The 3,2,1 of Virtual Leaning

During my research of virtual learning I discovered there are many levels. There are full time virtual schools and there is blended virtual learning. Alabama has several different options for students in the virtual learning environment. ACCESS is Alabama’s virtual learning program for grades 9-12. Students can take classes through ACCESS that may not be available through their high school. For full time virtual school, Alabama students have to attend one of the virtual academies like Alabama Connection Academy. Another option students may have is a computer program that has been purchased by their school system. Chilton County School System uses Edmentum for its virtual learning option. Through my research I discovered different states use different programs with different levels of student-teacher interaction. Some states offer full time virtual schools and some only offer a degree of virtual learning.

Alabama vs Florida's Virtual K-12 Schools by Tracy Johns

3 Interesting things I learned:

Course management systems (CMS) are not just for the delivery and organization of distance learning. Schools must be careful when choosing a CMS to administer their distance learning so that it can accommodate students with special needs (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015).  Students that are enrolled in a virtual school must also be enrolled in a local high school. The local high school is their home school and this is from where their support comes. The student’s home school holds the accountability for the student’s success. There are various levels of virtual learning. Virtual learning can be as simple as using videos for instruction all the way to full time virtual school. Different states requires different levels of virtual learning in their schools. For instance, the state of Florida has mandated that all K-12 schools have a virtual school (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015).  

2 Things that concern me:

Cost and teacher readiness are two areas about virtual learning that concern me. The cost of distance learning can be impactful to budgets and schools have limited funds to support a distance learning program (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015).  The list of required items that are needed to properly support a distance learning program is long. This leads me to my second concern which is teacher readiness. Teachers who are monitoring or instructing distance learning must be trained and possess certain characteristics (Simonson, et al., 2015). Proper support for the program and teachers will determine the success of the program.

1 question I have:

Do students in a virtual school or blended classroom achieve academically as well as their classmates in traditional classrooms? To determine success, states need to create standards to measure virtual schools results along with blended programs that are equal to traditional schools (Gulosino, Miron, 2017).

Gulosino, C., & Miron, G. (2017). Growth and performance of fully online and blended K-12 public schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives,25, 124. doi:10.14507/epaa.25.2859

Simonson, M. R., Smaldino, S. E., & Zvacek, S. (2015). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education. Charlotte, NC: IAP, Information Age Publishing.

Choosing a Course Management System

I would like to discuss choosing the right learning management system (LMS) or course management system (CMS) for your environment. The type of CMS you decide to use will determine how your distance courses, or classes in general, are designed. I am currently at an intermediate school, grades 4-6, and I feel that Google Classroom would be the best CMS for my school. My school would like to implement flipped classrooms in some subject areas and Google Classroom would be a great asset in this process. The ease of use and simple integration make it my first choice. The applications associated with the Google Suite for Education, such as Google Forms and Google Docs, make this the ideal CMS for the K-12 environment. Google Classroom is completely cloud-based, making it available everywhere. Below is a short demo of Google Classroom.

Instructional Design:

Designing a learning environment requires many factors; who are the learners, what is the content, and how will the information be evaluated (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015)? Google Classroom makes it simple to set up a learning environment. The teachers can send an invitation to the students in the class or just simply give them a class code and they can quickly join the class. Through applications like Google Forms and Google Docs the teachers can create customized assignments or use assignments other teachers have shared. Google Docs allows easy distribution of material by the teacher and students (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015). It is simple to share documents and information between students and teacher, teacher and teacher, and student and student. Students can also give feedback to the teachers about the assignments, class, or answer surveys (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015).     

Teaching:

With technology dominating every aspect of education today teachers must embrace the change and find ways to give students more independence in their learning. In an intermediate environment, classes are not a typical online class. However, the flipped classroom format can be a form of distance learning called distributed learning (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015). The flipped classroom turns teacher-centered instruction into student-centered learning (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015). Flipped classrooms have several advantages. This video on flipped classrooms will explain a little more about how they work. Using Google Classroom teachers can create, arrange, and transmit information to students any time of the day (Erdogan, Akbaba, 2017). Teachers can quickly add instructional videos to the classroom and students can access them where ever they have internet access. This feature allows students to work at their own pace. The image below shows a few differences between traditional and flipped classrooms.

Students:

With the use of Google Classroom teachers can give students independence and flexibility with their education. The Google Classroom environment provides students the ability to access their class and assignments wherever they are such as in a flipped classroom. In an age of smartphones, students are rarely without one attached to their hand. With the ability to view their work anywhere they can always stay on top of things. Success in any form of class, especially online classes, is directly related to student/teacher communication (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015). Google Classroom gives students and teachers an immediate and open line of communication with each other.

Support Materials:

Media, handouts, and supporting material are very important to online or distributed learning (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015). The easy integration of all the Google applications make it simple for teachers to supply students with copious amounts of information.  Videos, images, assignments, and assessments can be appended and managed at the click of a mouse.

Assessment:

A major component of any class is evaluation. Assessment is used for many reasons but mainly it is used to provide feedback (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015). Feedback to the learner and to the instructor is crucial to the learning process. Google Classroom makes it simple to assess students at various levels. Teachers can create simple quizzes that can be automatically graded for immediate feedback or they can create more complex assessments that require the teacher to grade more thoroughly. Google Classroom allows teachers a wide variety of assessments making it a great tool for the classroom, both distributed and distance.

Erdogan, E., & Akbaba, B. (2017). Should We Flip the Social Studies Classrooms? The

            Opinions of Social Studies Teacher Candidates on Flipped Classroom. Journal of

            Education and Learning,7(1), 116. doi:10.5539/jel.v7n1p116

Flipped Classroom Resources [online image]. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.slu.edu

Kellogg, N. (2015, August 03). Google Classroom – 5 min demo [online video], Retrieved from

 https://www.youtube.com

Simonson, M. R., Smaldino, S. E., & Zvacek, S. (2015). Teaching and learning at a distance:

            Foundations of distance education. Charlotte, NC: IAP, Information Age Publishing.

Teachings in Education. (2017, June 20). Flipped Classroom Model: Why, How, & Overview

            [online video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com