You are About to Witness an Education Revolution: Part 2

Welcome back.  It is becoming more and more common to find multiple articles daily from credible news sources that stress the important of "e-learning" or "m-learning" for the "i-generation."  I'd like to share a few of them in this post and the previous as a follow up to our Ten Things a Teacher Should Know In the 20-Teens article to point #3: Explore How  to Teach, Not Just What to Teach.

After discussing reteaching the way teachers teach in the first part of this post, the natural question I want to ask after such a thing is accomplished is: "Then what?"  That's when we can start having fun with technology.  Our young students are immersed in technology everyday, what with YouTube, smart phones, video games, web browsing, Twitter, etc.  Since the emergence of these (and especially since the iPad launch), there has been a rather noteworthy increase on articles that involve educational video games, so much so that this could be a precursor to a rather major movement to the educational industry.  But don't take my word for it; Browse the news articles when you have a moment and you'll quickly discover it as well.  Even companies that make products for the classroom are beginning to be encouraged and pushed towards creating more tech-based products (i.e. programs for cell-phones).  I'll be happy to point you to a few within this article to get you started.  As I come across more I'll be sure to update the list.

Social Sciences

-Too many students do not retain vital information from social sciences.  Here's an interesting title that includes minigames such as “Do I Have A Right”: iCivics

Elementary

- Martha Speaks has made its way to the iPhone as an App.  This is just the start of applications with educational purposes to keep your child busy in the checkout line at the supermarket.

Foreign Langauges

-Facebook Apps are now beginning to crop up with educational value.  Teacher's Discovery, a leader in foreign language education just launched a Digital Flash Card Challenge for beginning learners of a few languages.
-Hello-Hello has launched a new app for the iPad for learning numbers in different foreign languages for children.

Math

-Math and logic are sometimes are a bit of a challenge to have fun with, but True Thought LLC has developed a rather interesting game to liven it up.  Square Logic is Sudoku-meets-Inspector Parker with math thrown in the mix.  Frankly, it's almost too much fun while doing math.

Role Playing / Training

-Corporations may take this virtual world into their consideration when training customer service reps

-One of the more seasoned and fascinating video games used for role playing in a virtual setting is Second Life

Here's a great post from a fellow blogger talking about educational games.

Some educators may look to this video game surge as disheartening, but other educators look at this as revolutionary and exhilarating.  Just as when the emergence of writing birthed civilization and allowed the world to learn at an incredibly quickened pace, technology has just birthed globalization, allowing humans to access their environment from a top-down perspective, understanding the bigger picture of how the world works.  Look at how fast a toddler learns to use an iPad.  As we recall with the Learning Pyramid, instead of just watching Sesame Street, a toddler can now interact and heighten their understanding of a math problem or vocabulary word almost instantly.

This is a fascinating time to be in the education world.  Teachers: get ready for the revolution.

You are About to Witness an Education Revolution: Part 1

Yes indeed, the time as come.  Experts, marketers, bloggers and administrators are all marching to the same beat: We are on the brink of a massive education revolution.  It is becoming more and more common to find multiple articles daily from credible news sources that stress the important of "e-learning" or "m-learning" for the "i-generation."  I'd like to share a few of them in this post and the next as a follow up to our Ten Things a Teacher Should Know In the 20-Teens article to point #3: Explore How  to Teach, Not Just What to Teach.

As our digital natives enter the education world, some are light years ahead of their instructor in networking, online etiquette, accessibility to information and adaptability to newer technologies.  Since we cannot change the way the students are learning, it only makes sense that we must change the way our teachers are teaching.  Such a call to action would have to be answered by not only the universities and colleges that train our next generation of teachers but also the education supply companies, the parents, but most of all, the teachers themselves.


But what exactly needs to be changed?  
-The content?  Not necessarily.  Although certain standards may have been tweaked to accompany some of the growing technologies, they have mostly remained the same and students still need to learn to read a map.

-The time of day that school takes place?  Although there have been about 120 schools across the country that have shifted to a 4-day schoolweek and have claimed improvements in student test scores, there isn't sufficient evidence to support this wholeheartedly.  This could be a maybe.
-The delivery of the content?  Now we're on to something.  So says former President of both the California Charter Schools Association and the Los Angeles Unified School District, “data shows that more than half of the students say that the easiest way for students to learn something new is by practicing and watching, which is one of several critical reasons why we need to re-wire our educational approach.”

