“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.

For the rest of the article, go to Fantage recruits schools one by one for kids online virtual learning world

virtual classroom

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

For the rest of the article, go to POLL: What Are Your Thoughts on Virtual High School?

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.

For the rest of the article, go to PRS Students Plugged in to Learn Chinese

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual Schooling In The News

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Teaneck school district withdraws lawsuit against virtual charter school

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Online schools are largely untested

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Braun: New kind of N.J. school privatization on the rise

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Online schools are largely untested

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Weinberg Calls for Short Hold on Charter School Applications

Their call to action was prompted by a recent application from a group that wants to open the Garden State Virtual Charter School, an online school with a drop-in center in Teaneck, next fall.

Currently in New Jersey, charter schools are allocated funding for each student equal to 90 percent of the per-pupil funding in the student’s home district, with the money coming from those districts. Because it is not yet known where students for the proposed virtual school would come from, the state in late October wrote to the Teaneck school district, suggesting it set aside $15.4 million next year, which would cover the cost of all the students.

For the rest of the article, go to Teaneck school officials want ‘antiquated’ charter law changed