There’s little doubt that the Internet will transform schooling (read choices) and how students learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. A newly-created Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California-Irvine will explore the impact of digital media on learning and its potential for transforming education. The Center is funded by a $2.97 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The foundation has invested substantially ($50 million since 2006) researching digital learning and gaming with positive results and continues with a variety of media projects including astonishing findings of the positive impact on youth in the three year research report, Living and Learning with New Media.
David Bly, former President of the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs and a co-founder of IALA has written a powerful booklet, The Middle Class Amendment, which you can read online. Bly, a Representative from Northfield, is a member of the Minnesota Legislature. While IALA does not make political endorsements, we think the topic of interest to alternative educators and students because Bly like many of us believe education change is nearly impossible. Thus, Bly proposes a constitutional amendment.
The technology revolution has entered into every part of our lives, and now it seems that the implications for education are about to bring major changes to the way students and indeed all of us learn and gain information. There are a multitude of options for students of all ages to gather and disseminate information on multiple platforms. Many people have already discovered the multitude of useful websites providing information regarding distance learning. The Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning http://mediasite.ics.uwex.edu/mediasite5/Viewer/?peid=a863be1f5bc348bbb1c875366dafe581# has a great presentation with many thought provoking ideas for educators. Another intriguing site is ted.com TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. TED’s world class presenters on video stretch users with valuable information on a wide variety of topics.
After school budgets, testing remains one of the most controversial and talked about subjects among administrators, teachers, parents and students. Edutopia has an interesting article along with several links regarding the future of standardized testing. The article Reinventing the BIG test http://www.edutopia.org/reinventing-big-test-the-challenge-of-authentic-assessment gives examples of several promising alternative assessments to the standardized multiple choice tests that are so prevalent across the country.
Some say tests can’t assess important characteristics such as responsibility, autonomy, engagement, affiliation, hope and other aspects of major school outcomes. For a huge sample of tests see Compendium of Assessment and Research Tools and the newly developed Hope Survey (see products).
Since the early 1990s when the nation’s first charter school was opened in St. Paul, MN, the scope and availability of school-based options to parents has steadily expanded in the U.S. and abroad. No longer can traditional education be a public monopoly. Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice (NCSC), this 648 page ($115) Handbook of Research on School Choice studies K-12 school choice. Coverage includes charters, vouchers, home schooling, magnet schools, cyber schools, and other forms of choice, with the ultimate goal of defining the current state of this evolving field of research, policy, and practice.
Several recent articles outline the uses of technology in the classroom and give readers lots to think about.
The first article deals with the effects of technology on students throughout their education. Lenovo to Research Tech’s Effect on Learning: Global Education Research project will study how technology affects education in and after school, from kindergarten through higher education.
Another article Google Wave has Great Potential for Education, a new online collaborative tool combines eMail, instant messaging, and file sharing in a dynamic environment and outlines how Google is moving further into communicating and collaborating on the web.
A recent US Dept. of Education report, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning finds that students learn more with online learning and even more with blended programs (both classroom and online) in elementary, secondary and higher education. The differences are not great but consistent and promising.
Cell phones appear to have considerable potential for learning. Early adopters combine the power of cell phones, social networks, websites and software. Student engagement and motivation increased. This early in the movement approach is generating excitment over the possiblities. Lift the Cell Phone Ban describes dealing with both the distraction factor and the interest.
Peter Wieczorek will be editing the website. He is a life science teacher, advisor and board chair at Northwest Passage High School in Coon Rapids, MN. Peter has spent the majority of his career working with youth in non-traditional/alternative settings. In addition to working at NWPHS he lives in Clear Lake, WI with his wife, Renee and two sons, Isaac (12) and Noah (9). He is excited to be joining IALA.
Several helpful documents are available for describing, implementing and evaluating alternative education programs. The first three refer to alternative education broadly, that is, providing a choice of programs for all students. The last one is more attuned to at-risk students.
Ray Morley and the Iowa Association of Alternative Education prepared a thoughtful document, Alternative Learning Environments: a Checklist of Quality Indicators. This offers a program the opportunity to examine its practices for their alignment with some of the best thinking about alternative education.
The Seattle Public Schools under the leadership of Elaine Packard adopted a well-worded document, Quality Indicators for Alternative Schools in the Seattle School District.
Member John Loflin wrote a valuable document which is part of our resource bank of materials. His Pseudo-Alternative School Checklist identifies numerous aspects of alternative education which are not truly “alternative” practices. It is a thoughtful and provocative document.
A Tennessee official has written what they describe as the first national framework of practices that are common to alternative education which have been adopted by the National Alternative Education Association. The framework covers 10 areas: Mission, Leadership, Climate, Staffing, Curriculum, Assessment, Planning, Parents, Collaboration, Program Evaluation.
Here are useful resources with links to other sites:
Brief descriptions in Summary of Educational Models include: Accelerated Schools, America’s Choice, Big Picture, Communities in Schools, EdVisions, Job Corps, Youth Build and 17 more.
The Alternative High School Initiative (AHSI) is a network of youth development organizations with over 258 sites nationwide for creating educational opportunities for young people for whom traditional school settings have not been successful. AHSI was launched in 2003 with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Financing Alternative Education: Profiles and Policy by The National Youth Employment Coalition with the support of major foundations and the U.S Dept. of Labor recognizes that some of the most promising and innovative practices are taking place in our nation’s community-based and alternative education schools and programs serving youth between the ages of 16 and 24 and describes innovative practices and funding mechanisms.
We recently created the outline below showing the kinds of choices available to students in some parts of Minnesota. This may be similar to other states. By no means are all of these alternatives available to all students in all places but it represents a major shift in what parents had to choose from in 1970 which was almost nothing in the public sector. In that sense it represents major progress in the IALA mission of leading, promoting and supporting learning alternatives in education to better match needs of every child. Of course, much remains to be done to reach the policy that every state and the federal government provide a choice of different programs for each child.
Minnesota Options for Students
1. State approved alternative programs (SAAP)
- Area learning centers (ALC)
- Contract schools
- Alternative programs
2. Charter schools
3. Online/distant learning schools
4. Traditional schools
5. Magnet schools
6. Post secondary enrollment options (early college enrollment)
7. Open enrollment
8. Nonpublic schools
9. Programmatic schools
- Open education
- Core knowledge
- Subject: performing arts, science
- Experiential and community based
- Project based
- Waldorf
- Montessori
10. Recovery schools
11. Democratic schools
The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled showed a significant increase from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007 according to a U.S. Department of Education report. The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 36% since 2003. The report identified seven reasons parents give as their motivation for home-schooling their children.
The U. S. Department of Education’s Office of Voluntary Public School Choice program supports States and school districts in efforts to establish or expand a public school choice program. It supports efforts to establish or expand intradistrict, interdistrict, and open enrollment public school choice programs to provide parents, particularly parents whose children attend low-performing public schools, with expanded education options.
Building Choice.org supports the federal program with numerous and comprehensive “Tools” for communities to use beginning with the rationale and establishing a vision all the way to evaluating programs. Valuable resources, research and examples will help communities or schools at any stage in their program. Building Choice was developed for USDE by WestEd in collaboration with Edvance Research who also did a series on Innovation Guides.