In other words?  Teachers must become students again... sometimes to their own students.  In an Associated Press article that asks how we should teach future teachers, "Hemant Mehta's formal training was useless when it came to keeping order in the classroom and getting students to pay attention." The article continues, explaining "the 27-year-old needed help from Twitter, math blogs on the Internet, TV sitcoms and experienced teachers down the hall."


Suzanne Wilson, chair of teacher education at Michigan State University from the same article adds to the mix by bringing up a daunting point. "It's complicated in the United States because we don't as a country agree that teachers need much preparation.  We're deeply divided on this as a country."


But what are the challenges to changing the attitude of educators towards such a momentous shift?  In a survey reported here, teachers cited the following factors as barriers to using information and communication technology in their classrooms:


    * Extent of the curriculum that needs to be covered during the year (81.4%)
    * Time constraints (71.7%)
    * Time required for preparing information and communication technology-based activities (60.4%)
    * Availability of infrastructure (53.5%)
    * Amount of quality content (50.7 %)
    * Lack of in-classroom teacher support (50.2%)
    * Lack of participation of teachers in decision making (43.4%)
    * Need for professional development (37%).

At first glance, it appears that we just revealed a project that's a bit bigger than anticipated.  Considering the leading challenge, not only do teachers have a large amount of content to cover, they also have No Child Left Behind Axe looming over their sweating brows.  This, in fact could arguably be a direct or indirect cause to many of the remaining factors.  Such a rationale is a fair explanation used from the critics to this movement.  From a new-age perspective however, there exists an argument that is just as powerful: the use of information and communication technology will assist students in learning quicker, thus moving through the extent of content quicker and allowing the rest to fall into place.

Platforms are beginning to crop up like ConnectYard that would allow instructors to communicate with their students through social media.  They may also start a second Facebook Profile that is only for school-purposes, an online blog, a wiki and much more.  Possibilities are growing every day for teachers to reach their students in a method that will maximize the learning potential.  Some teachers have even allowed students to text them.  We are about to witness an education revolution.  Will you be a part of it?

Educators: Your Personal Life May No Longer Be Personal

In lieu of all of the newest Facebook changes, here's a quick follow up post to our Ten Things Educators Should Know in the 20-Teens article and come back to #4: Your Personal Life May No Longer be Personal.

After the most recent changes that included user to "Like" content outside of Facebook (Thus allowing information to leak out of the site), there were a few negative responses from the community urging Facebook to reconsider it's breach of the privacy threshold.

As educators, this is simply an alarming reminder to stay wary of what to post online in our profiles and other content.  With camera phones only being a recent innovation, a veteran educator may not sense the threat of unprofessional images cropping up in their supervisor's inbox of something they did in the past.  However, an interesting new article points to the fact that the younger crowd are beginning to learn rather quickly.

Posted at eSchoolNews, studies have shown that youth are more apt to watch their privacy settings than the previous generations.  It is becoming more common for a student entering the working world to hack and slash their profile to skin and bones, eliminating tags to unprofessional photos and cleaning up their "interests" and "hobbies."

"I have to present a public face that doesn't have the potential to hurt my image," says Marlene McManus from the article as she "scours" her profile of photos from college exploits.  This is so key, and portrayed very nicely through @edtechsteve and his video on digital footprints.

But it's not just students who are trying to enter the working world.  Educators must also be wary from the opposite end of the spectrum.  If a teacher has a Facebook account, it may be harsh to simply ignore friend requests from students.  A simple solution some educators are taking is creating a second account, starting afresh without the danger of sharing content that was not meant to be seen.

Critics seem to be running out of arguments.  After once claiming that "[online] relationships could cause bias when the instructor gives his or her students a grade," we are beginning to see that a social media account is as expected as having a cell phone in today's era.  From the same article, "Proponents of using online social networks to reach students say it makes sense to go where students are already spending much of their time online."  By separating the professional from the personal, educators may find a handy tool to assist in conducting an engaging classroom.

