South Carolina K-12 Online Schools: A Framework for Measuring Success in Teaching and Learning

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Stone
Author(s):  
Peter Holowka

This paper is based on the findings of an exhaustive study of all 75 large K-12 districts in Canada's three western-most provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.  This study encompassed over 1.1 million students and a geographical area of 2,258,483 square kilometers.  Facilitating teaching and learning activities for so many students across such a large territory, with diverse provincial regulations, is an impressive feat achieved by the information technology leaders of the K-12 school districts.  Multiple case study analysis, followed by correlation analysis, were used to explore the nature of IT infrastructure and cloud computing use in Western Canada.  A data transformation model mixed methods triangulation design methodology was used.  This paper discusses the strategies used in Western Canada to deliver educational technology resources through to students, teachers, parents, and district staff.  The findings of this study are that cloud computing is the primary IT infrastructure in Western Canadian K-12 education.  All school districts in the three provinces studied use cloud computing for some aspects of their infrastructure.  In instances where cloud computing infrastructure is not used, school-level LAN and server infrastructure is used.  In addition to being an alternative to cloud computing, the rare instances of school-level server use are either to supplement or complement a district’s centralized cloud computing infrastructure, with cloud computing infrastructure existing in parallel.


Author(s):  
Cher Hill ◽  
Paula Rosehart ◽  
Sue Montabello ◽  
Margaret MacDonald ◽  
Don Blazevich ◽  
...  

This paper explores the potentiality inherent within a community-campus partnership in the area of inservice teacher education, and the inter-institutional space that has afforded creative and collaborative practices. Through this partnership, we endeavour to find innovative ways to better serve our students and create opportunities for smooth interactions and flow across school and university communities. Unlike other research that explores tensions and/or common ground within community-university partnerships, we seek to understand the potential that is created in the metaphorical space in-between institutions. Using dialogic inquiry, the diverse members of our teaching team, including members of the university community and the K-12 school system, as well as graduates of the program, reflected on the unique material, discursive and relational dimensions of our inter-institutional space. We came to see our graduate program as a hybrid place of connections, rhythms, and intersections in which usual institutional practices are ruptured. Together we identified powerful interrelated structural dimensions of our inter-institutionality, which we referred to as the gathering space, the inquiry space, the transformative space and the empowering space. These themes and the flow that has been created across and between institutions will be discussed in the following paper. 


Author(s):  
Angela Elkordy ◽  
Jessica Iovinelli

AbstractOn the surface, adopting technology presents itself as a technical issue. Yet, the real challenge of digital transformation in educational contexts necessitates a second-order change to disrupt and realign interconnected systems. A significant component of digital transformation in K-12 schools is an understanding of the unique affordances of digital tools and technologies and how these can be leveraged to align with learning goals and targets to impact teaching and learning in new ways. While there are several models for innovation diffusion and technology adoption in K-12 contexts, they fall short, particularly in describing the nature and interactions of these interconnected systems. These aspects of technology implementation remain a mystery. As a result, efforts to enact change in K-12 organizations often fall short due to a lack of understanding of context, inadequate goal-setting, insufficient professional development and personalized supports to build capacity, and a failure to evaluate progress. In K-12 educational settings, the people, the competencies, and the culture, alongside the strong leadership, resources, and organizational context, are all essential to effect sustainable change. We propose a model for digital transformation that considers all of these factors and interconnected systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-34
Author(s):  
Chona D. Jorilla ◽  
Joel M. Bual

Competent and quality teachers are the principal key of an excellent educational system, for they contribute to the integral formation of the learners. Their unique role in the teaching-learning process enables these children to maximize their potentials in becoming active and critical thinkers. Through this professional endeavor, they become stewards of knowledge not only for learners but also for the building and growth of the nation. Thus, for teachers to perform this mission, they must show high regard for professional standards and competence. However, most Catholic schools nowadays are confronted with the challenges of teaching competence due to the gradual migration of qualified educators to public institutions considering the demands of high remuneration and K-12 educational reform. In this sense, they resort to hiring new and unqualified teachers who compromise the continuity of quality Catholic teaching and learning.  Hence, the paper assessed the level of teaching competence of Diocesan Catholic schools in Antique in the light of content knowledge and pedagogy, learning environment, diversity of learners, curriculum and planning, assessment and reporting, community linkages and professional engagement, and personal growth and professional development domains of Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (PPST). Likewise, it sought to establish the relationship between teaching competence and their age, sex, employment status, and professional status.              


