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NBTHS hopes to have good fortune with new online learning class

February 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

NORTH BRUNSWICK — About 30 students have shown interest in a new Mandarin class that will be offered online next year at North Brunswick Township High School (NBTHS).

The New Jersey Virtual School (NJVS) program is the high school’s first attempt to offer online learning during the school year, “a 21st-century skill our kids really need,” according to Kevin Farrell, director of guidance.

The course would be offered for one period each school day, but students would work at their own pace. They would be supervised by an NBTHS staff member, but would have access to a NJVS instructor using a chat option. They would learn basic Mandarin, such as numbers, the alphabet, culture and basic conversation. The course would fulfill a one-year world language requirement, because there would be assignments, assessments and participation grades as in a regular instructional class.

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Fantage recruits schools one by one for kids online virtual learning world

January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The company will roll out a new school each quarter. Two or three schools can compete with each other via the virtual classroom. The winning classroom gets a cash prize for the school. The goal is to enable schools to adopt the challenges by themselves, Hwang said. As word spreads among schools, they can organize their own challenges. Fantage has set up a challenge page for teachers.

“The pilot we ran showed children can get engaged because of the competition,” Hwang said. “We hope schools can use our site to do this indpendently.”

Fantage is also extending into separate sites for German and French speakers.

“We are very excited and have been preparing this for a few months,” Hwang said.

Fantage also plans to launch about one new app a month for mobile devices.

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POLL: What Are Your Thoughts on Virtual High School?

January 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Smart boards continue to replace what we knew as the blackboard and chalk. Now iPads are starting to enter the classrooms. In fact Hasbrouck Heights was recognized by Bloomberg.com just last week for their use of iPads in the Algebra classes.

The Internet now also provides some students with the opportunity to study a subject not offered in the classroom by way of a virtual classroom, something the school district is currently piloting with a handful of students

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PRS Students Plugged in to Learn Chinese

January 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Tones – Mandarin has four – distinguish the meaning of a word from other similar-sounding words. Recognizing those distinctions is crucial: It can make the difference between referring for instance, to your mother or to a horse. “This word is a great example of how important tone is in creating meaning,” Tsui said.

In response to the challenge, Tsui has turned her teacher website into the hub of the virtual classroom outside of the daily 45 minutes of in-class time. To help her students learn tone, she relies, among other things, upon Vocaroo, an online program that allows users to make and send voice recordings, much like an audio e-mail.

As students move on to PHS, teacher Shwu-Fen Lin is ready with an array of tools to enhance instruction. Included in her repertoire are 30 iPods, which she uses as part of her assessment process.

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Virtual Schooling In The News

December 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Research: Online Algebra I benefits students without other access to the course
Students who took an online Algebra I course in eighth-grade performed better in high-school algebra and more likely were to take rigorous math classes later in high school than students who had access only to general eighth-grade math, a new study shows. Researchers studied the use of the virtual course in small rural schools in Maine and Vermont, in cases where students were ready for advanced math but did not have access to a formal face-to-face course.

Analysis raises questions about the business of online schools
More than half of students are performing below grade level in either reading or math at Agora Cyber Charter School, one of a series of virtual public schools supported by the publicly traded company, K12. A newspaper analysis highlights several questions about the benefits and shortcomings of these, as well as other full-time online schools that are run by for-profit companies supported by taxpayer dollars. The New York Times

Chicago considers partnering with K12 on Agora Cyber Charter SchoolAgora Cyber Charter School: Officials with Chicago Public Schools are considering a partnership with the publicly traded K12 company to expand its portfolio of online education for students. The company is the country’s largest for-profit education-management group, but some of its schools have drawn recent attention for poor performance on standardized tests. However, Chicago’s Virtual Charter High School, which was the city’s first school opened by K12 in 2006, was among the few schools in the district last year to meet federal academic benchmarks under No Child Left Behind.

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Teaneck school district withdraws lawsuit against virtual charter school

December 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

TEANECK — The school district has withdrawn its lawsuit against the state Education Department and the Garden State Virtual Charter School.

The school board voted to drop the lawsuit at its meeting Wednesday, two days after the Education Department informed the founders of the Garden State Charter School that its application to start an online charter school had not made it to the second round, Board President Ardie Walser said Friday.

The board filed the lawsuit seeking emergent relief on Dec. 2. The lawsuit asked an administrative law judge to compel the Education Department to deny Garden State’s application, to rescind a letter the Department of Education sent to the district in October suggesting that the district may have to set aside $15.4 million next year to fund the charter school, and to order a moratorium on all virtual charter schools until the state adopts a fair way to fund them.

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Online schools are largely untested

December 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A proposed virtual charter school based in Teaneck has led to a roiling debate about academic rigor and oversight of a new breed of schools where laptops replace most in-person interactions with teachers and classmates.

Education researchers say these full-time cyber schools are so new there is scant independent evidence on their outcomes for students. The founder of the proposed Garden State Virtual Charter School says he aims to provide a high-quality option for children statewide whose lives don’t fit the traditional school setting, but skeptics argue much is lost when students attend all their classes sitting at home.

Even so, virtual public schools are growing fast. Evergreen Education Group, a consultant, estimates 250,000 students in K-12 attend them full time nationwide, up 40 percent in the last three years. At least 27 states had at least one full-time virtual school last year, and most were charters. Two virtual charters are slated to open in September in New Jersey.

It is common these days for students in regular schools to take some courses online, but virtual schools present their full curriculum via computer, with Web conferencing, e-mails and videos. Some, such as the Garden State Virtual Charter proposal, require a parent or other “learning coach” to supervise children at home, while promising face-to-face tutoring by teachers when students struggle.

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Braun: New kind of N.J. school privatization on the rise

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Public education in New Jersey has been roiled recently by conflicts over charter schools, vouchers and “virtual” schools — but, now, a new type of privatization is on the horizon: allowing public schools to contract with a private company to offer “alternative” education.

The idea has been promoted to school superintendents by one of their own, Mount Olive schools chief Larrie Reynolds. He says it could bring extra income both to cash-strapped school districts and to a private, Dubai-based company for which he works as a consultant.

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Online schools are largely untested

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A proposed virtual charter school based in Teaneck has led to a roiling debate about academic rigor and oversight of a new breed of schools where laptops replace most in-person interactions with teachers and classmates.

Education researchers say these full-time cyber schools are so new there is scant independent evidence on their outcomes for students. The founder of the proposed Garden State Virtual Charter School says he aims to provide a high-quality option for children statewide whose lives don’t fit the traditional school setting, but skeptics argue much is lost when students attend all their classes sitting at home.

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Weinberg Calls for Short Hold on Charter School Applications

December 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

New Jersey should put charter school applications on a “short hiatus” while the schools can be carefully studied, State Senator Loretta Weinberg said.

Weinberg told Patch she wanted a brief hold on the applications and said it was time to review the positives and negatives of the schools.

Charter school regulations must also be updated to address new online schools, the senator said.

Weinberg said she supports charters, but wanted to see data before any widespread approval of the schools.

In a video interview posted on BlueJersey.com, Weinberg reiterated her call for a ”short moratorium” on charter applications and said she admired fellow Teaneck residents for braving the cold to protest Gov. Chris Christie’s press conference at the Teaneck Armory Thursday. Around 20 protesters gathered to voice opposition to the proposed Garden State Virtual Charter School, which officials have said could cost the district $15.4 million.

Weinberg questioned the thinking behind a letter sent from the state to Teaneck telling the district to prepare for a possible $15.4 million budget hit from the proposed online charter school.

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