Shakespeare Festival - Collaboration for all Virtual Learners

My virtual teacher is planning an amazing week long collaborative experience for her virtual students. My face-to-face students are invited too. Here is an excerpt from her email that explained this excellent opportunity for me to witness some of her best work:

"I am attaching the Shakespeare Festival schedule for you. Unfortunately, many of the sessions are in the evenings so won't be as accessible for your class to participate, but the Tuesday session at 10:00am will be great. K. is an 8th grade Language Arts teacher who is wonderful! In fact, he has made a few recordings for the festival that we will be playing each day to let the students know about what is happening that day. In your training course (in Educator), I loaded the banner I have on my announcement page so you can see what it looks like and can access the link for the session. You will also see a link for the first day's recording that introduces the whole festival so you can see how we can use audio to engage kids. :) This is one of 6 recordings we will play over the next week.

If you would like to log into any of the evening sessions, that would be fine, too! Here is an Elluminate link...

You can also view the Shakespeare Festival page on the FLVS website. Beginning on Monday, you will be able to view our Shakespeare Idol contest pages and see some of the projects students have created."

I spoke with my teacher about the importance of collaborative online experiences for students with special needs. She said that although all students reap significant benefit from working together, students with reading disabilities seem to benefit most. They are able to learn through their areas of strength (speaking, listening) and gain perspective so they can better understand related text.

Gifted learners enjoy the detail of collaborative events like these. They enjoy the history and drama, as well as the related literary experiences.

I am very excited about our upcoming collaboration. I will report in full on Tuesday evening.

The Ends of the Bell Curve

I spoke with my virtual school teacher about her special education students. Her comment surprised me, but on reflection make perfect sense. She said approximately 30% of her 200 students have learning disabilities, some mild, some significant. Another 10-20% are academically advanced, probably gifted. We discussed how this group, about half of her students, lie at either end of the bell curve. They are the kids who don't fit well into traditional schools. They are the kids who fall between the cracks and sometimes under the bus.

My virtual teacher told me the story of a middle school girl who was retained twice before she entered virtual school. My teacher took the time to understand her problems, anxiety and the need for extra time, and find solutions. The child quickly went from being an academic failure, to a success story. She became an honor student and went on to college. Her story was published in a local newspaper and it was picked up the the Associated Press. This child, once a special diploma candidate, graduated with a regular diploma with honors.

Virtual school serves a need in our society. I'm sure there are many other success stories like this.

Exploring Ucompass Educator

Ucompass Educator, the online course management system used by the virtual school I'm observing, has a variety of interesting tools teachers can use to meet the needs of special learners. I spent an hour this evening exploring the Help Center, a page on the virtual school website that explains the features of the system, focusing on the management and communication tools that a teacher could use to support struggling learners and enrich the learning experiences of advanced learners. I'll describe those that are not features I've found on Moodle, the course management system I use in my face-to-face classroom, though I may not have discovered them yet.

In April, 2006, Educator added a feature that allows users to record audio or video, and create a podcast of those files. No special equipment is needed other than ordinary sound input and a web cam. The directions are clear, making the process a snap even for new users. This feature could be used by virtual school teachers to help struggling readers by providing oral interpretations of text or directions. Students with writing disabilities could create podcasts as assessment options. Gifted students can view supplementary, enriching podcasts related to traditional topics. They can also create podcasts as enrichment projects.

Educator study aids help students review vocabulary through the creation of a glossary, quizzes, and games. Matching games and hangman are fun ways for all students to review material. Struggling learners are able to uses these tools, over and over if necessary, to prepare for real tests. Gifted learners can explore higher level concepts with these tools too.

Teachers have access to a wide variety of tools to evaluate learners. This allows them to find a way to evaluate learners in ways that access strengths. Quizzes, multiple format exams, worksheets, surveys, practice tests, and rubrics are available to teachers to customize tests and reviews.

Most of all, however, the communication tools on Educator are the keys to differentiation. Educator's email, instant messaging, teacher-led and student-led grouping options, chatrooms, discussion boards, and whiteboard features give virtual teachers a variety of tools in their toolbox to meet special needs.

This course management system seems easy to use and flexible enough to allow teachers to meet the special needs of many special learners.

Virtual School Assessments and Multiple Intelligences

I like many of the assessment activities in the sixth grade language arts virtual school course; they're varied, choice driven, and appeal to multiple intelligences. For example, in the lesson "2.02 The Reading Readiness Road: School Day Blues," the main character in the story experiences a painfully embarrassing day at school. The Creative Reader Response assessment activity gives the student two choices: create and send an e-card to the main character or write her a friendly letter of encouragement. Both options have links to lists of specific directions (which has more links to definitions, galleries of cards, and guidelines for letter writing. I like like both choices because options empower learners and variety addresses multiple intelligences. This is another example of how virtual school meets the special needs of learners. The e-card assignment meets the needs of learners with strong spatial intelligences and the letter assignment meets the needs of linguistically oriented learners. The choice between the assignments allows students with learning disabilities choose the assignment that suits their areas of strength but still gives them the opportunity to practice important skills.

