Content Delivery for a Virtual High School.

IN THE FALL OF 2002,VISIONS IN EDUCATION, A CHARTER school for home-schooled and independent-study children, opened Visions High School Academy (www.visions academy.org), a virtual project-based high school. The five educators who started the program–Mark Jackson, Fred Lamora, Celine Darby, Jennifer Russell and I–identified three beliefs that guided our design of the program: 1. Learning occurs in communities. A community is a group of individuals who share common interests and identity. In order to increase learning, individuals need to increase their involvement in other communities. 2. Learning requires greater participation in communities. Learning involves moving to a greater participation in a community. Newcomers are introduced to the community by masters who mediate the newcomers toward this better participation in the community. 3. Participation ensures the survival and growth of communities. The only way a community can grow is to allow those who belong to other communities to participate in your community. If a community fails to allow others to enter, the community will become stagnant and wither. Delivery Tools Keeping these three beliefs in mind, we used a variety of technology tools to develop a program that delivers core high school course material. These technology tools and delivery models had to align with the beliefs laid out by our team. We decided that the following three modes of instructional delivery and interaction were needed: * Synchronous (e.g., real-time chat) * Asynchronous (e.g., newsgroup and discussion boards) * Face-to-face interaction These modes of delivery and interaction allow teachers to take on the role of facilitator: Teachers do not occupy a space at the head of the class; rather, they are within the class, which is more along the lines of a roundtable. Using these three modes of instruction and interaction, we felt that a community of learners could be encouraged to develop and grow. We had to decide on the appropriate synchronous and asynchronous tools to use in the academy. TAPPED IN (www.tappedin.org) was selected as the synchronous tool that designed a special virtual “space” for the academy, which was password-protected for the students’ safety. This space became the classroom for synchronous chats. In addition, teachers had their own studios in which to conduct real-time classes. TAPPED IN also allows participants to write on a whiteboard, project Web sites, and show emotion and movement in a virtual environment. At the end of each session, students receive an e-mailed copy of their session so that their learning is captured for future reference. This last component was key in the decision to use TAPPED IN. In addition, while conversations disappear as soon as they are spoken in a traditional classroom, these conversations are not lost with students and instructors using TAPPED IN. The captured information can then be retrieved later or used by an absent student to catch up with the class. We chose Blackboard to host the academy’s curriculum, calendar, gradebook and asynchronous discussion boards. The instructors designed their courses based on national, state and district standards. These courses consist of projects due at the end of each week, with the scope of the projects covering the standards studied during the week. Students can access their projects in Blackboard before posting their completed projects to their Blackboard course. Teachers can also post topics for discussion each week on the course discussion board. Students can access these discussion boards at anytime and post their responses. The course calendar and gradebook are also located on Blackboard. Face-to-face meetings were the last method of content delivery chosen. Periodically, students meet with their teachers at the academy office building or other locations. Instructors use this time to perform science dissections, museum field trips, group and individual tutoring, as well as literature coffeehouse discussions.