February+10,+2011+-+SREB-iNACOL+NOTY,+Online+and+Blended+Learning,+Textbooks,+Google,+Resources,+Webinar

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=**Worthy of Note: February 10, 2011**=

**SREB, iNACOL Announce Finalists for National Online Teacher of the Year**
Five finalists for the 2011 National Online Teacher of the Year Award have been announced by SREB and the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), which hold the annual competition. Chosen from 65 nominees in 25 states, the finalists were selected for exceptional contributions to online K-12 education. They are: Kristin Kipp from Jeffco’s 21st Century Virtual Academy in Colorado, Thomas Landon from Virtual Virginia, Dianna Miller from Florida Virtual School, Emily Parrish from North Carolina Virtual Public School and Andrew Vanden Heuvel from Michigan Virtual School. One of these five finalists will be named the 2011 National Online Teacher of the Year on March 10 during the SREB Education Technology Cooperative’s Teaching and Learning Symposium. For details, see the press release.

**Online Learning/Blended Learning**
The rise of K-12 Blended Learning (White paper) //Michael Horn and Heather Staker, Innosight Education, January 2011// Online learning is sweeping across America. In the year 2000, roughly 45,000 K–12 students took an online course. In 2009, more than 3 million K–12 students did. What was originally a distance- learning phenomenon no longer is. Most of the growth is occurring in blended-learning environments, in which students learn online in an adult-supervised environment at least part of the time. As this happens, online learning has the potential to transform America’s education system by serving as the backbone of a system that offers more personalized learning approaches for all students. And here is coverage of it in Education Week.

How Blended Learning Will Change the World //Tom Vander Ark, Huffington Post, February 7, 2011// The global secondary education gap is the most pressing problem in the world. If we solve that problem, we can improve global health, sustainability, security, and prosperity. Using extensive statistics to describe the condition of global educaton, the author purports that online learning, cheap access devices, open content, and broadband will soon provide low cost universal access to quality high school learning and building a bridge to post secondary and job opportunities for the next billion youth. “Facebook and Twitter may topple autocratic regimes, but it will be blended learning that empowers hundreds of millions of youth to lead healthy and more productive lives.”

Virtual Learning in Michigan's Schools
//Michael VanBeek, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Midland, Michigan, 2011// This study analyzes the financial costs and academic benefits of virtual learning, and it explores how this innovation could further benefit Michigan public school students. While there’s not an abundance of quality research on virtual learning in K-12 schools, several studies suggest that some students, particularly older ones, can perform as well, and perhaps even better, in virtual environments. A 2009 U. S. Department of Education report concluded that students in virtual learning programs outperformed those in traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms. Evidence from extensive virtual schooling in Florida and Ohio demonstrates that instruction delivered online can at least hold its own with face-to-face instruction. Read more about the Michigan study here: Study says online learning saves schools money and helps students //(Lisa Ermak, The Holland Sentinel, February 7, 2011)//

K-12 Inc., Research University Launch Virtual School //Trading Markets.com, January, 2011// In its latest foray into higher education, K12 Inc. has teamed up with George Washington University to launch a fully online private prep school for high schoolers. The partnership between a major research university and the virtual education company aims to bring higher quality curriculum and online classes to students around the world as well as to allow George Washington University and the Herndon, Va.-based K12 Inc., to conduct research on curriculum development and instruction in online learning environments,

Online Courses, Still Lacking That Third Dimension

// Randall Stross, New York Times, January 5, 2011 //
When colleges and universities finally decide to make full use of the Internet, most professors will lose their jobs, but Randall Stross isn’t worried. Developing that best-in-the-world online course — in which students would learn as much, or more, than in an ordinary classroom or a hybrid online class — requires significant investment. He doesn’t see that happening soon. Here he gives a good summary of the likes of online learning in the universities. Any other missing ingredients?

iLearn: A Content Analysis of the iTunes App Store's Education Section
//Carly shuler, Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, November, 2009// This short paper is a content analysis of the education section of the iTunes App Store. It seeks to provide an up-to-date, reliable, and unbiased analysis and to act as a benchmark for change as the iTunes App Store continues to grow and evolve. Also: iEAR.org; A Community Effort to Grade Educational Apps (Apps are searchable by grade level (K-20) and apps may be submitted for review.)

