“Our goal is to help schools and districts to improve student achievement. The Plato Virtual Academy is an important step forward in doing that,” said Jamie Candee, Plato Learning vice president of product and marketing. “We are here to partner–not compete–with educators to meet the needs of 21st century learners.”

For the rest of the article, go to Plato Launches Virtual Academy

Brassfield said the online classes are fairly new and offer opportunities to students who didn’t have access to AP classes before.

Mark Thane, a regional director for the district, said offering advanced courses benefits students by providing more challenging work and preparing them for higher education.

For the rest of the article, go to MCPS makes national Advanced Placement honor roll

At the top of the list: offering a platform for students to explore the rapidly expanding realm of online education.

“We felt that it was important for us to be able to have that experience available to our students,” said Bigfork High School principal Matt Porrovecchio. “They’re likely going to have some form of online learning in college, so really, experiencing an online classroom is just as important as the actual content because it’s a skill in itself.”

In 2008, the school began offering electives through Virtual High School (VHS), a national program that offers a variety of courses on topics such as video game design, criminology and world religions. The school also offers a selection of Advanced Placement (AP) classes in more traditional subjects.

“We set out to find what we felt was the best program available, and that was VHS,” Porrovecchio said. “There are a lot of online programs out there that are more in the category of correspondence classes, and that’s not what we were shooting for. We wanted a platform that was as close to a traditional classroom as possible, where students were required to communicate with their instructors and their classmates on a regular basis.”

For the rest of the article, go to Bigfork offers online diploma option

But, it needs to grow up. And fast. As online learning approaches the knee of the exponential curve, we can’t ignore it as just a small tangential sandbox. With 200,000 full-time virtual students nationwide and growing, it is core to the system now and we need to treat it that way.

In a new brief my partners Gene Glass and Kevin Welner, of the National Education Policy Center, articulate many of the current problems in the P-12 online learning space. There are serious, documented quality concerns and in some cases a near total lack of traditional accountability and oversight. The Washington Post this morning provided a good summary. The abuses are appalling and could cause a national backlash against the use of online learning in the P-12 learning system.

For the rest of the article, go to Time for Virtual Schooling to Grow-Up

The school first offered online classes four years ago through Virtual High School, an international online consortium of instructors teaching specialized courses such as American Popular Music and Nuclear Physics.

Virtual High School expanded electives that would not be feasible to offer at the school. Participation has been popular: Students have taken 140 classes.

For the rest of the article, go to Bigfork offers high school diploma online

For the rest of the article, go to Technology expands school offerings

Classes from two online programs, the state-funded Montana Digital Academy and the locally run Great Falls Public Schools Virtual Academy, are open to students throughout the district.

Valorie Oldfield, 18, who graduated from C.M. Russell High School this year, said her experience with online education has “definitely been positive,” despite having difficulty learning in an online language class.

For the rest of the article, go to Great Falls schools embrace online teaching

The district is saving $100,000 by not renewing the contracts of six teachers.

However, with that staff reduction the district lost its Spanish teacher and the middle school must offer a foreign language to keep its accreditation. To fix that problem the school is trying out the use of online classes through Montana Digital Academy.

For the rest of the article, go to School board decides against holding levy

Last year, Vermont and Montana launched their first state-run virtual schools, while Michigan and Massachusetts created full-time online programs. This year, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman told lawmakers he wants to use $8.5 million in lottery funds to create an online high school to bring new courses to the state’s students. “In rural Nebraska, it can be difficult to hire foreign language, math and science teachers,” he said in a January speech. “A virtual high school would allow rural schools and rural communities to survive.”

For the rest of the article. go to Virtual education boom hits the states

Classes from Montana Government to Spanish are now being offered through the school district and through the Montana Digital Academy.

For the rest of the article, go to Great Falls Schools Embracing Online Learning