberg (2008) speculated that some students at two of these three schools were electing to take basic level courses to avoid taking the course online (i.e., or because they wanted to take the course from a face-to-face teacher). Basic level courses in English language arts and mathematics in the province mean that you don’t qualify for college or university. In a subsequent study, Mulcahy and I have found that the basic level enrollment for rural schools that use the CDLI for their academic or academic English language arts or mathematics is much higher than the province average and also higher than the overall rural average. Is online learning providing opportunity for these K-12 students or taking it away? The jury is still out, as we have yet to do the follow-up to explore why the proportions are higher, but it does raise some interesting questions.
Well Mr. Barbour, you certainly are showing your true colours along the lines of your political ideology, as well as the lines of debate, the refusal to explore all facets of e-learning, by ignoring the facets that does not fit your present reality.
The online learning provided by the public education systems in Canada, are frozen in time, working for the best interests of the unions’ contracts, first and foremost over the education needs of the students. In NL, the number of students using online courses are low for a very good reason, the capping takes place at the individual schools, where no more than 10 students are allowed to take the identical course. The online learning system simply provides the avenues for boards and their schools, to offer online courses of the core subjects, and non-core subjects when the numbers are not sufficient and/or not having qualified teachers, A very rigid system, somewhat nuts on security, and a close shop, regarding time and location to access the online courses. Otherwise, what is rather good, and improving each year, is the online tutoring that has far more accessibility and easier to use.
Without the capping of the individual schools, online learning would take off, creating the optics for expansion and improvement, that would benefit students first, as well as a bit of competition between the brick and mortar schools and the online version.
Keep that in mind, when looking at numbers at the macro level, than go to the micro numbers as to why numbers are low and any other questions that arise from looking at the numbers. It doesn’t take any brains to figure out the controls are put on the individual schools, to maintain the centralization model occurring in online learning as well as maintaining the delivery of education from the top to the bottom levels.
Speaking about the top to down nature of any public education system in Canada, very hard on the students as well as parents to make good decisions for their children when it comes to their education, when the current model is eager to take the reins from the parents, but does not want to be held accountable when things go wrong and students do not reach their full potential. If I had listen to the previous crop of educrats, my child would not sitting in an academic classroom, and thankfully I chose to listen to the conclusions of the research that is buried within the education system. Buried, and vital information that is needed by all parents to make good decisions for their children’s education. Online learning can represent a leap for children who are experiencing learning difficulties, and a greater leap than the snail-paced lessons handed to them of the classroom kind.
Nancy, I have been exploring all facets of K-12 distance education in Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia and South Korea for more than a decade now. The problem is that you come from a belief where anything related to government control and any role for unions within the system is bad. You can’t debate someone who isn’t willing to include all of the stakeholders in the potential solution. This is why we get the situation that you have in the United States, where you have a single vision of education reform and everyone against it wants to shackle the students to their desks in an out-dated and backwards factory model school.
The reality of the situation is that provincial governments regulate and fund education. Within the Canadian system, teachers are unionized. So how do we work within the system to bring all stakeholders to the table to come up with a solution. Your approach is to bust the unions and to remove all sense of government control and oversight. Its kind of like a “Lords of the Flies” model of public education. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about the Canadian system is that most people – and I wouldn’t include you in this statement – don’t demonize the other side. This is why teachers unions in Canada have been much more supportive and quite willing to engage on the K-12 distance education front. They haven’t been demonized in Canada as they have in the United States. As your solution is to demonize and discount them, along with any form of government control and oversight, and anyone who wants to include them as part of the solution, there will be no changing your mind of even influencing your thinking. The best one can hope for is to shout as loud as you and hope the two of you become drowned out.
” the US have a federal Department of Education and that certainly hasn’t helped matters south of the boarder when it comes to K-12 online learning”.
————————————————————————————————
No but you did reference the US department of Education. That was my point.
Also I did not mean to put words in your mouth re the CCL. It was I who said: I would not consider Cappon’s views neo- conservative, not you.
Steven, check out what comes immediately before that:
“…I don’t think it helps us to have a national outlook on this front. The US have a federal Department of Education and that certainly hasn’t helped matters south of the boarder when it comes to K-12 online learning.”
The US Department of Education hasn’t helped create a national outlook. All you need to do is read any of John Watson’s annual “Keeping Pace” reports and you’ll see that each state has developed quite uniquely.
I wasn’t referring to their funding of K-12 online learning. I apologize for the confusion (and for the misunderstanding about who was calling the CCL a neo-conservative).
I have a group of teachers (and students) with whom I am conducting what I hope will be a 2 years project to look at
wise use of this stuff.
Currently the jury is out
but there are examples, from teachers I work with, of powerful +ve effects.
Well we shall see.
The world has changed so how do we shape it for the better?
Blending if some sort is likely the most useful direction but . . ..