Cyber-Bullying & The War On Social Media Critics

Social media has drastically changed not only how we communicate with one another, it has also changed how the world operates.  Business is conducted through blogs, Twitter and Facebook.  Education is executed through Podcasts, Wikis and online training.  Online schools thrive on the existence of social media to connect students to essential and necessary resources. 

This past week, Anthony Orsini, the principle in New Jersey's Benjamin Franklin Middle School sent out an email to its parents, urging them to stop their children from using social media entirely.  Here is a portion of the message:
"Sit down with your child (and they are just children still) and tell them that they are not allowed to be a member of any social networking site. Today!  Let them know that you will at some point every week be checking their text messages online! You have the ability to do this through your cell phone provider." 

The reason for Orsini's message?   


"The threat to your son or daughter from online adult predators is insignificant compared to the damage that children at this age constantly and repeatedly do to one another through social networking sites or through text and picture messaging."

Cyber-bullying hardly existed pre-social media, yet it seems that the emotional state of our youth was still a concern even then.  After the initial surprise of a parent receiving this in their inbox, it shouldn't take long to the trained eye to recognize this as a knee-jerk reaction to the social trends of the day.  After all, how is this really different from the media's attempt to convince parents a few months ago that formspring.me was the cause of a young girl taking her own life (when her mother said it was not); that video games were the cause of all school violence in the mid 2000s; or even that the tragedy of Columbine was to be blamed on singer Marilyn Manson?  Love him or loathe him, Manson's quote from his VH1 interview after Columbine still resonates so strongly even in the context of today's attempt to control social media.  When asked what he would say to the students that conducted the incident, Manson replied: "I wouldn't say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say, and that's what no one did." 

Social media may in fact not be the cause of our youth's turmoil if these warning signs have been apparent before these "dangerous" websites.  To act on Orsini's thought process may be telling the students that social media is unimportant, that in order to live in today's world they need not interact with others online.  In fact, it's been noted that scare tactics do not work as the best education for online safety.  But just as social media can be detrimental to students' education if used in excess, it also can be extremely helpful if used properly.  Resources like Twiducate put a beneficial spin on social media, and these could be a wonderful preparation for students' future use of online social media outlets, such as Moodle and Blackboard.  

Even eschoolnews explains the benefits of students that are actively "seeking technology-based learning experiences outside of school... using Facebook and podcasts."  Articles similar to eschoolnews' are becoming prominent but merely just make it an official statement of what all of us are witnessing: a communication revolution.  So parents, when a call-to-arms crops up in the media or from critics that are against the imminent change, take the time and patience to really look at the facts.  Be honest with your children, communicate with them, and nurture a great relationship so that if any challenges arise because of a negative occurrence through social media, you may be able to work through them with the correct authorities to see it through.

And your thoughts?

*Update 6/10/10*  Facebook and National PTA team partner up to promote internet safety.

Student vs. Pull Down Map

Social Studies sure has come a long way.  While speaking about the evolution of pull down maps to online maps with a coworker of ours--a former teacher of 30 years--he began to reminisce a story I felt would be worth sharing:

"Back in the beginnings of my teaching career (early 70’s), part of my teaching day was in platoon... where I taught geography and social studies to 3rd graders. My classroom was one of those typical WPA classrooms built around the Depression, a brick fortress with weathered hardwood floors, beautiful molding everywhere, institutional green paint (three various shades throughout the building) and multiple heavy-duty pull down maps hanging above the chalkboards on two of the walls.


I will never forget the day when I decided to quiz students on the names of our states, using a topography map that only identified states by outlines. The students were divided into teams.  After a short clue was given, I requested for them to go up and point out the State and name it along with the Capital.

My first platoon group did well--no problems with the map or questions. The next platoon group came in and I realized right away this could be interesting. In this group was a young man, who was a little person. On the first day of school, his parents had told me they wanted no exceptions for him. Since the students were pulling down various maps (the maps were regional by nature) I had asked Jimmy B if he would like a partner to help him pull down the maps. He adamantly said "NO."

The fun began when he went up to the map. He first pulled up the stool (others had used this so that was nothing new).  He then selected the correct map and grabbed it with both hands to pull it down.  What a surprise it was to me when he stepped right off the stool to pull the map down, but even funnier when Jimmy B dropped down with the map, only to be sent right back up with it!  After the recoil, his weight helped the map to go down some as he began to swing his legs about. Jimmy let go with one hand, swinging it up to Tennessee (which was the correct answer along with Nashville).