Author(s):  
W. Kyle Ingle ◽  
Stephen M. Leach ◽  
Amy S. Lingo

We examined the characteristics of 77 high school participants from four school districts who participated in the Teaching and Learning Career Pathway (TLCP) at the University of Louisville during the 2018–2019 school year. The program seeks to support the recruitment of a diverse and effective educator workforce by recruiting high school students as potential teachers for dual-credit courses that explore the teaching profession. Utilizing descriptive and inferential analysis (χ2 tests) of closed-ended item responses as well as qualitative analysis of program documents, Web sites, and students’ open-ended item responses, we compared the characteristics of the participants with those of their home school districts and examined their perceptions of the program. When considering gender and race/ethnicity, our analysis revealed the program was unsuccessful in its first year, reaching predominantly white female high school students who were already interested in teaching. Respondents reported learning about the TLCP from school personnel, specifically, guidance counselors (39%), non-TCLP teachers (25%), or TLCP teachers (20%). We found that the TLCP program has not defined diversity in a measurable way and the lack of an explicit program theory hinders the evaluation and improvement of TLCP. Program recruitment and outcomes are the result of luck or idiosyncratic personnel recommendations rather than intentional processes. We identified a need for qualitative exploration of in-school recruitment processes and statewide longitudinal studies to track participant outcomes in college and in the teacher labor market.


Author(s):  
Marit Grande Haugdal ◽  
Hilde Sundfaer

Fantasy Workshop is a project focused on the active use of a Learning Management System (LMS), itslearning, in teaching and learning in a K-12 blended environment. As teachers in this study, the authors used an LMS as a learning platform in their 6th grade literature class. The focus for the class was creative writing and learning about Fantasy, a fiction genre. The aim of the project was to enable all students, not only those students who love to read and write, to learn about the Fantasy genre in a way that would build on their previous knowledge and interests. In addition, the project was aimed at facilitating students’ writing processes in such a way that was meaningful and motivating for all students. Most importantly, as teachers, the authors used this project to establish an effective blended environment that worked for teaching and learning in the 6th grade classroom.


Author(s):  
Cynthia J. Benton ◽  
Kathleen A. Lawrence

Effective presentation skills and communication competence are important developmental qualities for teachers’ professional success and K-12 students’ learning. Yet identifying the definitive qualities and methods to practice and evaluate those skills has had minimal emphasis in current education programs. In addition to traditional abilities such as making clear presentations, speaking well, and articulating an argument, K-20 learners are faced with an explosion of options for accessing, organizing, and presenting information using technology. This study documents methods for college-level instruction and assessment of presentation skills, which serve as evidence of preservice teachers' readiness to demonstrate effective communication skills for K-12 student learning. The report summarized in this chapter tracks two years of creating and evaluating methods for promoting professional presentation and communication skills, and includes rubrics focused on the development and evaluation of those skills.


Author(s):  
Nicholas H. Wasserman

Contemporary technologies have impacted the teaching and learning of mathematics in significant ways, particularly through the incorporation of dynamic software and applets. Interactive geometry software such as Geometers Sketchpad (GSP) and GeoGebra has transformed students' ability to interact with the geometry of plane figures, helping visualize and verify conjectures. Similar to what GSP and GeoGebra have done for two-dimensional geometry in mathematics education, SketchUp™ has the potential to do for aspects of three-dimensional geometry. This chapter provides example cases, aligned with the Common Core State Standards in mathematics, for how the dynamic and unique features of SketchUp™ can be integrated into the K-12 mathematics classroom to support and aid students' spatial reasoning and knowledge of three-dimensional figures.


Author(s):  
Carolyne Nekesa Obonyo

The use of mobile technologies to enhance 21st century learning is increasing in K-12 schools and teacher education institutions. Thus, there is a need to effectively prepare preservice teachers to use mobile technologies in their future classrooms. This chapter explores the effective use of mobile technologies in teacher preparation in ways that are transferred to K-12 teaching and learning. It goes on to look at two major organizations: the university and partner school involved in the preparation of preservice teachers. Additionally, the purposes of incorporating information and communication technologies in teacher preparation as identified by Davis are explored to understand how mobile technologies align with these purposes. Common challenges of using mobile technologies in teacher preparation are also presented.


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