It certainly is understandable that some students prefer to take basic courses in a regular face to face -student to teacher – classroom setting.
But as Michael Corbett sets out to study in “Learning to leave; The irony of Schooling in a Coastal Community” –
“the prevailing idea of standardized curriculum…. will continue to render school irrelavant for large numbers of rural, northern and coastal communities.”
So perhaps those students electing to take basic level courses are doing so because they have no desire to pursue post secondary education.
New ideas and programms will bring power structures and regulations with them. Opportunities and risks. Resistance in rural communities is understandable in light of their identity and alligence to place, and even job prospects which can no longer be dangled in front of them as an effective strategy.
It is true each province has developed quite differently. Some more successfuly than others. If they are unique it is also because of how they have had to contend with problems of centralization, ridgid curriculums, urbanization and the diversity of the rural context.
Perhaps that is the case… I indicated that we didn’t know for sure. The fact that the percentage of rural students – particularly rural males – taking basic level courses is much higher than what the provincial average is in general. But the fact that this gap increases for schools that are offering online learning as the only academic option to these students does raise my eyebrow (and I would suggest it should raise your’s as well).
This is why in my academic writing, I call attention to these things and suggest that before we go diving head first into K-12 online learning as the saviour for all of our educational woes (as our colleagues south of the border seem to be doing – just look at the comment Paul posted above about what is currently being debated in Michigan), let’s step back and first figure out how we can effectively design, deliver and support these kinds of learning opportunities so that all students can be successful (not just the academically high achieving students that have been represented in the research to date).
Personally, I believe that K-12 online learning has great potential. But before we begin to use our students – particularly those lower performing students and our rural children – as lab rats. Let’s do a better job of figuring out how to do this well (and also when we shouldn’t do it). I recall one rural principal that was part of a study that I was conducting who said that he thought online learning was a great thing for the students that didn’t take it, as it decreased the overall class size so that the face-to-face students could have greater contact and individual attention from the teacher.
I have a colleague at Kent State who is fond of saying that we need to get past asking questions of whether K-12 online learning works, and begin to ask questions about under what conditions, with what kinds of students, covering what kinds of topics or material, etc., is K-12 online learning appropriate. Unfortunately, my colleagues south of the border have yet to follow his advice. It seems some folks leaving comments here are also immune to his guidance (and I’m not included you as part of that group, in case you were wondering). But it is advice worth considering before we begin to tear down the schools, bust the teachers unions, and put every kid in front of a computer and treat them like Skinner boxes.
In a previous topic the digital classroom was debated. Certainly the pros and cons came out in the course of discussion. Conditions, student risk, subject matter etc. There was one overview on the superiority of “process” while making skills and knowlege take a minimal back seat in the classroom.
One thing parents here have concluded. Their worst fear with many forms of public education – including the way unions try to recruite, then isolate parents on issues they may disagree with, is to put students in a metaphorical Skinner box.
This should be about constructing good solid programs and determining where they belong. I agree we can learn a lesson from the US.
Steven, I used the term Skinner box very purposefully – as much of the online learning in the United States are these teacherless online environments where students take an exam, if they fail to achieve mastery (which they define as 80%) the students get multimedia based instruction on the things that they got wrong. Once they have completed that instruction, they take another test. The entire thing is database driven, much like Skinner’s thinking machine was.
Mr. Babour, I said no such thing as union busting, but just pointing out that unions are serving their best interests first, when it comes to online learning. A reality, that often makes the students take a back seat to their education and their needs.
Below are typical lines sprouting the same tired lines (excuses), and in this case online learning.
” If you look at rural Newfoundland and Labrador as an example. Right now the CDLI only offers academic and advanced level courses at the secondary level. In their study of three coastal Labrador communities, Mulcahy, Dibbon and Norberg (2008) speculated that some students at two of these three schools were electing to take basic level courses to avoid taking the course online (i.e., or because they wanted to take the course from a face-to-face teacher). Basic level courses in English language arts and mathematics in the province mean that you don’t qualify for college or university. In a subsequent study, Mulcahy and I have found that the basic level enrollment for rural schools that use the CDLI for their academic or academic English language arts or mathematics is much higher than the province average and also higher than the overall rural average. Is online learning providing opportunity for these K-12 students or taking it away? The jury is still out, as we have yet to do the follow-up to explore why the proportions are higher, but it does raise some interesting questions.”
