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Press Release: Virtual High School Courses Receive California Approval

February 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Virtual High School Courses Receive California Approval

Students in California can now take Virtual High School’s high-quality Advanced Placement® (AP), language and social sciences courses online from their school or home.

February 15, 2012, Maynard, MA – Virtual High School Global Consortium (http://www.goVHS.org), the pioneer of K-12 online learning and course design for teachers, today announced that 16 of their award-winning online courses have been approved to meet requirements for admission to the University of California. High schools in California can now enroll their students in individual courses to expand their curriculum or easily overcome scheduling challenges.

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Coopersville High Joins Virtual High School Consortium

February 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

MAYNARD, MA (WHTC) – Coopersville High School is among 25 new schools that have been added to the Virtual High School Global Consortium. The non-profit collaborative, based in Massachusetts, provides access to more than 400 online courses delivered co-synchronously and taught by trained, experienced consortium instructors. Coopersville joins Holly as the only Michigan high schools participating among 676 in the US and 43 countries.

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Parents to D-Y district: Offer more, fight less

February 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

SOUTH YARMOUTH — Parents who have removed their children from the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District have some advice for school officials: Focus more on academic programs, including languages, make classroom sizes smaller and stop squabbling over the budget.

Parents made these points in an online school choice survey that the district conducted to see why students left for other schools.

The online survey, which ran from October to December, got only 32 responses, or 6.6 percent of 480 students who left the district, mainly to pursue school choice or charter school opportunities, said Carol Woodbury, D-Y regional school superintendent. The most recent figures available on the school district’s website show 3,241 students in the district as of October 2010.

“I wish I had 50 or 60 percent that responded,” she said. But Woodbury said she believes school officials can learn from concerns cited by parent respondents.

The district offers accelerated and innovative programs for students in grades 4 and beyond, including advanced placement courses at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School and virtual high school courses in subjects such as Latin.

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Any interested School Committee candidates out there??

January 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

e) Ultimately, my opinion is that we need to do more to embrace the multiple different online learning systems, to provide a more enriching curriculum while still keeping costs under control. We already do some such programming, through Virtual High School at SHS, and our partnerships with WPI and Stanford at the middle schools, but can do far more. By embracing the new non-traditional methods of delivering information, we can keep our costs in check, while leveraging our way to an infinitely higher level of learning. Many districts around the nation use such techniques, partnering with other local towns and universities to augment their in-class instruction.

(f) I want to find ways to provide top notch programming and services, without charging people fees upon fees upon fees. A parent in our town with three kids in school could easily be paying $3000 in fees alone, between $500+ for buses, $800 for sports, more for activity fees, admission to sports events, music lessons, busses to the speech tourney, etc. I have often felt that this creates an inherent imbalance between those who can afford all the things they want, and those who cannot, and think that fees, quite simply, need to begin to go down, and then vanish, in my opinion – even if that means making harder choices in other areas.

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Virtual High School Expands Students’ Options

January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

No one at Canton High School teaches “Investing in the Stock Market” but that didn’t prevent senior Bryan Fitzpatrick from taking it this year.

Fitzpatrick is one of 18 students at the high school taking online courses through Virtual High School Inc.

For the courses, students log into a website and receive instructions from a certified teacher, interact with other students, submit their work, “discuss” ideas and more.

Students and staff said the courses have several advantages, one of the most obvious being that students can study topics the district either can’t afford to offer or doesn’t provide due to limited student interest.

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Virtual High School creates chief learning officer job

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

At the same time, VHS named John Englander as the new director of Curriculum & Instruction. Englander previously worked as the associate director for online learning at Facing History and Ourselves, an international educational and professional development non-profit organization in Brookline. Previously, he was a designer for VIS Corp. and Big Mind Media. Englander received a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University and lives in Acton.

Virtual High School was born out of a partnership between Hudson Public Schools and the Concord Consortium. In 2006, it celebrated its 10-year anniversary.

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AP for all at Barnstable?

January 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Barnstable High School has taken another step toward improving student education.

In a special presentation during the Jan. 10 school committee meeting, BHS principal Pat Clark, vice principal Scott Pyy and math coordinator Kristen Harmon announced that the high school is among 26 finalists in the Massachusetts Math and Science Initiative, a program that aims to include as many students as possible in taking higher-level Advance Placement (AP) courses.

According to Clark, Barnstable is one of 26 finalists hoping to be awarded one of 12 MMSI slots.

At present, Barnstable has 300 students taking 21 total AP classes, 17 in traditional sit-down classrooms and four via Virtual High School.

The MMSI program, with its emphasis on classes in science, technology, engineering and math, will make it possible for Barnstable to expand its AP course offerings, include more students in AP courses and allow for the creation of pre-AP classes for students at the Intermediate School level.

“It definitely is an opportunity to elevate the levels of academic rigor at Barnstable High School that exist right now,” Pyy said.

The Massachusetts-based initiative comes from the National Math and Science Initiative, created in 2006 to close achievement gaps seen in students at the collegiate level, particularly in science and math.

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AMSA’s Mark Vital Garners Most Votes for Patch’s ‘Teacher of the Year’

December 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Soon after Ms. Carlson offered me the position at Marlboro High, I passed my MTELs and the subject tests for both business and English. In addition, last year I obtained an additional M.Ed in Curriculum and Instructional Technology from Framingham State. I am also certified to teach online high school classes through Virtual High School in Maynard.

At AMSA, I teach 6th and 7th grade ELA and world literature. The curriculum at AMSA focuses on the classics (Greek and Roman mythology—reading the Iliad, Odyssey and the Aeneid), which I love to share with my students.

 

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Tough Times on virtual learning?

December 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A 50 percent “churn” rate is unacceptable, and that Pennsylvania is not insisting on answers suggests that they need to improve their public policy. And while Saul’s wrong on the kinds of students who may benefit from digital learning, we would be wise to listen to disgruntled K12 Inc. staff members when they

say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program[.]

As the Massachusetts legislature thinks through this issue, it has to pay special attention to the fee structure and timing. Here the public model in Florida may provide important lessons in as much as there is no payment made to the Florida Virtual School until the student completes the course with a satisfactory grade.

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Some lessons for virtual learning

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There is so much energy in the virtual learning space right now, with a number of products that are maturing and others that are continuing to grow exponentially. The free Khan Academy has provided almost 100 million exercises, now boasts about 3.5 million discrete users, and is growing at a rate of about 300,000 users a month (with the pace of growth increasing). That opens up all kinds of possibilities in terms of partnerships, branding and funding. That product is going worldwide fast, and branching out into many new academic areas.

Getting the promise of digital learning right is going to be a challenge on a number of fronts. One challenge is that the two tons of money going into building and marketing product are not necessarily focused on high-quality academics. The general public has gotten so used to a low-quality public education product that their expectations may not be altogether high. I am willing to bet my best necktie that a look at the American users of Khan Academy, for example, will tell you that most of the users are from wealthier homes. These are homes that are more used to high-quality academics, homes where hard work and self-direction are more the norm, or wealthier homes where kids just are not fitting into the rubric of the traditional school.

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