In our gifted program we use Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences as a guide for meeting the special needs of our students. It appears the virtual school also provides alternative assignments and assessments to meet the needs of the children they serve.

Armstrong, T. (1994) Multiple Intelligences: Seven Ways to Approach Curriculum. Educational Leadership (November), retrieved on 4/11/08 from http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/articles/7_ways.htm

Virtual School and Learning Disabilities

I met a young graduate student today who has dyslexia. She described the accommodations she receives from her university, which includes digital audio recordings of all text, extra time to complete assignments, and tutoring services when needed. She is a successful student who feels strongly that her accommodations are important ingredients of her success.

Our conversation made me wonder, how do dyslexic students fare in virtual school? I wondered how students with other specific learning disabilities manage virtual school courses. And from a teacher's perspective I wondered, how do virtual school teachers with hundreds of students have the time to provide accommodations like those my acquaintance receives in her face-to-face graduate classes?

In their article, "An assistive computerized learning environment for distance learning students with learning disabilities," Klemes, Epstein, Zuker, Grinberg and Ilovitch said 5 to 20% of people in the general population have learning disabilities. This is an astounding number of potential distance learning students. The authors found that many distance learning courses are text-centered so students with reading centered learning disabilities (like dyslexia) struggle. Although distance learning programs offer these students several advantages, such as extra time and assignment flexibility, many have difficulty processing the large quantities of text inherent in the courses.

Commercial products such as speech synthesizers help many students, but many others encounter flaws with the synthesizers. Few are available in languages other than English and many of synthesizers feature voices that are difficult to understand, cost a lot, and are time consuming (Klemes, J., Epstein, A., Zuker, M, Grinberg, N. & Ilovitch, T., 2006). The authors urge educational technologists to continue to explore technologies that support learning disabled students and to improve the quality of the tools that exist.

When I consider the sixth grade language arts class I'm observing, I realize it is rather text intensive. When my virtual school teacher returns from her well deserved vacation in a few days, I will ask her which technologies she uses with learning disabled students.

Klemes, J., Epstein, A., Zuker, M, Grinberg, N. & Ilovitch, T. (2006) An assistive computerized learning environment for distance learning students with learning disabilities. Open Learning (21)1, 19-32.

Local Virtual School Grabs Attention

The front page of our county's most popular newspaper highlighted the success of our local virtual school yesterday and my community is reacting. This afternoon three parents of my fifth grade gifted students waited outside my classroom after school to talk to me about it. Another called me during my drive home. The newspaper article grabbed their attention and gave instant credibility to this educational option for their soon to be middle school students. They wanted to know what I thought, yet ironically had no idea I am observing the same virtual school as part of a graduate course. I didn't reveal my internship, but I explained a personal perspective that evolved through my internship: virtual school would be an excellent full-time or part-time option for their gifted children next year.

Each of the parents spent hours online today exploring the program. The parents were stunned by the list of course options and simplicity of the program. They couldn't believe it's free. All were especially excited by the foreign language options and the opportunities for their children to work at advanced levels in mathematics, reading, and science.

For confidentiality reasons, I am unable to quote or cite the article in this blog. I can say that the article explained that virtual school classes are excellent choices for thousands of students whose regular schools don't offer advanced or unusual courses, or for students who want to work faster or slower than the students at their local schools. It explained that our virtual school offers more than 90 online courses for middle and high school students and serves over 54,000 students. Next year it expects to serve over 80,000 students.

Since the focus of my blog is how virtual schools meet the needs of special students, I was especially interested to read statements from students that said their virtual school teachers give them more attention than they got in regular school. These students reported that they are able to call their virtual teachers as late as 9PM or as early as 6AM with questions or concerns. One said she was recently given an extra week to work on material that was extra challenging, something she was never allowed to do in traditional school. Clearly, this program meets the needs of these special students. I feel confident they can also meet the needs of mine.

Online Course Designs for Special Students

As I review selected lessons in the sixth grade language arts virtual school course, many thoughts regarding course design cross my mind. Mostly, I'm struck by the overall quality and balance of the lessons. They're quick paced, interactive, and varied; they possess the attributes of high quality online courses suggested in the studies I've cited in my blog. The lesson assessments seem purposeful, engaging, and fun. My teacher explained how she uses course pacing (among other tools) to meet the special needs of students. High achieving students move twice as fast through the course than traditional students; struggling students move at a significantly slower pace. Most students are encouraged to take 36 weeks to finish the course, a pace that seems appropriate to me as I review the material and consider the skills of my own fifth grade students. It seems like most sixth graders would be well served by these lessons offered at various paces.