To take any CDLI course offer in NL, a student needs the commands and skills of reading, writing and numeracy skills, so the students can actually keep up with the course load on line, Now take a look, a real look at the stats in NL for reading, writing and numeracy levels of the adult population, and compared it to the levels of the high school student. A school is not about to enroll a student on a CDLI course, that does not have an acceptable level in the 3 Rs. Or at the local rural NL schools that I know, is reserve for students who do have acceptable levels, and can adapt to the online school environment. What has been told to me, by many teachers and the upper levels of the system, (or the ones that do admit there is a problem), approximately 60 percent of the students entering high school have weaknesses in the 3 Rs in one or all of them, that hinders their learning and achievement. No doubt, it is the same across Canada,regarding literacy and numeracy levels, and such agencies of the CCL, whose own evidence supports the low literacy and numeracy levels of students after 12 years of schooling. As reported by the CCL, 48 % of Canadian adults have low literacy, and a higher number in NL, and will be rising according to the CCL. It is another barrier that keeps online learning of the public education type, at the low levels it is, as well as maintaining and controlling the numbers accessing online learning, by the process of elimination. So I am curious, what numbers do you have on the number of students taking basic? Or better yet, the numbers pertaining to online learning and remediation? Just curious, since NL really is not at open and transparent with their education numbers.
The stakeholders that are often missing, are the taxpayers, parents and students. As a result, education policy ends up taking many detours to work around the best interests of the students and taxpayers, to satisfied the many different agendas within the education arms. The latest example, comes from a teacher at parent-teacher interview, that he boasted that his tutorials are free, since he is not being paid for his time. To the next teacher-interview, a teacher making it very clear, to have my child come anytime, anywhere if she does not understand something. Two very different messages, dealing with teachers’ duties and responsibilities, the former, the union message of contracts and the latter, concerns the best interests of student learning. And it was not long ago, only a few years, that the educrats of the board was still maintaining their stance, that my child was not academic material, and I was demonized to object to their judgments coloured in their biases, beliefs and pseudo-expertise.
It is time for those who work within the education system, to admit to the fault lines of the education system, the highly politicized environment where the agendas and special interests take root, and gives rise to the blame and excuses as well as redirecting education funding away from the students and schools. At the expense of the students and their education, slamming the doors of opportunities and their futures. A good place to start is to admit, that online learning within the public education system, will only happen if it meets the conditions of the union, contracts and their best interests. Especially in places like NL, where even taking an online course from another provincial education system, will not be recognized in the K to 12 system.
Nancy, that is the role of a union… To unsure that its members are treated fairly by their employer. We don’t complain to the Canadian Auto Workers about more car safety or better fuel mileage. Why do we think that the union representing teachers should be responsible for pushing for and implementing reforms that the government should be doing? To believe any differently is to fundamentally misunderstand unions.
In terms of the low literacy levels in Newfoundland, this is why I suggested earlier to Steven that before we go jumping head first into online learning (which seems to be where you want to head), maybe we should start asking questions like under what conditions can online learning be most effective? With what kinds of students can online learning be most effective? What topics or courses can online learning be most effective? And maybe the answer to that question is that it may not be the most effective way to teach students that have low literacy levels.
In terms of my data about basic level enrollment, I just got the statistics from the Government’s own website through their K-12 Profile System on the Department of Education website and did some number crunching from there.
I think you may be wrong about the credits being able to transfer from one province to the next. While I don’t see if happening much in Atlantic Canada (which surprises me as the four provinces have essentially the same mathematics and English language arts curriculums now), the provinces do have systems in place to assess credits from other provinces. This was actually one of the questions I asked during the 2010 “State of the Nation” study, and the responses were that almost all of the provinces would accept transfer credits from other provinces for students that presented it to them in accordance with the regular policy. Their regular policy having been developed for students that physically move from one province to another. Interestingly, this happens a bit more out west and in Ontario, but – like I said above – very little in Atlantic Canada.
Finally, I continue to find your union bashing rhetoric amusing. “A good place to start is to admit, that online learning within the public education system, will only happen if it meets the conditions of the union, contracts and their best interests.” The first K-12 online learning programs in Newfoundland and Labrador were developed by teachers in the rural school districts, in conjunction with faculty at Memorial University of Newfoundland (often through federally funded research programs). The province government, on the heels of the Sparks and Williams report, adopted the model that had been developing through these rural initiatives. The NLTA has been a willing partner, and has provided no resistance to anything these early rural district initiatives or that the CDLI has attempted.
Private sectors unions have to worry about quality of products, customer satisfaction as well as repeated sales. However public sector unions, are not known to worry about quality of education services, and how it is deliver to the bottom levels. I could say a lot more, but it suffice to say public sector unions do not have to be accountable to the public in terms of service to the public, in the same way as a private union and its company have to be accountable for. The public sector unions never have to worry, when they treat the public’s purse as their own personal piggy bank, especially in the area of education. Everything about a student’s education is measure, the minutes and hours are counted, and no one is held accountable within the education system, on the literacy and numeracy levels of their students that ensures that the students have the foundation to do advance work, without much difficulty. In the same way a customer purchases a automobile, and expects an engine inside the hood. Often happens with education services, the bells and whistles, but no alternator inside the hood, to keep students progressing from one level to the next.
