I’ve just been reading through some of the articles and papers that are a part of special issue of The High School Journal (December 1995/January 1996) that was developed on the Horizon site.
They can be found within the Projects page of the Horizon Site, under the heading Essays on The Future of Secondary Education.

There are some great reads here from authors including James Morrison and Andy Garvin who frequently appear on readings lists and links associated with the areas of education that I’m intertested in.

Three of the essays have particuarly taken my attention, the first being The Inquiry School: A Sketch of a High School for the Next Generation by David Marshak from Seattle University. This was of particular interest in terms of discussions we’ve been having in my workplace about the need to develop a disposition of Inquiry in students to prepare them for their future. Marshak bases his essay on the assertion that secondary schools are caught in a struggle between, on the one hand, a push for common standards for all students, and on the other, developing programmes that reflect the needs of learners in authentic ways. His solution is an Inquiry School:
a model for a high school that could bridge the polarity between these two perspectives and result in high school graduates who are both competent and knowledgeable according to a set of common standards and skilled, thoughtful, and lively self-directed learners.
In the essay Marshak outlines the six guiding principles for such a school, and even gets down to the detail of describing how the programme would operate, which includes two dimensions – a group programme and a mentor programme.

The second essay that caught my eye is titled Students as Producers: Using the World Wide Web as Publishing House by Richard Smyth from Hamline University. Smyth focuses on two cases to illustrate how teachers can assign collaborative writing assignments incorporating hypertextual principles of composition that require students to prepare texts to publish on the Web. There’s an interesting quote towards the end of the essay where the author refers to…

Ben Shneiderman (1992) calls for both “engagement,” which he defines as “interaction with people” (p. 18), and “construction,” which occurs when “students create a product from their collaboration” (p. 20). reference included in the essay

A third article of interest is New Possibilities for Teaching Diverse Populations in Tomorrow’s High School by Laurence R. Marcus and Theodore Johnson from Rowan College of New Jersey. This one has particular relevance in NZ where the focus on Diverse Learners is a key part of the Ministry of Education’s Schooling Strategy. Marcus and Johnson suggests that the effective use of instructional technology, along with the reconceptualization of the role of the teacher, can help students to achieve their potentials within heterogeneous settings in the high school of the future.

Article in a recent edition of Wyoming’s StarTribune.net titled Virtual School Hits Obstacles tells of the efforts of a local school district to open a ‘virtual elementary school’.

It’s an intriquing tale involving a commercial company who have developed the curriculum materials, the district that is promoting the use and the department of education who are opposing it. There is the predictable tug-of-war over students, with the district claiming they’re targetting home schoolers, and the department saying they can’t support the “poaching” of students from other districts.

Within the article itself however, two quotes made me think about where we’re at in NZ in the development of virtual schooling:

Defending the intention of the virtual school, a local principal is quoted as saying:

“We felt there was a real large number of students, whether they were home-school based or students in families that had mobility issues, that needed to have a consistent and high-quality education, and we wanted to provide that for them.”

This sounds a very plausible reason for starting such a school – similar focus on quality and opportunity that underpins the intentions of the efforts here in NZ. My comment would be, while these are laudable goals, the next move must surely be to provide evidence to support the “feelings” that are expressed here. For the promise of virtual schooling to be realised we’ve got to move past what we think is a good idea and begin gathering hard data to support the notion that students are receiving a better education and better educational opportunities as a result.

And on the matter of supporting the virtual school into the future, an official from the department is quoted as saying:

“For the school to continue in future years, the Legislature will have to pass a law allowing the Department of Education to fund virtual schools, and the department will have to write rules on how these schools are to be run.”

Here’s the real rub – the “rules” that govern how our existing (face to face) schools operate were developed in an era before virtual schooling was even conceived of. In New Zealand the regulations around how schools receive funding for students, and how staffing entitlements are worked out are all premised on the notion of schools as physical places of instruction, with students in classes taking courses in full year programmes etc. In my experience, any attempts so far to change or adapt these “rules” have been reactive, and approach virtual learning as problematic, rather than taking a more ‘green fields’ approach that truly tries to align a new set of ‘rules’ that will encourage and support the aspirations of virtual schooling as articulated in the previous quote. Let’s hope that is the approach they’ll take in Wyoming?

Interesting article in the News Tribune.com today titled “Virtual instruction, real learning” providing a ‘good news’ story about the impact of online learning opportunities for school age students in the US.

The article reports on the small, but growing trend among students in Washington State public schools – . The number of students studying online and receiving course credit from public schools has more than tripled over the past five years. Some interesting examples to illustrate this, plus a useful list of characteristics of successful learners in an online environment at the end.

This supports the view I have of what is happening in New Zealand. I’ve recently been collating some information from two of the video conferencing clusters, OtagoNet and Cantatech , to explore how well these clusters have performed in terms of the retention and achievement of students learning in this environment.

Initial analysis of the data reveals that schools in each of these clusters are seeing a 30% improvement in the retention of students at the senior level of the school over the academic year. In addition, achievement rates are between 68% – 78% of the total number of achievement standards that are available in the courses offered.

For a more complete picture of the extent of involvement in clusters such as these in NZ check out the Virtual Learning Network website which brokers courses between and among the clusters.

The Tribune article also refers to the benefits of online learning for those who are unable to participate in regular schooling for a variety of reasons (health, beliefs, phobias, transience etc.) Again, similar experiences exist in NZ, with innovative online programmes such as LearnNow involving students from around the world in thematic, collaborative projects that are mentored and assessed by a teacher. In addition to being used by a number of individuals who are unable to attend school, the LearnNow programme is also being used within a number of schools to provide an enrichment/extension programme for more able students.