I returned yesterday from this year’s Virtual School Symposium (VSS), which is an annual conference of educators from across the United States (and Europe) who are extending the frontiers of education. The focus of VSS is to promote advocacy for and research into online and blended learning. More than 2,000 teachers and administrators attended the conference in New Orleans, where they shared content ideas and strategies for professional development. If you’re interested, please check-out my live tweets from the conference.
Explosion of Online Learning
Anyone who teaches, or who has children in school, knows how rapidly online learning is expanding in the public, private, and charter school systems. The 2012 edition of Keeping Pace, an annual report of K-12 online learning in America, reports that:
- 275,000 students attended fully online schools during the 2011-12 school-year.
- there were 619,847 course enrollments (one student taking a one semester online course) in 28 state virtual schools.
- approximately two-thirds of school districts in the United States are offering some form of blended learning.
You can read the report here.
Online Learning and Jewish Education
Jewish education is making the transition to online and blended learning, and Behrman House is excited to be involved in the effort. Our Online Learning Center (OLC) provides an easy-to-use platform for supplementary and day schools. Students can access their virtual classrooms anytime and anywhere, and teachers can post exciting Hebrew and Judaic multimedia content available from our digital resource library.
My Top Three Take-Aways from the VSS Conference
- Professional development is crucial to the success of blended learning. Teachers must be trained to use the technology that has ushered in the promise of online learning. To that end, we’re adding weekly webinars for teachers on how to use the OLC; we’re adding a how-to column to our popular Tech Tuesdays newsletter that demonstrates how each featured Web 2.0 tool can be used in the OLC; we’re simplifying and expanding our tech support system.
- The personalized learning environment made possible by online learning has reinvigorated mastery learning and competency based education.
- Content acquisition must involve a mix of licensed products from third party providers and open educational resources that teachers can use to build their own materials. Obviously, we strive to provide Jewish educators with fully designed digital companions and licensed learning software. But we also work hard to develop and provide a robust library of free digital assets for teachers to use in their classrooms – both virtual and brick and mortar.
