District Administration - March 2007 - (Page 46)

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For instance, check beyond the syllabus to understand Schools in Richmond, Va., these tips meant he wound up both purchasing and creating his own courses. He purchased courses with narrow focuses such as Pearl Harbor or women of the 21st century, which did not draw many students, but more importantly, he developed in-house broader curricula such as algebra, health and ﬁtness using a standard multimedia platform, which draw on the highest level of excellence when it comes to interaction between the online teacher and student. T he biggest myth, of course, is that a good classroom teacher can automatically become a good online instructor. But just as you can’t take text from the traditional classroom, throw it online and call it a course, neither can you put teachers into this setting without proper training. In many cases, they need to have learned how to work online. Universities such as Villanova and Wisconsin have degrees and certiﬁcate programs based on the principles and practices of distance learning. But real change needs to take place in the teachers’ mindsets. “T hey have to learn they are no longer standing and delivering,” Pascarella says. “They have to know how to create interactivity and discussion, because they can’t see who is squirming in their seat, who has their head down, who has their hand up.” Pascarella models the traits he expects from virtual school teachers “We look for teachers who base their success on the success of their students and do not believe in a bell curve.” —Julie Young, president and CEO, Florida Virtual School why the course was created, to ensure its lessons match what your district needs to teach students on the subject, and browse through the attached student chat rooms to consider how well the teachers encourage thoughtful communication. For Gabe Pascarella, assistant director of coordinated studies for the Chesterﬁeld County Public a much wider base of students. Online Teacher Support Pa r t ner i ng with a third party to provide content certainly solves some start-up hurdles; however, simply asking students to enroll at a Web site—and wishing them good luck with the course—doesn’t ensure a successful virtual program. It’s up to district administrators to ensure ADVICE FROM THE TRENCHES Here are nuggets of wisdom that school administrators have about starting a virtual school. • Make sure your program is supported. Ensure your school board and faculty understand and support virtual courses, says John G. Flores, CEO of the United States Distance Learning Association. “You have to reach out to all the stakeholders involved to get their input, or the project isn’t going anywhere,” he says. “Make them part of the planning process and show how ultimately a virtual school beneﬁts them as a school district from a student’s perspective, a parent’s perspective, a teacher’s perspective and an administrator’s perspective.” • Start small. If most students are failing an online course, it doesn’t mean they can’t achieve success. “It means that somehow the support mechanisms are not in place for these students,” says Sharnell Jackson, chief elearning ofﬁcer for Chicago Public Schools. She revamped how the district structures its staff and training for the virtual school, and limited the number of students allowed to enroll in classes in schools that had a large failure rate. She also developed a prerequisite course to determine 46 March 2007 if students could handle such a course’s rigors and requirements. It’s part of a larger plan to avoid the “too much, too soon” principle. “Encourage the gradual growth of enrollments while monitoring student progress to ensure that students are not outstripping your capacity to serve them online,” Jackson notes. • If it’s not working, change it. “One of the things we believe very strongly is that if something isn’t working, change it,” says Julie Young, president and CEO of the Florida Virtual School. She originally offered three enrollment periods each year, which led to a long waiting list of students who wanted to take classes but were locked out because they didn’t sign up in time. So she switched to a continuous enrollment policy that allows students to enroll in classes 24/7, 365 days a year, rather than shoehorn their needs and schedules into arbitrary deadlines. “So often in our traditional education environment, we realize we’ve outgrown something in February but wait until the following school year to change it,” she notes. “But our virtual school doesn’t have start and stop dates.” District Administration virtual.inddJH.indd 6 2/13/07 11:34:28 AM Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - March 2007

Contents
Editor's Letter
Update
Inside the Law
Curriculum Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Friday Night Fever
Creating an Effective Virtual School Program
Hunting for Talent
Multimedia Man
Do These Web Sites Work?
Finding Funds for Student Laptops
Curriculum Crassifieds
Gearing Up for Science Assessments
New Products
Computer Literature
Speaking Out
Principal Opinion
The Online Edge
Calendar of Events
Problem/Solution
Research Corner

District Administration - March 2007