ODYSSEYWARE

I’m reminded of the commercials on the television about the most uncommon areas users are able to use the internet around the world, due to satellite internet connections when I read this article.  Because online courses are portable, allowing students to access content from nearly anywhere, many rural districts that have access to broadband connections are making the wise move to online courses.  As this article illustrates, this option is gaining steam quickly.

The term is “distance learning” and it encompasses just about any class in which the teacher is not physically in the classroom. Distance-learning courses include interactive-TV classes — where classrooms at several locations are linked through video feed — and online courses in which students attend virtual class through a computer.

Another important area where online learning can help rural districts is by introducing highly specialized instructors to teach courses in small, rural districts that might not otherwise be able to afford a teacher in a particular discipline nor fly them in to teach the classes.  With online learning, you can have that option at a much reduced rate.

Games have a wide utility in learning.  For years students have learned how to build civilizations or traverse the Oregon Trail through games.  These opportunities, while found, also illustrate key concepts in unique ways.

This small school in Michigan is attempting to blend similar concepts, education and fun, to help students struggling under normal class circumstances.

In order to do so, they must test their skills in everything from math to English.
The second- through fifth-grade students are all enrolled in Study Island, a state assessment preparation test they can access via the Internet from school and home.

“The games reinforce their skills and they have fun,” school Principal Gary Paquet said.

For those that remember Oregon Trail during school, it was a nice change of pace from the normal class routine and was certainly not a watered version of what you could have been learning.

“They’re all independently working, they’re all actively engaged, you can’t always say that,” he said.

OdysseyWare creates online curriculum for students in grades 3-12 with cutting edge technology and internet portability for students in any location where an internet connection is present.  It is for that reason students at Columbia-Brazoria ISD in West Columbia, Texas are using this great curriculum for their educational needs.

“We’re in the 21st century, so we need to use 21st century technology,” C-BISD Curriculum Director Sena Yates said.

Columbia High School students looking to graduate early, make up some credits, get a general educational development or free up spaces in their schedule for other courses now can earn credits through the Internet, Yates said.

Students in Arkansas will have a greater opportunity to finish their online curriculum homework on the bus as many school buses in the state will begin using wireless internet connections.

The project, known as the Aspirnaut Initiative, gives some high-performing students laptops or video iPods and sets them up with online courses and educational videos during their long bus rides to and from school — a round trip that often starts before dawn and ends after dark.

With mobile devices reaching 3G speeds now and online curriculum accessible from any location complete with an internet connection, students will now have the opportunity to use their commute on buses to study rather than throw paper airplanes.

With the rise in mobile text devices like Amazon’s Kindle and the iPhone, many publishers are converting their material to these technologies and re-packaging classics like Dr. Seuss for younger generations in formats that are now coming into vogue.

The jump in digital sales is strongly related to the increased popularity of the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader and even the iPhone. Once readers have bought the hardware, digital books are much cheaper than hardcovers or even paperbacks. You can get a hardcover of Wally Lamb’s “The Hour I First Believed” for $17.97 on Amazon, for example, but it costs only $9.99 on the Kindle. And “100 Words to Make You Sound Smart” is $5.99 in print but only $2.99 in Apple’s App store.

Now all we have to do is put textbooks with high graphic demonstrations to really help students learn!

Schools across the country might soon have the opportunity to broadcast all of their high school games via the web, with Webcast America, a new opportunity created by a student in Minneapolis-St. Paul that allows schools to reap broadcast royalties while giving students valuable production experience.

Students get paid — and acquire valuable experience — when they film events, do play-by-play sports commentary and webcast events live on the Web, free to viewers. Parents never have to miss one of their children’s games. And it’s an opportunity for schools to showcase their offerings. Events are streamed live on the Webcast America website, www.webcast50.com, then archived for a year.

In America’s heavily cash-strapped schools, this presents a potential revenue source for the schools as well as many students who do not have the time for a part-time job.

When a school signs up, Webcast America invests about $3,000 for camera equipment, wireless hookups and a laptop. Students, called “webheads,” are trained and paid $10 for each event they cover.

Data, the lifeblood of effective trouble shooting, has been a traditional problem for schools that struggle with student transfers and effective accounting.  Online education, however, presents a unique solution where students can carry ‘virtual backpacks’ with their own unique scoring data and achilles’ heels the teacher can trouble shoot more efficiently.

Imagine the research possibilities if every student in the country carried a “virtual backpack” stuffed with statistics on his or her entire educational history.

The data, traveling with students as they moved from school to school, could be used to update parents on their children’s learning progress, register students in school, or import information when they moved to a new city or entered college.

The health care industry has begun a similar, as equally challenging, path as well with medical record sharing.

Researchers at Florida State University have found that students, due to their inherent interest in digital culture are actually becoming more responsible and self-directed in their learning while using these tech-tools.

The three-year study was part of a $50 million project on digital and media learning funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Altogether, researchers involved in the project interviewed more than 800 children and young adults and conducted more than 5,000 hours of online observations. Tripp also is one of the co-authors of the final report on the project, which will be published by MIT Press as a book called “Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media.”

Because items like iPod and social networking sites are fun and part of their entertainment culture, researchers found that students are more likely to pursue answers to scholarly questions through these mediums and learn about things they might never have sought through textbooks or library indexing systems.

The study found that young people’s learning with digital media is often more self-directed, with a freedom and autonomy that is less apparent than in a classroom setting. The researchers said youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from each other than from adults.

For critics who say kids are not interested in learning and are apathetic, this is an interesting study.

Students that might have questions on challenging problems in all disciplines have recourse: YouTube.  As this article from ESchool News documents, students are finding many answers to school’s toughest questions online and can learn on their own.

Nissim typically scours the video-sharing Web site for clips of bands and comedy skits. But this time she wasn’t there to procrastinate on her homework. It turned out YouTube was also full of math videos. After watching a couple, the psychology major says, she finally understood trig equations and how to make graphs.

Try it yourself.  I am currently brushing up on homeostasis!

Michigan, while facing daunting state budget deficits and the woes of Detroit’s car makers, is quietly leading the way in the digital world of education, second only to Florida.  By mandating online classes for students as a prerequisite for graduation, Michigan is meeting the challenges of a 21st century education head on, and it is paying off according to a newly released study.

High school graduation requirements mandate Web-based learning, and in 1998, state lawmakers established Michigan Virtual University (MVU), a portal to more than 150 online courses. Included in the courses are 19 advanced-placement offerings and six foreign languages that are accessible to high school and post-secondary students across the state.

Teachers in Michigan are touting the program as it has improved communication between students and teachers and also made lesson planning much easier as teachers have a breadth of material to pull their lesson plans from.  According to this teacher, the program is doing wonders in his classroom.

As students face increasing pressure to juggle demanding course loads with extracurricular activities and jobs, online classes offer much-needed flexibility, said Goudie, and are likely to help school districts curb dropout rates.

Online learning also moves beyond textbooks alone to increase the breadth of source material from which to teach, Goudie said.