Digital Directions - Fall 2012 - (Page 34)

Educators, a professional association in California, has aims already of becoming a nationally recognized credential. And Mike Lawrence, the executive director of the Walnut Creek-based group, says the implementation of the common standards will help ensure that the curriculum for the certification program is widely applicable. “It was very much in our minds as we embarked on the project,” Lawrence says. “Without a common bar to demonstrate proficiencies, it’s difficult to know whether [the certification is] going to work for your online program.” Lawrence acknowledges that policy discussions are a big distance away from getting states to recognize certification from other states, but says he sees the adoption of the standards as a potential catalyst in that process. “Just the fact that you have states talking to each other with a common language for the first time ever, that opens doors,” he says. QUESTIONS TO ASK 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Will states open policies to a common teacher certification? Can virtual schools afford to fund proctored exams? Do virtual schools have an edge on teaching to the standards? Will standards lead to more educational choice? Emphasizing Innovation At the Council of Chief State School Officers’ Innovation Labs Network, the strategic-initiatives director, Linda Pittenger, is trying to drive some of those discussions and open those doors, not only around online learning, but also around the broader spectrum of educational innovation. (The Washingtonbased CCSSO partnered with the National Governors’ Association to lead the common-standards movement.) The Innovation Labs Network is a nine-state coalition supported by the CCSSO that Pittenger says will address challenges relating to how to supplement the next-generation assessments created to test the common core by two separate consortia, how to personalize education while meeting those standards, and how to expand educational options for students and educators. Pittenger, who previously served as the director of secondary and virtual learning for the Kentucky Department of Education and the state’s virtual school, says none of the nine states in the network is obligated to take a particular approach toward solving any of those problems. The idea of the model instead is to enable a quicker and more reliable Are standards-driven digital projects helping online learning? ? subject-matter expert on the common core for the FLVS, suggests that virtual education may be a good fit for standards that place a greater emphasis on skills application and collaboration. Focus on Effectiveness For the past several months, Dulgar and her team have been delving into the content of the school’s courses in English/ language arts and mathematics, the two subject areas of the new standards. They’ve been cross-checking to see where that content covers the necessary standards that are part of the course, and noting where gaps exist between current content and future standards. During that process, Dulgar says, she’s become increasingly confident that the transition, while spurring some content changes, will in general be a natural one. “The live lessons we do, the discussionbased assessments we do, ... those pieces are definitely going to help us make the shift,” she says. “I think the shift will cause us to change the way we do some of those things, but it will just be better.” That’s not to say virtual schools won’t encounter their own difficulties during the adoption process, says Patrick of iNACOL. For example, the idea of having to give proctored online assessments could present funding challenges for virtual schools that have traditionally not had to build in the costs of facilities or face-to-face personnel, she says. For better or worse, she adds, the standards may also provide a more thorough and comparable measure of the quality of online and blended learning offerings at a time of increasing questions about the quality of online learning content. “Now we can start to focus resources on high-quality curricula that are similar across 45 or 46 states,” Patrick says. “The outcome of that is to start to be able to look at online courses and modules of online courses and value-judge them on effectiveness. “We could talk about that before, but it’s been difficult to do when there’s so many disparate standards.”n exchange of information and insights from any efforts at reinventing a portion of a particular state’s educational system. But Pittenger sees online and blended learning as a likely vehicle for some of the states in the coalition of Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. She says this is particularly an answer for increasing educational options and allowing a more flexible course of study. “You’re looking at more digital, open educational resources and modularity,” Pittenger says. “And I think this is one of the reasons that virtual learning, and online learning, is such a natural part of these kinds of environments. ... These are all characteristics of the sort of learning environments we are looking for.” The Florida Virtual School, the largest state-sponsored online school in the country, is having to rethink its curricula because of the common standards—just like all schools, virtual or brick-and-mortar, in the participating states. Cindy Dulgar, a curriculum specialist and the resident 34 >> www.digitaldirections.org  http://www.digitaldirections.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Directions - Fall 2012

Digital Directions - Fall 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
DD Site Visit
Bits & Bytes
Shifting to Adaptive Testing
Tailoring the Tests To Special Needs?
Choosing the Right Device
Bandwidth Demand Rising
Are You Ready?
Where’s the Money?
High-Priority Virtual PD
Online PD Destinations
Virtual Ed. Dives In to the Common Core
Open Education Resources Surge
Security

Digital Directions - Fall 2012

http://dd.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/dd_2013summer
http://dd.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/dd_2013winter
http://dd.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/dd_2012fall
http://dd.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/dd_2012springsummer
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com