Giant Campus Blog

A special report from Education Week was recently published in April, 2010 backing up blended or hybrid learning is proving to be effective because it plays to students’ strengths and weaknesses. Districts and states are embracing online learning. And as one educator puts it “There are so many technology resources out there, why wouldn’t you want your students to gain access to them?”
You can read more about how e-learning is making a difference here: www.edweek.org/go/elearningp

The US Dept of Education is seeking change in today’s education system. With the “Race to the Top” program, the department is asking states to commit to closing historic achievement gaps, getting more students into college, and preparing students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy.

A recent article in the Washington Post calls on online learning as tool to help spearhead that change:

“How do we know online education will work? Well, for one thing, it already does. Full-time virtual charter schools are operating in dozens of states. The Florida Virtual School, which offers for-credit online classes to any child enrolled in the state system, has 100,000 students. Teachers are available by phone or e-mail from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. The state cuts a funding check to the school only when students demonstrate that they have mastered the material, whether it takes them two months or two years. The program is one of the largest in the country. Kids who enroll in Advanced Placement courses — 39 percent of whom are minority students — score an average of 3.05 out of 5, compared with a state average of 2.49 for public school students.

In his book on online education, “Disrupting Class,” Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen estimates that half of all high school courses in the United States will be consumed over the Internet by 2019. But we have a long way to go to reach 50 percent. Seventeen percent of high school students nationwide took an online course for school last year; another 12 percent took a class for self-study. Many of these students, along with younger kids taking online classes, might be considered homeschooled, though that very concept is changing as they sign up with virtual schools connected to state systems.”

You can read the full article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032602224.html?hpid%3Dsec-tech%26sid%3DST201003http://www.http://www.washingtonpost.com:80/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/registration/register

Check out a few of the games that students in our Online Game Design course learn how to make! (This course has been named a 2010 CODiE award finalist.)

Dragon Tamer, a maze game with collection items and enemies with artificial intelligence.

Space Scavenger, a vertical scrolling space game with continually increasing difficulty.

Robot Rescue, a game with rooms to explore, items to collect, and a friend robot that follows the player.

Ever played Bejeweled, Tetris, Snake, or Frogger online? Check out our video for our Online Game Design course (this course has been named a 2010 CODiE award finalist) and see what it takes to develop  these type of games.

Interesting article in USA Today about a growing trend of high school seniors, growing restless and unsatisfied by the current offerings in their school, choose to reinvent it on their own or skip out on parts of it. 

A selection from Greg Toppo’s article: “Trimble is part of a small but growing group of students — most of them academically advance and, as a result, a tad restless — who are tinkering with their senior year.  A few observers say the quiet experiment has the potential to reinvent high school altogether.” 

These stories get me going every morning.  Helping students and schools reinvent high school education is what we do at Giant Campus every day.  Make high school more relevant for our students and get them prepared for the future.  Our motto says it all:  Real Classes for the Real World!

Here’s a link to the full article at USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-02-25-senioryear25foronline_st_N.htm

I recently just read Bill Gates’ 2010 Annual Letter that was posted on the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation website. Within it, Bill Gates mentions how online learning can change the landscape in which education is being taught and presented to students.

“We need to bring together the video and interactive pieces for K–12 and college courses. We should focus on having at least one great course online for each subject rather than lots of mediocre courses. Once we have this material in place, it can be used in many different ways. A teacher can watch and learn how to make a subject more interesting. A teacher can assign subsets of the material to students who are behind and finding something difficult. A teacher can suggest online material to a student who is ahead and wants to learn more. A teacher can assign an interactive session to diagnose where a student is weak and make sure they get practice on the areas that are difficult for them. Self-motivated students can take entire courses on their own. If they want to prove they learned the material to help qualify for a job, a trusted accreditation service independent from any school should be able to verify their abilities.”

Read the full letter here: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/2010/Pages/bill-gates-annual-letter.aspx

I attended a Keynote presentation at the TASA (Texas Association of School Administrators) conference today.  The speaker was Don Tapscott, a noted researcher and author who has studied the Digital Native generation for over a decade.  His latest book, Grown Up Digital, is a follow up to his 1998 book Growing Up Digital.

Tapscott’s basic premise is that the world of education as we have known it for the past 100 years has come to the end of its useful life and it must be rebooted or reinvented for a new age.  The book talks about how education must shift from a traditional, broadcast model to one that is customizable, collaborative, and interactive. 

The data and the research were very compelling.  The school superintendents and administrators that were sitting near me were taking copious notes and seemed very interested in reading the book.  You could sense a genuine interest in the subject and a desire to not just know more, but to start doing something with the knowledge.  These books are great, but it is going to take a collective effort to implement change and adapt!

Learn all about Giant Campus of Washington and meet the people behind our school!

Stumbled across a great article in Forbes that discusses how Technology is addressing the dysfunctions in education.

“If teachers all across America (and the world) can be motivated to use technologies such as those offered by K12, Apex and Revolution Prep, the entire K-12 education problem will become tractable. The “guide on the side” model takes off a lot of the pressure on teachers in terms of lesson plan design and content delivery. If they act as classroom supervisors rather than domain experts, allowing technology to play the latter role, the likelihood of children learning better even from teachers who do not have the appropriate background is considerably higher.”

Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/online-education-innovation-intelligent-technology-mitra.html