AS for taking online courses in another province, no it is not allowed under the biggest school in NL, and a highly doubt it in the other boards. Try it twice, even though it would be at my expense. I wanted to improve my child’s writing, and Alberta had a couple of high school courses that fit the bill. According to the board staff, my child does not need any help, but not according to the school, and the teachers who say otherwise, as well as another 60 % of the student population needed help to produce clear coherent writing. Check out the bottom of the education system, what is stated and what is the reality are two different realities. A monopoly like the public education system, does not allow quality to get in the way of the private agendas and special interests of the monopoly. If it was not for the local teachers, a lot of students would have most of the doors of their future slammed, nailed shut, and sealed because of the agendas and special interests.
Common sense, a student weak in the 3 Rs, would have a difficult time with the current online courses geared for the accomplished students. But the answer is not to kick them back into the classroom, but to provide an environment to look after the weaknesses, at the same time looking after their education. A blended learning environment would provide it, but the public education is not prone to think outside the box when dealing with the individual students, or in the whole. About 6 years or so, I was pushing for the use of math software for my child, to be used at school. It is an excellent product, and still is, but the powers to be elected that my child could used the software at lunch hour and at the recess break. The software went unused, of no benefit to any students in the math class for the year. The following year, the powers to be decided the math software under narrowly defined parameters will be used in the classroom in the last 15 minutes or so, by selection of students by the teachers. The end result, the software went walking out of the door, never to be seen again. Why? The software was not doing its job according to them. It was a good thing, that my child was not dependent on the education services being provided, or was in great need of the math software. It was around that time, I started to subscribe to an online learning site, that was used to firmed up the foundation in the 3 Rs. Big hit with the kids at school, and used often to obtain the answers to their homework, and research. It was so popular, my child’s friends would come to visit at home, just to go on the site. Why? There were learning, and they were quite excited about it. It is how my child learned her root words, and since than it has help her to decipher meaning of unknown words, or figure out the meaning, by looking at the Greek and Latin root words.
And yes rural teachers are on board when it comes to on line learning and the many other promising digital technology, I would state, rural residents are the first ones to jump on board when it comes to the new technology, and government policy has provided the means to take advantage of the new technology. However boards and ministries are slow to adapt to this new reality, as well as the old reality of the advances being made in children’s learning and cognitive fields. In many ways backward and in many other different ways eager to advance the goals and agendas of the public education system at the expense of the students.
Nancy, again you misunderstand the fundamental purpose of unions. A private sector union isn’t concerned with “quality of products, customer satisfaction as well as repeated sales”. The private corporation is, but the role of the union is to represent its members – not the company, not the public, and not the regulators. That is true regardless if we are talking about a public sector union or a private sector union.
In terms of taking courses from another province, I believe your problem was you went to the school or the school board and asked. I suspect that they likely didn’t know any better and I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had been the first to ask. But the rules for your child taking an online course from Alberta (provided that they were able to receive Alberta credits from the online school in question) are the same rules that apply to a student who lived in Alberta last year and is physically moving to Newfoundland this year.
What its seems to be is that you’ve had a negative experience with your own child and one or more of their teachers and you’re now painting all teachers and the entire system with the same brush. I’m sorry that your child had a bad experience. Yes there are bad teachers out there. But that doesn’t mean that unions and the government regulation are the root of all evil and getting rid of both would solve all of the problems in education. In the same way that throwing open the doors to a completely unregulated K-12 online learning environment would also not solve the problems facing education. Jurisdictions have tried it. All you need to do is look at what happened in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio when K-12 online learning was first introduced to environments with no regulation. There was rampart corruption (by private sector companies like K12, Inc. – whom you praise in an earlier comment). The result were numerous court cases, criminal charges, the introduction of regulation, and – in the case of Michigan – a complete ban on cyber charter schools for a decade.
Online learning is certainly a hot button topic in educational policy-making and I have been thoroughly enjoying the recent exchanges with Dr. Michael Barbour. He brings a wealth of knowledge to this online conversation and we can all learn something from him on this vitally important matter.
I simply raise the big issues and try to provide a forum for informed discussion. Periodically, I make mistakes and stand corrected, on matters such as the number of students currently enrolled in Canadian K-12 online education. (Note that I have corrected an earlier comment with inaccurate numbers)
When I started Educhatter some 30 months ago, this is just the kind of wide-open, free-flowing, informed discussion I hoped to encourage. Labelling people and casting aspersions on people’s motives leads us to dead ends. Whether you agree with one another or not, this is what the larger educational should be all all about –identifying real problems and searching somehow for policy direction.