He let go and dropped to the floor. Everyone stood up and cheered.  Who would have thought a boy and a map would clash?  With the triumphant display of physical determination, the final score was Jimmy B: 1, U.S. Map: 0.


…A day in the life of Mr. H."

The moral of the story?  Buy online maps.

No more answering the "Why am I learning this?" question

Ever had 5 minutes extra to spare at the end of your lesson?  It's happened before: it's too late to start a new topic and the students don't want to open their books if they'll need to pack them back up just as they get a feel for the homework assignment.  What's more, it's Friday and they're starting to get antsy.  What can a teacher do that could be anything but a reprimand to get them to settle down?  Simple, just open up a quick 5 minute video from The Futures Channel.

It's brain candy for the curious; it's a "How It's Made" for the career explorer; it's an academic YouTube for the classroom.  Learn how they used probability to locate one of the biggest underwater treasure finds to date; learn why it's profitable to pursue a green career, or even why math is so important for the art of baking.  These short clips will seize not only the students' attention, but yours as well.  With a 250% increase in internet traffic in 2007 alone, this site is becoming a popular choice among teachers for visual supplementation since it surpassed 10 million views.

Although a good handful of videos are available for public viewing, the expansive collection is available upon subscription to Defined STEM, the partner company that creates these videos with The Futures Channel (STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).  Pricing is definitely in favor to a teacher subscribing by the year, and the list of convincing feedback is exceptional.  Trouble getting students excited about math?  The site helps portray a dimension of the working world that students are typically unable to see, as noted by a teacher on the feedback page: "I show the videos to my Geometry and Calculus classes and we discuss the need for mathematics in the occupations highlighted in the videos."  Now when students continue to ask why they have to learn how to solve equations or why biology is an essential component to their daily education, a teacher no longer needs to reply with the traditional "so you can be a well-rounded student," and instead can just show a video on the application of whichever topic is up for discussion.  As a matter of fact, why not preclude your Skype guest speaker with one of these fantastic videos?

Extra educational tidbits give the site more flavor, as math teachers and fans of Stand and Deliver actually have the opportunity to see videos from and about Mr. Jaime Escalante's experience in education.  Collections of the best movies are available for purchase as well for those not seeking a subscription.  For the teachers that have difficulty adding supplemental educational elements into their tight curriculum, The Futures Channel is the perfect fit to maintain a great sense of edutainment.

Kid-Tested, Administration-Approved Twitter for your Class

High School teachers and even elementary teachers, it's time to get hip and join the social media networking frenzy.  It has become an increasing debate on if teachers should cross that line from privacy to public domain with their social networking profiles on Twitter, Facebook, etc., especially those who are fresh out of college within the past 5 years and witnessed the beginnings of "TheFacebook" (Facebook's original website title).  So how can educators still have a private life, write on friends walls about the upcoming gathering on the weekend, yet still be professional with students that live and breathe social media?  Introducing sites like Twiducate, "an opportunity for students to explore web 2.0 without the barriers and blocks of existing social networking websites."

School networks are keen to block trance-inducing sites like Facebook and Myspace, so incorporating social media into the classroom with the thumbs up from administration may be a bit tricky.  With Twiducate, it's a website solely designed for the classroom, controlled by the teachers, and just for the purpose to help connect the classroom... well, outside of the classroom.  A teacher is able to create her own profile and a unique classroom that she manages.  From there, the teachers actually create the students' profiles so as to disallow just any student, or any person for that matter to join the online class profile.  Creating a student under the controlled classroom profile churns out a unique passcode that a student can use once provided by the instructor to login to the specific classroom.

Once the classroom profile is set up and the students have their codes, the class can tweet away to one another, have discussions, comment on other topics, and even have quirky avatars to keep it light.  It's a safe website, safe in the sense that it's darn near impossible to do anything wrong on it.  Images or files can't be posted, and posts can be deleted by the teacher if need be.  Students can't wander into another "classroom," and they can't post official bookmarks to the group's page (only the teacher can).  It allows for a teacher to communicate with students over the weekend without the worry of providing phone numbers or facebook messages, yet its personal enough to be answered quicker than an email since it's within the community setting.

