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Virtual Education Offers Global Opportunities for Students and Teachers

February 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Middle school students in California, for example, watched Chinese dancers perform during a recent virtual field trip. Some schools are even making virtual education with foreign educators a part of their curriculum.

In Michigan, educators have partnered with colleagues in China to offer virtual education exchange opportunities that allow students to communicate with each other, often through videos, online. During the next school year, students will have the chance to attend a real Chinese school, taking virtual classes according China’s time zone, at their own schools during the hours of 8 p.m. and 4 a.m.

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Can States and School Districts Cut Costs Through Digital Learning?

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Digital learning represents wide-open terrain for K-12 education reform. Several states — Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Michigan and Minnesota — require students to take an online course to receive a high school degree. Twenty-seven states have established statewide full-time virtual schools since the first opened in 1997 in Florida, according to a report by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, an indication of virtual education’s growing appeal.

As with all innovations, though, there is always a question of cost for providing such new technologies, especially when states are providing less per-pupil funding.

A study released last week by the Education Center of Excellence at the Parthenon Group (commissioned by the conservative education think tank, the Fordham Institute) suggested that the costs of digital learning could be significantly less than more traditional modes. The authors cautioned that its findings must be interpreted with some caveats: costs vary across digital education platforms and different entities pursue online learning for different reasons (cost-savings versus enhanced offerings, for example).

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Kalamazoo top stories of 2011: Area schools’ funding struggles

January 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In the end, the state threw some more money into the pot. Still, most school employees across the region are paying more for insurance benefits this year and many have seen their pay frozen or even reduced. School officials also became more innovative in putting together their 2011-12 budgets: Gull Lake Community Schools, for instance, initiated an adult-education program, reached out to home-schoolers and expanded its virtual education offerings.

This year should be better: Snyder indicated last month he’s thinking about how to “invest back dollars” in education for 2012-13.

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Dropouts revive dreams at alternative high school

December 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Fusion, which also has an east-side campus on Warren and Connor and has a total of about 150 students between both campuses, combines online course work with face-to-face instruction from certified teachers. Students attend one of three 41/2-hour sessions daily.

The school is operated by Connections Education, a Baltimore-based provider of virtual education programs, and Ombudsman, a Nashville-based company that serves students who learn better in non-traditional settings.

The setting appears to work for sophomore Sapphire Doss, 17. She attended Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences where she said she received A’s and B’s, but fell in with the wrong crowd.

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Legislation would erode our public schools

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A package of bills has been introduced in the Legislature, SB 618-624 (called the “parent empowerment package”), which has the potential to further erode the enrollment and funding provided by local communities and which will serve to further diminish the capacity to provide the comprehensive curriculum that our community values.

The bills support lifting the cap on charter and cyber schools, mandating schools of choice and diverting public monies to dual enrollment and virtual education programs for private and home school students.

The expansion of charter schools, conversion schools, shared time, dual enrollment, cyber schools and mandatory participation in schools of choice has the potential to significantly cripple all local public schools’ ability to fund their infrastructure, due to the potential loss of per-pupil funding. It drains resources from comprehensive school districts and damages neighboring districts, such as Southfield, which has nine of 18 charter schools in Oakland County.

For-profit charter schools have no elected school board, have no accountability to local residents, no track record of quality, no transparency, do not comply with many of the most onerous mandates for local schools, focus on K-8, higher income, non-special education students — “profitable students” — and have boards that may not even be in Michigan.

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G.I.V.E. program gives district financial boost

October 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The Garden City Public Schools’ G.I.V.E. program has a hit a home run with students who don’t fit into a high school setting.

In it’s first semester, G.I.V.E., short for Garden City Interactive Virtual Education, has an enrollment of 81 students, well above the 60 students the school board had asked for to launch the new program.

“We’ve covered the cost of the program plus the utilities and cost of operating the building and bringing more than $200,000 to the district,” program coordinator Jack Pelon said.

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The Garden City Public Schools’ G.I.V.E. program has a hit a home run with students who don’t fit into a high school setting.

In it’s first semester, G.I.V.E., short for Garden City Interactive Virtual Education, has an enrollment of 81 students, well above the 60 students the school board had asked for to launch the new program.

“We’ve covered the cost of the program plus the utilities and cost of operating the building and bringing more than $200,000 to the district,” program coordinator Jack Pelon said.

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District goes virtual with G.I.V.E. program

August 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The school board has given its approval to launch of the Garden City Interactive Virtual Education (G.I.V.E.) program this fall, requiring that it have a minimum of 60 students.

“This would be for kids who fall between the traditional high school and Cambridge, it’s for the alternative student who doesn’t fit into the high school setting,” said Jack Pelon, who has been director of Adult and Community Education in Garden City. “It’s for the student who can’t function in a large setting. The ratio would be one teacher to 15 students, the teacher would also mentor the students.”

The program is unique to the area in that students would be take two classes at Henry Ruff and two other classes online. The sessions would be in four-hour blocks and be offered in the morning, early afternoon and early evening four days a week. There would be a maximum of 30 students in each class with two certified teachers who would also serve as mentors.

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