TECHNOLOGY & EDUCATION DIGEST
Digest No. 98-1 -- January 15, 1998
A Moderated Mailing List
Steve Wildstrom (steve_wildstrom@businessweek.com), Moderator

Return to Technology & Education

[Several posts on Virtual High School programs, following up on the Business Week program on the Concord Consortium program:]

Will Fitzhugh (fitzhugh@tcr.org) writes:

I hope you will look for Cyber High School on the Web. I believe it is older than the Virtual High School and did not rely on a huge federal technology grant to get started. I think it was based in Ojai, California.

Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review, http://www.tcr.org

I just visited the VHS (vhis.concord.org) site and found it very interesting. I know of two other similar ventures in California.

I think our biggest challenge in dealing with this new electronic space is our natural tendency to impose on it our experience of the physical space. For in-stance in the Philosophy statement of VHS it states, "The ability to create as-signments but make them invisible to students enables course developers to re-strict students from learning activities or accessing assessments until specific course levels have been met. This type of flexibility of design allows teachers the control they might fear losing in a virtual classroom."

Having been both a teacher and administrator I understand where that statement originates, but I think we are limiting not only the learners (students in ver-nacular), but those who are providing learning opportunities. We educators have taken each "new" technology and forced it into our 19th Century structure in-stead of looking at what potential there is to use the technology to develop true "individual learning" opportunities. As long as I've been in education we have talked about meeting the individual needs of learners and how different we all are in our learning styles. Yet, when the opportunity arises to provide those opportunities, we fall back on the tried and not so true.

It will be interesting to watch these efforts as time progresses and we become more comfortable with the idea of using the technology to do what some of us have dreamed of for many years... designing and implementing learning opportuni-ties for multiple intelligences and learning styles.

K...

Keith D. Vogt
President
Telis Foundation
www.telis.org

Saw you posting asking for replies from those working with distance learning projects. I am one of the VHS teachers and also work with another project, the NASA Classroom of the Future, Wheeling Jesuit College, Wheeling WVa. www.cotf.edu. They have numerous online courses and also modules for teacher and student usage. Excellent resource, check them out.

CJ Rodkey

Thank you for your excellent article "The World Wide Classroom" (BW, December 29, 1997)

You may be interested in two things:

1 - Learning Space is being used by Monash Mt Eliza b-school to deliver some of its mba courses

2 - the company I work for as an education consultant has created its website INSIDE LS so that visitors can see what we're talking about they can also have a free go at LS activities the site is at http://www.corporatesystems.com.au

sincerely

james moulder
monash mt eliza business school
melbourne, australia
IDD 61 3 9540 3736
corporate systems pty ltd
IDD 61 3 9548 0704

I am responsible for bringing a distance learning program on line in a Florida community college. I would like to talk to any one else who has been through this experience.

Thank you,

Chris Collins
Manatee Community College
Bradenton, FL

Schools interested in setting up low-cost networks, incorporating both current equipment and aged Apple II's should check out www.spacs.k12.wi.us/manual/preface/TOC.html

In the Kentwood School District, Kentwood, Michigan we have taken a route for computer education that has moved us forward quickly. Rather than set up a com-mittee to develop a computer curriculum as most schools seem to do, we discov-ered Future Kids.

Future Kids is a company that provides computer training to the general public through local training centers. They focus on kids and have a terrific program. We investigated their program and discovered that they had a complete package for elementary schools. Our staff reviewed the materials and the concepts being taught and agreed wholeheartedly that this was the way to go.

In less time than most schools figure out what they should do, we had a well thought out program going. Teachers who came into the inservce for Future Kids were scared and nervous, some to tears. At the end they were excited and "re-born" as teachers.

We have also installed Smart Labs 2000 in our middle schools and high school. It is our believe that we are not computer curriculum experts and should not be in the business of designing it. There are people that have the experience and buying there success has proven very valuable for our kids.

Ron Brown
Trustee, Board of Education

Here's another take on the laptops for students idea, this time from Apple.

Check out the web posting at http://ed.info.apple.com/education/promos/one2one/ for more information on Apple's eMate One to One Program, which pairs students with these small mobile computers in a one-to-one student to computer ratio. Several districts across North America are already implementing this model using the new eMate mobile computer from Apple, with a great deal of success. Success stories will also shortly be posted on the Apple site, so keep checking.

Bruce Morrow (bmorrow@panix.com) writes:

Apple has released the 1998 Education Grant program guidelines. The 1998 program builds on the successes and experiences of your programs and adds a new focus.

The 1998 program will continue to call for partnerships between a K-12 school and a staff development institution. A new focus for this year is on how a distributed learning environment can provide learning opportunities for anyone, anytime, anyplace.

The guidelines are available at the two web sites listed below. Please share this information with other educators who may be interested in using distributed learning tools and applying for a grant.

Happy Holidays,

Don Zundel

------------

The 1998 Apple Education Grant guidelines are available at the following web sites:

K-12 Web Site:

select Technology In Learning, then Education Grants

Higher Education Web Site:

select Special Programs, then Apple Education Grants

Ed Tech Tools - Quizmaker 2.0
Free on Line Testing and Educational Module Development

The Maui Educational Technology Research and Development Center (METRD) an-nounces the release of Quizmaker 2.0 and the new on-line service - Ed Tech Tools - for educators.

Creating interactive quizzes on the Internet has now been made easy. In a simple three-step process, QuizMaker 2.0 takes your quiz information, and your ques-tions and answers, and then uses them to compile a quiz file and answer key file which are stored on the server. No knowledge of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is necessary.

Features include:

-- Online and mail-in quiz correction methods
-- Support for multiple choice, short answer, true-false, and/or essay questions
-- Display of inline graphics and reference links with textual descriptions
-- Randomization of multiple choice quizzes
-- Handling of short answer questions with several possible answers

This tool is available as a free service for teachers involved in distance education and Internet instruction.

If you are interested in applying for a QuizCenter account, visit the Ed Tech Tools web site at:

http://motted.hawaii.edu.

METRD: A program of the University of Hawaii Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development (UH/OTTED) focused on the creation of software tools for the classroom and distance learning on the internet.

Tom Wright
Director, Maui Ed Tech R&D Center
Maui Community College/UH Office of Tech Transfer 590 Lipoa Parkway
Kihei, Maui, HI 96753
808-875-2601
twright@mrtc.org
wright@mccada.mauicc.hawaii.edu

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