With Twiducate being so basic, there's hardly any options or profile changes anyone can alter or change.  After playing around with it for a few moments, one can even see a value in adding this into the elementary school classroom for 4th or 5th graders that may want to become wet behind the ears with social media (aka web 2.0).  As a matter of fact, Twidicate itself says on its website: "It is a fact that students will need social networking, blogging and basic internet skills to compete in today's business world."  I'd be very interested to see if school administration catches onto the need of students using and breathing social media.  Whether Twiducate or another website that offers such a web 2.0 service in an approved academic setting, it may be their only shot to keep up with these tech-savvy students.

No more sick days?

Unless being bedridden with a dreadful case of the flu, most sick days involve a student simply moseying around the house, snacking on chips and watching a movie or playing video games to pass the time as he or she gets well.  Upon their return to school two days later, they may discovery mounds of homework from their 3 AP classes, as well as the workload from the current day.  It's enough to overwhelm anybody.

These poor students can be helped.  We have rather simple technology these days that teachers can tap into and assist a student's recovery from sickness back into the classroom with unnoticeable ease.  Introducing streaming audio, podcasts, or, even easier: Skype video chat.  "Skype is software that enables the world's conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. Everyday, people also use Skype to make low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles."

Is the student really playing hooky?  Have him log in to find out. Poor sick Johnny can now pop up on the classroom's TV screen to interact, raise his hand to ask a question, and even speak into a microphone to converse with the other students.  To prevent a student from abusing the system, maybe only a handful of those would be considered excused absences from class.  Don't have a video camera or want to activate one?  Might have to have some stricter attendance rules.  Just listening to the teacher over the speaker isn't too different from sitting in the corner of the class, blindfolded and turned around... which isn't necessarily interactive.

But should we force students and parents to buy such expensive technology like video cameras and broadband internet?  Let's get up to speed with the facts (pun intended).  High-speed internet is becoming more and more necessary and accessible, even in lower income households. The Pew Research Center just reported in June that homes with annual household incomes below $30,000 experienced a 34% growth in home broadband adoption from 2008 to 2009.  Also, what with school supplies, new clothing, and a new iPod and cell phone the student isn't supposed to take to school in the first place, a decent video chat camera these days is hardly a drop in the bucket when only about $25.

Not only could it help students on sick days, it could shift support to the other side of the spectrum for the teachers as well.  Is it virtually impossible for a California history teacher to have a National Museum scholar from D.C. speak to her class?  It used to be.  With Skype, there are many examples cropping up of teachers hosting authoritative and credible guest speakers in their classrooms with this free and easy-to-use software.  Heck, there's even a possibility that the teacher/professor herself can teach from home for a lesson if on a sick day.

All of a sudden, a whole new world is available.  A teacher isn't on the educational battlefield alone anymore; he or she has an arsenal of an endless list of government officials, professionals, research experts, or even motivational guest speakers to augment the day's lesson plans, keeping a class excited and guessing on where they are going and having a say on how they want to learn (almost Montessori-like).  Such exciting technology could make anyone envious of the resources today's youth have in the classroom.  As a matter of fact, I wouldn't mind living high school history class all over again.

Facebook University: How Far Away Is It?

Ever realized how quickly Facebook has been spine-grafted to our social lives?  Excuse the harsh analogy, but it's true.  After all, what would we do without it?  It's a networking site that allows anyone who isn't internet-savvy to become high-tech overnight, yet complex enough to satisfy the most hardcore of programmers into creating applications for the masses.

I heard the fastest growing demographic on the explosive site were the baby boomers, and whether or not this has a ring of truth to it, one can't deny the power of this website behemoth.  It took Facebook 5 years to accumulate 200 million active users.  After that,  it took only 5 months to acquire an additional 100 million active users.  How incredible would it be for any company to grow 50% in just a half year?

Let's introduce a little business and e-commerce for a moment.  Facebook apps (applications) like Yoville are free for anyone to use, but they have optional bonuses that are pay-to-use.  Want a new bedroom set for your little simulation self?  Just 50 cents.  A new entertainment center for your Yoville friend's birthday?  Dollar fifty.  This may not seem like an impressive profit-maker, but it brings to light a rather interesting concept. 