Is the Google-fication of Education Underway? //Scott Olster, Fortune, February 7, 2011// Among tablets and 3D TVs at International Consumer Electronics Show, one-size-fits-all learning is facing a digital death knell. Online learning startup Knewton and Arizona State University announced a partnership Thursday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in which Knewton will apply its adaptive virtual learning platform to run two of the university's primary introductory math courses and two remedial math courses starting this spring.Interesting perspective…

**New Publication**
[|The 2011 Horizon Report] //NMC’s Horizon Project, 2011// The internationally recognized series of Horizon Reports identifies and describes emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry.The report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years. The areas of emerging technology cited for 2011 are: __Time to adoption__: //One Year or Less// Electronic Books Mobiles __Time to adoption__: //Two to Three Years// Augmented Reality Game-based Learning __Time to adoption__: //Four to Five Years// Gesture-based Computing Learning Analytics

**Google Ventures into Education**
Will Google Take Any Higher Ed Risks? //Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, January 25, 2011// Google announced a couple weeks ago a new education category in its Google Apps Marketplace. You can read about the "20 applications from 19 vendors" at this link, watch the video included, and decide for yourself if this is a big deal in our world?

**Beyond the First Five Links: Using Google’s Left-Hand Panel to Reveal the Good Stuff** //Natasha Bergson-Michelson, Google, January 21, 2011// (Click on this link to find the recording of this tutorial: @https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=49801772&rKey=cbf52b19efd12b0c Download for further use; it may be removed from the website.)

Looking for new ways to motivate students to look beyond the first five links in a search engine? Learn how Google's left-hand panel helps you sort and filter search results in ways that reveal compelling new sources, even without formulating complex queries. We take on a simple research assignment, including hands-on practice, to discover how these tools encourage students to both engage with new forms of data visualization and explore the best resources, whether they come from the print or electronic world. This is a recorded presentation presented by Google and made available to teachers and instructors. (Time: 1 hour, 9 minutes)

**More on Textbooks**
Who Needs Textbooks? How Washington State is Redesigning Textbooks for the Digital Age. //Anita Hamilton, January 25, 2011, Newsweek// Washington’s Open Course Library is the largest state-funded effort in the nation to make core college course materials available on the Web for $30 or less per class. Financed with $750,000 from the state of Washington and a matching grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the goal isn’t just to reduce student costs, says program architect Cable Green. It’s also to create engaging, interactive learning materials that will help improve course completion rates. Green estimates that the initiative could save Washington State students up to $41 million in textbook costs per year. Read more….

The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning //Maria H. Andersen, The Futurist, January-February, 2011// It’s likely that we’ll see decent conversational interfaces within the next decade, and certainly applications like Google Voice are moving us much closer to this reality. The personal learning system would use a spaced repetition algorithm (SRA) to reintroduce the Socratic questions over time so that biological memory is more likely to grasp onto the ideas and information. For now, she calls this system SOCRAIT (a play on “Socratic” that includes SOC for //social,// AI for //artificial intelligence,// and IT for //information technology// within its name). There are several guides on the side for following her ideas of the future outlined in this article.

**Resources**
10 Tedx Talks that Teachers Should Watch We listed TED in the last Worthy of Note, and one of our online leaders suggested that we point up these ten videos that have been compiled by a teacher who says, “When you watch the talks you are infected by the passion for learning. The speakers are entertaining, thought-provoking and serious about teaching the audience…I will say that each TED talk has given me the knowledge and motivation to do better and be better next year.”

SLIME Kids (School Library Media Kids) S chool li brary Me dia Kids, an innovative new site packed with games and book trailers, is designed to provide a fun, interactve learning experiences to get students motivated to learn on their own! Students can choose from exceptional literacy-related resources such as author and book review websites as well as superb educational tools including reference works and search engines.

** Subject-specific Web 2.0 Tools ** **― English! History! Math! Science!** Join content area experts from one of the fastest growing state virtual education programs in the country, North Carolina Virtual Public Schools, as they showcase Web 2.0 tools ― tools that enhance learning and collaboration. Login here: http://web20tools022211.eventbrite.com Contact Matlea Parker (matlea.parker@sreb.org) if you have questions.
 * Webinar, Tuesday, February 22, 2011 from 6:00 - 7:00 PM (ET)**