Paul, it isn’t labeling for the sake of labeling or even an attempt to insult or demean. It is important to understand the ideological position people bring to a discussion like this – if for no other reason than to gain a larger appreciation for that person’s perspective. The educational reform movement in the United States made little sense to me until I read Michael Apple’s Educating the “Right” Way: Market, Standards, God, and Inequality (see http://books.google.ca/books?id=VlFTPWHm-iUC&lpg=PP1&dq=Educating%20the%20right%20way&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false – and for a brief overview, see his article “Doing Things the ‘Right’ Way: Legitimating Educational Inequalities in Conservative Times” at http://twidlitoo.com/downloads/DoingThingsTheRightWay.pdf ).
Understanding the notion of neo-liberalism and neo-conservativism, and being able to see what that meant in light of the educational reform debate, brought a whole new understanding for me about what was at stake and why people pursued specific agendas. One of the problems that these conservative movements have brought with them is this belief that there is a right way and a wrong way (or that you are either with us or against us). One needs look no further than the discourse that occurs in the United States around education (and most issues) to see this front and center. Even our own federal Conservative Party have begun to perfect this style of politics.
The problem is that education isn’t a black and white issue, its all about shade of gray. But if you read the contributions from SOME of the people contributing to this thread there is a definite right way to go about this and there is MOST definitely a wrong way. And it isn’t that simple (although some times I do wish it were)…
Mr. Barbour you are putting words in my mouth, and making assumptions coloured by your natural biases judging people on their ideological positions and political lines.
I grew up in a union family, and I know the bad old days long before public sector unions became a force to reckon with, where dead rats were sitting in my father’s lunch pail, as well other union reps. If there is one thing I do know, private unions are very much concern about producing quality products, because it is their jobs on the line. I spent enough time, at the dinner table hearing about unions, their characteristics, to know that the union brass of any private or public union, may have different goals and agendas from their members, that is far removed from the duties of negotiations, and other administrative details in looking out for their members. In the case of the education system, nothing moves unless the policy can fit in within the terms of the contracts, and the best interests of the teachers. A barrier when it comes to online learning, as well as meshing online learning to the administrative rules and regulations, that is not the union’s fault, but sure freezes online learning to benefit students.
As for online courses from another province, I am not talking about physically moving to another province, but staying put and taking advantage of online courses of other provincial education systems, and not at the expense of the home province, but at the expense of the student. No such beast, but it should be a reality for high school students across Canada.
To your comments:
” I believe your problem was you went to the school or the school board and asked. I suspect that they likely didn’t know any better and I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had been the first to ask”
and
“What its seems to be is that you’ve had a negative experience with your own child and one or more of their teachers and you’re now painting all teachers and the entire system with the same brush. I’m sorry that your child had a bad experience. ”
As for the rest of the comments, putting words in my mouth. As for the two comments in the quotes, a typical response inferring I did not know any better, and implying that as a parent I am the problem, and this is on top of putting words in my mouth. My child has had a typical experience in a public education system that is loath to remediate the weaknesses of children and eager to move them through the system, without a solid foundation to stand on. A system, that is loath to assess and provide timely interventions that are effective to allow progress of the students. A system that is riddle with rules and regulations that actively prevents students from progressing to reach their full potential, and the only saving grace was the individual teachers who work around the rules and regulations to support what I was doing at home. The same work that should have been provided by the education system, that is loath to do the remediation of early intervention. I only paint the union brass, board staff that probably has not seen the inside of a classroom for years, and some of the ministry staff, of working for the best interests of those who work within, at the expense of the students and their education.
I would not call it a bad experience for my child, a nightmare at times but I handle it by giving my child a day off from the stress and the refusal of not teaching to her way of learning. Actually, it was quite the learning experience for my child, and has developed into a well-adjusted student, with the ability to think logically, thinking beyond the box, creative, and a student who questions the status-quo of the things that go on in a a school. I do get amuse when she points the hypocrisy of some rules and regulations of the board, and schools are force to follow. And she certainly has harsh words for the board and their new cheating policy, as well as the online learning policy and the actual set-up. It is the structure of the education system, as well as the systemic fault lines, and the completing agendas that actively works against the best interests of students and their futures.
As for parents rolling up their sleeves, I did my fair share, and more than my fair share, in a province where the union does not allow teachers to conduct private tutoring lessons on the side. The local teachers would have love to be paid $35 a hour, in an area where there is no private tutoring services, until recently. An out of work newly minted teacher, who could find no position, started his own tutoring business and is fully booked. I just get this sneaky feeling Mr. Barbour, that the type of parents that you are looking for to roll up their sleeves are the ones who are passive and accept the word of all those within the system, as the gospel, and the only ones to make the final decisions of their children are the educators because they have the expertise.
