Online+Classes

Online Classes Facilitator: Colin MacMahon: Rye—Consortium Member of OSG. Year long process. New teacher, tech savvy. Presented her class at tech director’s conference. Virtual classroom via Moodle Class: never met as class; fully online; full credit English; only juniors allowed; Assignments: posts> changed all types of assessments; blogs: generate and respond; podcasts; everything submitted online; video conferencing with ubu (six people at a time; teacher with set times available; able to get girls to design own assessments> compare/ contrasts, film classes.   Logistics: tech director was the go to person. Could not go to English teacher during the day.    School is behind because quiet girls are not quiet here. Loud girls still loud. Girls liked everything was permanent, could review. Video sessions recorded but not on the class site on moodle. Girls could access for review. Class was more contemplative because it was permanent. Much less of “I agree”—allowed for the second half of “but”.    Blended courses: WH post WW2 course. 2 periods in school. 1 period on line. Talk about what is going on. 2D, 1 in school, 3 outside school (could be turn in work or respond). Another course: 1 tri in school, 1 trimester on line. Will offer 2nd online English course. For 10/11. Allows for group work online. SO—what was next step? Review OSG. Started to review classes. Presented to teachers. Economically, makes sense. Can’t do 3 people classes anymore, except maybe in upper language. All courses are taught by key teachers at the OSG schools. Teachers offer classes for semester. Logistic: full credit on transcript, bring in as component of transcript or added. Elective: they pay. IF continuation of course we can not offer: school pay. OSG: individual enrollment. ? summer courses? Will it allow advancement? OSG thinking is bridge classes to help girls be ready for baseline classes. Enrichment versus credit. ? who monitors the students? Maybe a tech person for student at school. Conversastion about OSG ; view course setup. Allows for more teacher control. How setup at school? How much teacher setup? To do self-design within the school and complement with OSG? Are there MS programs out there ? Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Aleks.com, Indiana The idea is not for student to pick up book and learn by self. Teacher driven, feedback given. Still need to have sense of independence and desire to learn. Questions about parent access to grade book Parent reaction to girls taking online classes at : hesitant, wanted sense of time, why online. Who sees it. Need to let parents know girls already on computer all the time. How are they going to learn if teachers not there. Once girls got into, no worries. This year no issues. 10-11 doing it. ?any written guidelines? Must have regular course expectations. Acceptable use policy in effect. Have not felt need beyond that. In other courses have virtual submission. ?Does it allow for advancement in subjects? Take courses out of their age level? ?Do you allow greater number of courses than normally would? No protocol> by student. Schedule change at school to allow it. Respond to need to let girls sleep. So not really let girls fill in time with more work. Quality controi also involves big levels of trust. What are the implications when a good teacher moves? Goes on maternity leave? What will department chairs think about/ monitor. Are all teachers at moodle at same stage? School put hold on moodle because transitioning to another course management system. Use it as they are comfortable for virtual classroom. Summer reading was on NING (Holy Child schools). So when came in, not doing summer reading. Ninth graders did the electronic after their bootcamp for technology. !0-12 did far more. Ubu. Holy Child going to Haiku because of OSG. Moodle, Blackboard, are options. Sharepoint and Moodle. Bringing to teachers: bring first to ones who are going to be receptive. Quick to pick up stuff. Praised them and celebrated them. Head celebrated. Everyone else needs to be awake. Have presentations at faculty meetings. Demonstrate to department chairs. ENO boards : metal boards. No wires. All the technology is in the stylus. Everything a smartboard does but better. Flexible and movable (recalibrate projector). Use a flashdrive into computer—connects projector and computer. Teachers got training. Haiku pricing. By teacher, for schools/ by student. Costs: yearly maintenance, FA kids. Maybe a shift in staffing? Not a lot of kids taking it yet. Key is that cap out the class. UNC: many first level languages not being offered as a sit down class. Need to take it online. Piece of it: spend money on more rich curriculum. What would it be for HS to generate opening level classes in this way? Is this finallty going to open up second half of senior year because academics are done—experiential ed programs. Will the desire to complete HS earlier be a consequence? Are we keeping kids in school for the money? Should Independent schools create the gap year as the senior year—become that to make us value- added? OSG: executive director, Board (designated members of consortium); advisory board (heads of all the schools).