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Plato Launches Virtual Academy
March 12, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment
Accreditation for the academy will be provided by the Northwest Accreditation Commission (NWAC) with the virtual academy designated as a distance education school. Established in 1917, NWAC is engaged in school accreditation in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
“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.”
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MCPS makes national Advanced Placement honor roll
November 29, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment
Missoula’s public school district offers AP classes at all four high schools – Big Sky, Hellgate, Sentinel and Seeley-Swan – as well as online through the Montana Digital 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.
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Bigfork offers online diploma option
October 31, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment
It all started four years ago, when a group of Bigfork High School staff members started meeting and brainstorming ideas of how to better serve students.
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.”
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