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine, calls it the concept of "Freemium."  Provide most of your product or service for free, but charge extra if your consumer wants more.  This small percentage of one's consumer base that bites will theoretically pay for the marketing and then some.  Not bad if it didn't cost you anything to put your free samples out there, save a bit of bandwidth.

So, the relevance question: How does this apply to education?  Well, to be frank, your kids are learning on Facebook.  Whether it's how to level up your mafia or how to rescue an animal from someone else's farm, they're learning something.  The pieces are all there, it seems to be just a matter of time before someone makes the connection.  Pay-to-use applications on Facebook; online education pioneered by schooling systems like Florida Virtual School; online colleges like Phoenix University providing a degree in a matter of a few years;  edutainment software such as Leap Frog and Rosetta Stone that must be used on the computer.  Why not combine them all?  As a matter of fact, it probably wouldn't be much of a surprise if Rosetta Stone becomes a free app on Facebook with extra pay-per-lessons available for the user that wants to become more serious.

*UPDATE* 7/29/10 Here's a company that has just done that.

This by no means would be proper to replace primary education, nor might it even be proper to replace secondary education.  On the contrary, an authoritative and interactive figure, such as an instructor, is crucial for a student's success.  However, for a short college preparatory summer course or supplemental lesson to a college student's foreign culture class, Facebook University doesn't seem like too much of a stretch when folks don't think twice to purchase a new fish tank for their virtual Yoville residents (because they're lonely).

Brick and mortar high schools a thing of the past?

What would it be like to live in a world without the hectic mornings of waking up the kids because they'd be late for the bus? A world without a boulder-sized backpack hanging off of your 4-foot son that, with one misstep, would topple him over like a helpless turtle? A world without the need to make lunch for the kids at midnight because the family got back late from your daughter's basketball game?

What would allow this? An accredited and completely online high school, accessible from anywhere in the world. Is Florida Virtual School off their rocker or are they the pioneers to something even bigger than we could have ever thought in the world of education? Founded in 1997, FLVS was the country's first state-wide, internet-based public high school. Since then it has opened its doors to out-of-state students and even out-of-country students. FLVS is also the only public school with funding directly tied to student performance.

Wait, hold up. Funding tied to student performance? How could a school possibly get adequate funding? Let's be honest, if all schools shifted to this model in January, there would be quite a few schools shutting their doors within the year's end. Let's take a look at how this works:

Outlined by our previous post, it's becoming more apparent that a student spends a large amount of his or her time socially interacting through the internet. Let's take the same student from our original example and instead enroll her in FLVS--or any accredited virtual high school for that matter. Maybe we'll give her a name this time.

So, Jane wakes up at 9 AM on a warm Florida morning to her cell phone alarm once again. It's the usual time for her to leave for a day's practice of her true passion, dance. After checking a text on the phone, she sees that Matt, a fellow classmate in Michigan has reminded her they still need to work on their project later in the evening since it will be due the following day. After checking her emails and the virtual school website, she responds to the updates from her teachers on the week's lessons before heading to her private dance instruction for the day. She departs from dance and drives a half hour to the state capitol to meet up with her congressional representative to complete an assignment for her online government class. She heads back to town to work at her part-time job at the library until going home for dinner. After sharing the stories of the day with her parents, she begins her latest math assignment. Having difficulty with a certain problem and concept, she phones her teacher in California and speaks with her for half an hour until she understands the chapter. Taking a quick break, Jane catches her favorite TV show before video chatting with Matt on their Literature project. Wrapping up the night, Jane downloads her favorite science podcast before setting her cell phone alarm and falling to sleep.

Jane can do what she needs to do without being chained down to one building for 7 hours a day. She also isn't holed up at home with her schoolwork. On the contrary, not only can she work a part-time job, FLVS moves her away from a computer and gets her to interact with the community. Jane can have her cake and eat it, too. She gets private instruction from her dance teacher while still achieving high marks in the her studies on her time, when she feels most productive and least distracted. FLVS' tag line is evidence enough of their understanding of this: "any time, any place, any path, any pace." Even home schooling parents can supplement their child's education with an impressive and reputable program that has its resources readily available.