As Paul has stated in his last post, it is about identifying the problems and exploring policy options. In order to do it, the problems need to be identified first before the exploration of policy options. It is the identifying of problems at all facets, upside down, inside-out and outside-in, in the same manner that I did years ago, trying to have the simple garden variety reading disorder remediated in a timely fashion. Did not win the war on that cause, but I certainly acquired a deep knowledge on all kinds of things regarding education, and truly grew to respect the individual teacher versus the system and its arms who are working counter to the goals of the individual teacher and the goals of the students. Online learning is in a deep freeze, due to the agendas and interests of those who work within, or otherwise you would not use the tactic of dividing people on their ideological and political leanings to dismiss anything that does not gel with your current set of beliefs and values. It is a favourite tactic used by school boards, to keep parents in their place, as well as to deny education services over and above what is delivered in the classroom.
Nancy, I didn’t blame you as a parent. And I know that you weren’t taking about physically moving to Alberta, but taking an online course from Alberta and paying for it out of your own pocket. What I said was that I think that the school or school board gave you misinformation. When asked about this very issue for the 2010 “State of the Nation” survey, every single Ministry or Department of Education that responded indicated that they had no specific policy for online credits received from a school in a different province, but that they would treat is the same way they treat transfer credits for a student physically moving from one province to the next. So as long as the online school in Alberta was able to grant your child credit (i.e., they could produce a transcript from their Ministry of Education indicating that your child received a grade of X in this course), the Department of Education in Newfoundland and Labrador would treat it the same way they would treat a student from Alberta who had physically moved to Newfoundland and tried to transfer the credit. If there was an equivalent course, the child would receive credit. Should there be a smoother ay to do it than that? Probably, but to date the vast majority of provinces have yet to come up with specific regulations for K-12 online learning and these programs have to operate within the brick-and-mortar system.
It is interesting that you assume the experience that your child had is the norm for all children in the province. While Newfoundland and Labrador do have some challenges when it comes to education, it isn’t like you’re living in Detroit where only 25% of students graduate on time.
I also have to say that you’re dead wrong when you assume that:
“I just get this sneaky feeling Mr. Barbour, that the type of parents that you are looking for to roll up their sleeves are the ones who are passive and accept the word of all those within the system, as the gospel, and the only ones to make the final decisions of their children are the educators because they have the expertise.”
The only thing I ask of parents is that they don’t come with the belief that their child is infallible and that all of their child’s challenges are due to the actions or inactions of the teacher. It is kind of funny that when I was a student the automatic response when little Johnny or little Jill got into trouble at school was to trust the teacher 100% and blame the child, whereas today the majority of parents believe 100% of what comes out of their child’s mouth and end up blaming the teacher. Surely there must be some middle ground.
Finally, I echo Paul’s call for solutions. But in almost every comment you have made in this dialogue (both in response to me and everyone else you to have responded to), your solution is to break the hold that the union has on the education system because you clearly see that as a problem (e.g., “Ineffective practices is the bread and butter of the teachers’ unions and their contracts.”). The other prong to your proposed solution is to essentially rid the education system of what you deem as the establishment (e.g., “The use of technology in our schools, is very much dependent on those who work within the education system, which for the most part the system is loath to change their practices to treat the decaying heart of the education system. For the most part, window dressing is the solutions of the public education system, and it really shows in technology. The inefficient use, inappropriate uses of technology, and not using the technology to its full advantage to reach the full potential of students.”). The problem is that unless you move to some fascist dictatorship or one of the states that are currently busting their unions (which amounts to about two thirds of them at this stage), no proposal will be able to gain widespread acceptance or adoption without the support and cooperation of the teachers’ union. The same can be said of the educational established, from school districts to the Ministry of Education to Faculties of Education. I’ve yet to see you offer up anything that would even come close to bringing any of those groups to the table to actually consider an alternative. The only thing I’ve seen you advocate is to bring for profit corporations in and have them directly run schools (or at least online schools). In the US this has been referred to as the McDonaldization of public education, and as a native Newfoundlander I’d like a little bit more from my education system than the cheapest available widget.
In my last post, I stated that for any education policy to move forward, the union has to be on board. I am not stating solutions, nor even suggesting solutions, but are the solutions that I was driven to help my child, in an education system that is loath to remediate learning weaknesses of children. The computerized environment, the technology certain paved the way for my child to maintain a high B average within six months, considering she was was below two grade levels in math in grade 6, her writing processes and mechanics were poor, but amazingly enough, there was worst students than her in that so called inclusive classroom, when it came to writing. Now compared that to the two years spent in a SE math class prior to grade 6, obtaining the distinction of being called the whiz kid obtaining an average of 97 percent, doing math work two grades below, and absolutely did not represent a challenge to her. And than imagine what a teacher is thinking, when I did the impossible feat of getting her evicted from the SE class, only to be tossed back in the regular grade six class, without the accommodations and the paperwork stating her disability. All the teacher knew, no accommodations for this kid.
