During this event you will have an opportunity to learn, share and network with other district and online learning personnel. Whether you are currently running an online program or charged with exploring or starting an online program, this event will provide critical information for success including:

Hosted by Sedona Oak Creek Unified School District through support by K12 & Backbone Communications.

Sedona Red Rock High School Performing Arts Center

Date: March 7, 2012
Time: 9:30am-3:00pm
Place: Sedona Oak Creek USD
Red Rock High School Performing Arts Center
995 Upper Red Rock Loop Rd
Sedona, AZ 86336

Click here to download a copy of the agenda

Who will benefit:

Superintendents, curriculum directors, technology coordinators and other district leaders with responsibility for online learning initiatives. Anyone may attend.

Welcome to Aventa Learning where we help schools help students.

Founded in 2002, Aventa Learning serves more than 1800 school organizations across the country. Our top notch virtual school solutions offer award winning curriculum, quality instruction and state of the art technology.

Aventa is renowned for it’s curriculum. Our comprehensive catalog of more than 140 middle and high school courses includes credit recovery, advanced placement, core classes and electives. Many of our courses offer ELL support and all are state-certified. Designed to be highly engaging, our curriculum keeps students focused and on track.

Our partners are our stamp of approval. Aventa is endorsed by organizations such as the Southern Regional Education Board, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the College Board. Our customers include the Chicago Public Schools and the Denver Public Schools.

We partner with schools in a number of different ways. Whether your school needs credit recovery courses, wants to reach out to homebound students or is interested in exploring more online money options, Aventa can develop the virtual school solution that works for your school district.

Today’s student was raised in a high tech world. These students have new demands and new ways of learning.

Aventa’s programs are specifically tailored for this generation. Our multi-media curriculum keeps students engaged and on-task. It’s also effective for different learning styles: from auditory to visual to tactile. Our high touch teaching gives students a chance to form one-on-one relationships with their teachers and with other online students.

Our on-site interim program provides in person support and an extra helping hand.

Aventa reaches out to students of all levels. From the at-risk student needing a second chance to the achieving student needing more challenges.

Our unique multi-media format includes videos, avatars, manipulatives and other denses and minds of the students.

We are as invested in your teachers as you are. Our teacher support system includes a network that connects them with peers and a community forum. Our detailed report in combination with proactive monitoring and notification helps teachers stay on top of student progress. We even provide professional development services for your teachers.

This report is just one example of the many hands on tools Aventa provides to keep teachers reprised of student progress. Teachers are consistently updated with important information about student work enabling them to intervene early and effectively.

Schools appreciate how adaptive and flexible our technology is. Whatever major learning management system your school is setup on, our platform can easily be integrated.

As part of our commitment to an ongoing partnership, we’ve developed this sweet tool to help schools track students, courses and teachers.

Aventa also support the larger community of educators and the counting promotion of best practices in the field.

Our Aventa educator community is the first of its kind and provides an important vehicle for maintaing a dialogue in the educator community.

Learn more:

http://www.backbonecommunications.com/aventa-learning-credit-recovery/

Wiki – There will be a live VSS conference wiki (located at http://vss11.wikispaces.com) to allow attendees to interact in real-time and engage in discussions about the trends, issues and programs discussed at the conference. Conference speakers are encouraged to upload copies of their presentations and any hand-outs on the wiki.

Webcasting – The VSS keynote addresses and break-out sessions being held in White River Ballroom G/H will be webcast live as well as be available for on-demand playback. In addition, the break-out sessions being held in Rooms 201/202, 203/204, 304/305, and Grand Ballrooms 1-4 will be recorded and be available for on-demand playback. The live webcast and on-demand recordings can be accessed at http://www.kzosites.com/inacol/.

I work for Excelsior which is in the high desert of California, we’re in Victorville, we’re our own district. We’re an independent study charter school. We have about 1200 students.

We piloted A+ as an online independent study curriculum predominantly for at risk students; students who have failed classes. We piloted in the summer of ’09 and had 22 students. We had great success so we decided to give it a try first semester this year. Semester just ended and we have around 400 students.

We have some awesome success stories. We have some special ed kids that have had challenges. The curriculum worked really well with the special ed kids who have learning disabilities predominantly because the delivery of the content is in such small pieces. So, first lesson in Algebra 1 is one sentence as opposed to a textbook where they’re reading 20, 30 sentences and graphs and numbers and all kinds of highlighted stuff all over the page that really keeps their attention. There’s a forward and a back button, there’s not a lot of places for the kids to get lost in the program itself.

We have some students with medical issues that are unable to come to school for some times. One in particular comes to mind who is a great student, but because of her medical issues she missed about 30% of her high school attendance over the past two years. So with this she’s able to do as much as she wants at home at her own pace. She’s not completely not caught up after one semester but she will probably be completely caught up by the end of the summer this year and on her way through high school and into college.

We also have a lot of students who are concurrently enrolled at the Community College and this gives them the flexibility and time so they can go to morning college classes, come home in the afternoon and do their work online.

I have another student who is extremely busy with school activities. She’s into ASB, helps prepare dances, field trips and activities. So she does that mostly in the day and goes home and knocks her schoolwork out in the evenings.

