Monday, February 15, 2010

CED0550 Week 3 News Aricle

On February 10, 2009 vitual schools made front page news of the Waukesha Freeman. Joe Petrie wrote an article called "Virtual Schools Virtualy Full." The article cites the fact that in 2008 an enrollment cap of 5,250 students was placed state wide upon on-line schools. The number of enrolled students is quickly approaching the cap. According to the article, a state audit found that open enrollment is fuelling much of the boom in on-line schools. Enrollment was capped by the state until research on the effectiveness of on-line education could be performed.

The questions surrounding on-line education are not just a manner of it's effectiveness though. There are financial considerations as well. I'd like to understand more about the financial side of the matter.

I will be watching the issues surrounding on-line schools closely. I suspect that there will be many developments within the next few years.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

CED 0550 Week 2

Last week we used the break out session more. I think that was my favorite part. To anyone that says on-line learning doesn't allow for students to collaborate easily, I would show them the break out function in Elluminate.

My manager once ran a cyber school and is becoming a great resource as I work my way through this class. Today he let me borrow a book called "What works in K-12 On-Line Education." I skimmed through the table of contents and the book looks very interesting. If I have any Aha moments, I'll post them to this blog.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

CED 0550 Week 1

We've used Elluminate a couple of times in the program, but there are so many tools we hadn't explored yet. Just for fun I signed up for a "Three for Free" account. It'll be fun to place around with it.

As I have mentioned in a class post, I can't believe that more teachers don't take advantage of Elluminate and LMS. I seems like a great way to engage students in a different way.

I think it will be nice to just concentrate on learning a couple of tools during this class. In so many of our classes we look at so many tools that we don't have a lot of time to investigate them thoroughly.