And by the way, by grade 7, I did end up speaking to the president of the union, who called, and throughly apologized for the public education system, as well as other people who hold important positions within the board and the ministries. Using the technology, and my affinity for being a packed rat, I supplied the hard copies of tests, work done by my child over the years, charts on her progress all wrapped up in legal terms of the responsibilities and duties that a public education is charge with. Far from being a parent who has whims and blames the teachers as you seem to think parents do, I provided the evidence of such things as hard copies of work, right from the very beginning starting in grade one, stating she needs help, but to no avail. Everything was ignored regarding my child, and I can only think of one reason why she denied help from the beginning, because she was passing. The technology, the digital tools help me to turned the tables, with my knowledge on math stats, as well as being well versed on number operations, I made the pretty colourful charts to clearly show and display the systemic fault lines of the public education system. It all started back on the cloudy rainy November day of a parent teacher interview and being told the first time I have no right to criticized the math curriculum, since I do not have a degree in math, or even to begin to understand the ways of a teacher and his or her instruction. We are talking about grade one math, and not some obscured math theory, such as the squeeze theory. I once had a kid who could add and subtract, and within two months of grade one, no longer could add and subtract single digits numbers.
But yes the above is typical experience for parents who dare to question the practices, policies and curriculum of the public education system. What you just read is only a tiny piece of the tip of the ice berg, and does not even begin to tell you the scope and breathe that I was driven to, to keep the doors of my child’s future slammed shut, nailed, and sealed off. In the process, or as I like to call it the ordeal, I stumbled upon excellent software, excellent resources on the web, and subscribed online learning sites, that I would recommend to any parent that thinks their child is in need of extra help. What is really ironic, years later I learned the most accomplished students in my child’s class were also provided software at home, as well as enrolling the accomplished students on one of the subscribed sites for online learning and to help with homework. Perhaps, I come from the school of hard knocks, but I earned each and every stripe when it comes to the technology of today, and earned the right to speak on technology based on my experiences and the success of my child, who is well on her way in realizing her dream of entering the field of forensics. But first as I always tell her, you need to improve on writing, and thankfully the local high school also sees it my way, but for all of the students. I must say, since the teachers have stepped in, progress has been made on that front, to where that I no longer worry about post secondary and their expectations of students to produce clear coherent writing in their essays and exams.
What I am objecting to, and I will used your own words, the McDonaldization offerings of the public education system, that does not used technology to offer education based on the individual student, their unique learning needs to reach their full potential. To do that, the people within the education system need to dropped their biases, suspend their belief systems, and start to listen to the users of the system,the wisdom and experiences and look at the final outcomes of students at every stage in K to 12. In order to make best use of the expertise of the educators, their time, the students’ time as well as making it as productive as possible, since the wild cards are the students, who can always put a wrench in the best laid plans and policies of an education system. And if that means calling for the expertise of private companies and individuals, so be it, Some of the best advice I ever received came from private individuals involved in the education field and at the other end of the education system, from the professors that lie outside of the education faculties in universities, who only know too well the poor state of the 3 Rs of their students. And that I am thankful, I was smart enough to listen, and heed their words, or otherwise my child would not be sitting in an advance math class. .
Nancy, it is clear that you have an axe to grind based on the experiences of your own child within the Newfoundland education system. An experience that you believe represents the majority of experiences of parents and children within the province.
In each of my responses I have tried to directly address the issues that you raise. Anytime I present a dichotomy, you automatically assume I am placing you in what you perceive as the negative of the two options (e.g., “Far from being a parent who has whims and blames the teachers as you seem to think parents do” – and yes, many parents do this. You only need read any of the research into generational differences and helicopter parents to see example after example of this – but at no point did I indicate that you were one of them).
While you say that you aren’t proposing solutions, but in each response you continually come back to the fact that technology-mediated learning and online learning is the answer. While you say in this most recent response that you believe that unions and the educational establishment need to be part of the solution, in almost every other response you have made in this thread you have blamed unions and the establishment for all of the problems in education and have indicated that it is only when we remove their influence will any of these issues be resolved (and even near the end of this most recent comment you fall back into that same mantra).
At this stage there is little to be gained from our continued discussion. No matter what examples I provide, no matter what research I point to, your opinions on this issue will not be influenced. Simply put, it is a waste of time to continue what has essentially become an exercise in trying to out-yell the other.
The Toronto Globe and Mail’s new series on “the Future of Education” promises to spark a much-needed “creative disruption” within the school system. Today’s lead article, “Pressing Reset on the Classroom” ( November 28, 2011), focuses on the “Flip Method” pioneered at Khan Academy and deserves serious discussion:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/primary-to-secondary/a-radical-approach-to-teaching-canadian-students-in-the-digital-age/article2251417/
Of all the authorities cited in the lead article, the only dissenting voice was that of Paul Taillifer, the new President of the Canadian Teachers Federation. He’s nervous about the Flip Method and wonders whether students can learn on their own without teachers providing the “clarifications.”