As I read through the material, I realized the lessons involve a lot of reading. Although novels are used elsewhere in the course, the students read all necessary material for these lessons on their computer screens. Directions, assignments, and stories must be independently read and comprehended by students. It's a significant quantity of text. I wondered how struggling sixth grade readers manage this challenge, for even at a slower pace, the independent reading demands seem significant. I wondered if struggling readers might benefit from having portions of the material read aloud to them as they read along on the screen. I wondered if students with attention issues may also benefit from such support. I know I sometimes enjoy hearing my online professors reading to me through PowerPoint presentations and prerecorded lessons. The audio portion helps me pay attention as I work my way through the lessons.

My virtual school teacher explained that most of her students, struggling or not, get a lot of adult support through the initial weeks of the course. Text is read aloud to students as they follow along on their screens. Students ask questions, and answers are provided immediately. As students adjust to the course design and the technologies involved, the adult support is gradually reduced. Some students get daily parental support through the adjustment period, some get daily teacher support, and many get both. Students with learning disabilities often need adult support throughout the course, just as they would in face-to-face courses.

I wondered if most online courses meet the needs of special students in a similar manner. In their article, "Online Course Designs: Are Special Needs Being Met?" authors Christy Keeler and Mark Horney examined how students with special physical and cognitive needs are served in online courses. The authors monitored how frequently 156 online design elements identified as critical for students with special needs appeared in 22 online high school courses. These elements were sorted into five general categories: accessibility, website design, technologies used, instructional methodologies, and support systems. Their "overall finding is that contemporary courses generally include design elements necessary to meet the basic needs of students with disabilities" (Keeler, C. & Horney, M., 2007).

Keeler and Horney made 12 recommendations for instructional designers including: "Increase the availability of audio elements," and "Include supportive text, but allow users to select which supports they want to access (e.g., no supports, ASL, definitions, graphics)," and "Encourage use of face-to-face support personnel who have experience working with individuals with special needs and who are knowledgeable about assistive technologies" (Keeler, C. & Horney, M., 2007).

Based on my observations of lessons in my virtual course, conversations with my virtual course teacher, and the recommendations listed in this study, it appears that the sixth grade language arts course meets the needs (or can be easily adapted to meet the needs) of special students with a wide range of special needs.

Keeler, C. & Horney, M. (2007). Online Course Designs: Are Special Needs Being Met? The American Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 61-75.

Elluminate Live! A Critical Feature

As I complete the final four weeks of my internship with our local virtual school, I will continue to focus my observations on the methods distance educators use to meet the individual needs of learners. I want to understand all the ways virtual educators differentiate curriculum and instruction to help all children learn and achieve, especially those with special needs. I chose this area of focus because I teach gifted students in a full time, face-to-face magnet program. I want to know if virtual school courses provide gifted students with a viable alternative to gifted face-to-face classes, and if virtual schools provide them with options not available in brick and mortar classrooms. I am also very interested to learn how virtual teachers modify the pace and curriculum to meet the needs of struggling learners.

My virtual teacher loves Elluminate. It's a tool that helps her differentiate instruction when necessary and to give her students opportunities for synchronous learning. In her article "Harnessing the Virtual Classroom," Ruth Clovin Clark describes Elluminate as a synchronous e-learning environment that supports "the projection of still, animated, and video images; instructor-participant audio; sharing of desk-top applications; and interactions using instant polling, chat, and whiteboard marking tools" (Clark, R., 2005). My teacher uses these Elluminate features with all of her students quite regularly, and more frequently with students who seek or need extra attention.

My two experiences with Elluminate so far have been memorable, and I know I haven't seen all it can do yet. I felt surprised when my teacher presented video images (PowerPoint slides, drawings on the whiteboard, or sections of text) while she was talking to me over the telephone. She could see where I was placing my cursor and where I clicked on the screen. She could even see my face as I watched the screen through the video camera on my computer. I've never experienced anything like that before. Elluminate is far more fascinating than iChat or Skype because it has so many additional features.

Even though Clark's article described how Elluminate was used in a corporate training environment, her conclusions and recommendations certainly seem relevant to K-12 virtual education. Clark says the key creating effective virtual learning environments is to maintain student engagement; Elluminate does this quite well. She recommends that virtual teachers maintain a lively pace, visualize their content (avoiding "a wall of words"), incorporate frequent participant responses, and to use small group breakout rooms (Clark, R., 2005).

From what I've learned, it seems clear that Elluminate is a key component of my teacher's virtual classroom and an effective tool for differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all learners.

Clark, R. C. (2005). Harnessing the Virtual Classroom. T+D. 59(11).