With the versatility of the internet, more and more careers are either being made to work from home or being shifted from the office to home. FLVS' addresses this, and their 90+ courses that address "national standards with a specific eye to global awareness" are able to employ a staggering 1,104 staff members and educate an astounding 63,675+ students in their 2007-2008 school year. They have not released their latest numbers, but judging from their growth in the past ten years, it wouldn't be a surprise if they are nearing 100,000 by now. Just as business has drastically shifted to e-commerce in the past ten years, it seems there are less and less excuses for education not to follow suit. With free in-state tuition but fee-based out-of-state tuition, FLVS' method of business is beginning to look daftly smart in a world of globalization. During that same academic year, only 2,625 of their students were out of state. If every one of those students took just one 2-semester course, this bad boy of a school district is bringing in almost $2 million on the side. This doesn't even include state funding for the students that are doing well. But how many of them are really doing well? I can't speak on their behalf, but the school's compiled list of awards might help explain.

Let's not forget about what it would be like to be a teacher employed by a virtual high school. Suddenly a teacher's salary doesn't have such a negative connotation when you're working it from the comforts of your home and in your pjs. Such a schedule could allow for a teacher to incorporate a part-time venture on the side of their scheduled mandatory online presence.

Is America fully ready to make the transition? Certainly not. However, it will be a shame for many states' parents when their hard earned salaries to go to FLVS because their state didn't want to have a virtual public high school.

By 2020 most students will learn online

According to the New York Times, most high school students by the year 2020 will be receiving their information and/or lessons in an online format. With the rapid rise of classroom technology, Tom Vander Ark highlights pilot programs such as New York City's "School of One" that blends online learning with small group sessions.

But does this make sense in today's culture? Are the traditional teachers that oppose the use of a projector and mouse falling behind to an inevitable evolution that is taking place in the classroom? Let's think about this.

A student wakes up to her cell phone alarm and checks her text message from a friend that's asking her to bring her DVD back to school because she forgot it yesterday. After getting on the bus, the student plugs her ears with her iPod nano and plays a 3-minute downloadable game on her phone. After school, the student finds herself back at home with a TV that is set to the Relentless Consumer Channel, rapid firing 30-second commercials on the viewer (that are all accompanied by a website of online deals). Another text from a friend redirects the student's attention to the computer to check her friends' 140 character tweets and newest mobile uploads on Facebook. To wrap up, that night after eating dinner, the student needs to work on an important math assignment. She decides to video chat with her friend over Skype and hovers the camera over her notebooks to discuss an equation both students are working on. Before heading to bed, the student decides to listen to her favorite podcast on science, only to set her alarm on her phone to start over again tomorrow.

We are receiving almost all of our information online, especially young adults who have access to a computer and a data transfer phone. Who needs to wait for weather on the 6 o'clock news when you can go to weather.com? Why wait to catch that important newscast when there's live feed on the website? Why worry about watching your favorite TV show at 8 PM when you can come back from a PTA meeting and catch the episode at your own leisure on the official website, commercial free?

In other words, the point is, why on earth are schools the last place to adapt? If a student acquires almost all of her information from some online source, does it really make sense to keep an old method of learning as mainstream? Schools used to only have one chalkboard and one room. Then we gained multiple rooms with multiple whiteboards in each. Now we've peeked into the future by starting computer labs, allowing for every student to his and her own "personal whiteboard," with the implementation of virtual chat rooms such as "Second Life."

The graffitied and torn fossils on the bookshelves (I've heard they were once called textbooks) can be replaced with periodically-updated online materials that a student can access not only in school but at home. A student pulling down a map from a wall in front of the whiteboard can instead use a mouse and projector to zoom deep into a third world country and analyze its GDP and political corruption with a second country pitted against it, side-by-side on the same screen.

Yes, there are funding issues, but this post isn't addressing that fact. There are online tools and rising technology available that will provide breakthrough curriculum at next to nothing cost. What is stressed here is the fact that our educators must catch on to the method of communication that our world is evolving to, regardless of if education wants to or not. If schools should remain where vital thoughts and constructive reasoning come from for a curious and growing student, it seems we must catch on, else Wikipedia will become our home schooling agent.