This is one Discussion Thread that has a life of its own (Smile)
There is always the pause button to hit, or the reset button.
Kids can learn, just asked them about their favourite celebrity, making all kinds of inferences. Why not the flipped classroom in math and perhaps some of the sciences?
What I really don’t get, is the current system from day one pushes independent learning the progressive method, and than go crazy when kids decide to learn without a teacher in the room.
““The reason students are struggling isn’t about finances or effort – it’s a structural issue,” he says. “If a school like ours can do this, it’s just the mindset that’s stopping others.”
Mr. Johnson is trying to change that mindset at his Kelowna school. He and two other teachers have helped flip senior math and biology classes, and he is tracking the impact on students. Next summer, he’ll present his findings at a conference on flipped classrooms open to all B.C. schools.
“I can’t say this is the silver bullet for education quite yet, but everything seems very positive,” he said. ”
A small miracle, a teacher thinks it is structural problem, and the mindset within the education system.
Looking for inspiration? The Toronto Globe and Mail’s final story on “The Future of Education” (December 2, 2011) features a list of Digital Learning Innovators in the classroom:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/primary-to-secondary/globe-readers-nominate-innovators—teachers-leading-classrooms-of-the-future/article2257387/
It’s amazing what can be accomplished when the technology and the Internet are utilized by teachers who are free to experiment and purposeful in their approach.
A November 26, 2011 story in The Washington Post addressed the question of whether the mushrooming of Virtual Schools is actually adversely affecting the quality of American public education:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/virtual-schools-are-multiplying-but-some-question-their-educational-value/2011/11/22/gIQANUzkzN_story.html
Full-day Virtual Schools are controversial because they do operate in a free market and outside the normal educational boundaries. In the United States, promoters of such enterprises are way ahead of the school system and that’s a far cry from the heavily regulated Canadian system.
What can we, as Canadians, learn from this latest American educational “crisis”? The Washington Post article provides this astute assessment:
“People on both sides agree that the structure providing public education is not designed to handle virtual schools. How, for example, do you pay for a school that floats in cyberspace when education funding formulas are rooted in the geography of property taxes? How do you oversee the quality of a virtual education?”
“There’s a total mismatch,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, who served on K12’s board of directors until 2007. “We’ve got a 19th-century edifice trying to house a 21st-century system.” (from The Washington Post)
None of this will surprise regular followers of Educhatter.
Today, the Society for Quality Education announced the publication of The Sky Has Limits: Online Learning in K-12 Public Education in Canada, my review of virtual education.
In the Media Release, Doretta Wilson offered this summary of the report and its findings:
“As students become more cyber-savvy and Apple proposes i-books to replace textbooks, online learning has fantastic potential to attract and retain learners, but there are challenges. Dr. Bennett found: “In spite of the tremendous advantages afforded by introducing online learning programs, significant barriers stand in the way of its natural growth and expansion. With the exception of British Columbia, the spread of online learning and virtual schools has stalled and, for the vast majority of Canada’s 5 million K to 12 public school students, the sky has limits”
The report’s findings dispute those of other Canadian studies in how the teaching profession views virtual education, “ Most provincial teacher unions show tepid support for online learning, holding fast to labour contract agreements which effectively limit online learning to a supplemental role in the K-12 public system.”
Among the other key findings:
· After enjoying an initial advantage, Canada has been overtaken by the United States in the rate of growth of online learning over the past two years.
· There is potential for governments to save money outside of traditional “bricks and mortar” schooling.
· Private provision of e-learning is becoming more innovative and is growing rapidly.“
For the full report, see http://societyforqualityeducation.org/parents/theskyhaslimits
It`s also posted on the SQE Blog and now open for comments.
The release of The Sky Has Limits report generated a Globe and Mail story (24 January 2011) by Education Reporter Kate Hammer.
For the full story, see:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-schools-falling-behind-in-online-learning-report-says/article2312713/
You will note that Dr. Michael Barbour and I have continued to debate the issue, this time in the pages of Canada’s national newspaper. (You read it first here on Educhatter!)
So far, the story has generated 76 comments, reflecting quite a range of opinions!
Dr. Michael Barbour seems to have taken an unusually keen interest in the SQE report, The Sky Has Limits. Perhaps that’s because it challenges some of his recent interpretation of the state of K-12 Online Learning in Canada. It is, as you may know, a literature review in a burgeoning field where he currently produces much of the research.
Contrary to his assumption, it is not “ideologically driven” but rather a much needed independent perspective. The public policy issue is too important to be left to the techies. Read the report – and judge for yourself!
We will know when Online Learning has matured as an academic field when different perspectives are welcomed, recognized, and open to fair comment.
In that respect, Educhatter has shown the way — opening the door and demonstrating a respect for those with differing opinions.