The parents really like it because the grading is done automatically, they can check progress. I send out progress reports out on a weekly basis. The kids will come in and I can see exactly what they’ve done, I can see when they did it, I can see how much time they spend on which aspect: the studying, the practice test, the mastery test, how many times they took the practice or mastery test. So if they’re doing their work at midnight on a Sunday maybe that’s an issue that the parent needs to address.

But we have so much information about students’ progress, students’ behavior as far as how much time and when; how often they’re engaging the material, that it’s really changed the dynamic of our independent study program in a positive way.

Learn more:

http://www.backbonecommunications.com/a-plus-credit-recovery/

Hi, I’m Joseph South, I’m the director of product development of Middlebury Interactive Languages. Today we’re going to be talking about the Middworld online courses.

Today we’re going to look at some of the unique features of the courses, some of the different ways they can be delivered in schools, some key product components and we’ll also demonstrate the courses for you.

The Middlebury Method for learning a language is really focused on the idea that you need to use it. That means you need to use it for a specific purpose, in a specific context and you need to do that while interacting with others.

Our courses are inspired by the Middlebury Summer Immersion Program where a student is to learn the language in class but also engage in a variety of fun activities outside of class that are all conducted in language.

These co-curricular activities include everything from dance, fashion or cooking to sports or politics.

One of the unique features of the Middlebury approach to online language learning is that we rely on an immersive methodology. A key component of that is that we provide an authentic cultural context behind everything we do.

One of the principal ways we do this is with authentic video that was shot in Country. Our course includes video that spans four continents. We’ve shot in the cities of Paris, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Montreal, New York City, Miami and in the country of Senegal.

Unlike other products that use this video in a very limited way, more as window dressing, we use it as a core feature of our product and actually build activities around the authentic video.

In addition to the video, we have thousands of audio clips spoken by native speakers from around the world. We also include thousands of images. Together, these really bring the sights and sounds of the target culture into the course.

Another goal of the Middlebury Method is to massively increase time “in language”. This refers to the time that the student thinks in the language, speaks in the language, writes in the language or listens intently in the language.

To accomplish this, in addition to the main course, we’ve added two key components. One is called Passport Sydney which is a social networking site where the students interact with each other in language. The second is a virtual world that provides the students an opportunity to use the language as if they were in the country.

Finally, we focus on ACTFL proficiency standards throughout the course. Our courses support three delivery models.

The first is the Hybrid Model. It brings our course into the classroom in lieu of the text book. The second is a Supplemental Model where the classroom teacher retains the existing textbook. By bringing in our course materials, it allows the teachers to create class presentations of authentic video, audio and cultural materials. The supplemental model also supports the use of our courses in computer labs, for after school programs and for engaging interactive homework assignments.

The fully online model provides a complete replacement for a face-to-face class. Students are supported by a certified teacher who provides email support, weekly live sessions where they interact with the students, assignment grading and written and oral feedback on their work.

Regardless of the model you choose to implement, the course consists of three main components: the Main Course, Passport City and the Virtual World.

Passport City is our in-language social networking environment that includes interest based clubs that parallel the co- activities in the summer immersion programs.

The Virtual World provides a highly immersive environment and allows for both single and multiplayer games and quests.

These courses use a multi-facets approach to assessment. Many learning activities provide immediate feedback. Additionally, teachers can provide both oral and written feedback on teacher graded assignments.

Teachers also conduct weekly, live, synchronous sessions. This allows them to provide feedback in real time.

Finally, each course also has two midterms, a semester final and a course final. Periodically, some of these assessments, along with project work, are gathered into a portfolio. This allows students, their teacher, or others to track the student’s progress. It also provides evidences of the student’s success.

Let’s move on to our course demonstration. We can’t show you all of the 1600 interactive activities in this course, but we’ll focus in on a few that exemplify the Middlebury methodology.

This first activity comes early on in the course. The students are experiencing authentic video for the first time.

In other courses at this point students would likely be learning individual words and phrases. However, we calibrate that experience and we ask them to focus in on just one item: the name of the person speaking. Listen to this video and see if you can pick out the name of this person.

Hola, mi nombre es Alejandro. Tengo diese y ochos anos. . .

The student then drags the name and places it on the video. This supports the Middlebury approach of using authentic language from the very beginning.

You’ll notice in this next activity, the video plays without sound. This is intentional. It helps the students realize that non verbal cues and situational context carry a great deal of meaning. It also encourages the learner to form a hypothesis about a situation that they don’t fully understand. This is a strategy that they can use to build islands of understanding that they can connect over time.

In this follow up activity, they have the opportunity to experience the same videos, but this time with the sound. When they think they understand the context they simply drag the appropriate description on top of the video. This allows them to verify the hypothesis that they formed in the previous activity.

As much as possible, even simple practices are contextualized inside of the course. In this activity, the students are practicing the numbers one through nine. To do this, students are asked to retrieve voicemail that they’ve received on their cell phone.

Listen to this message:

Hola! Mi teléfono es nueve, uno, dos, cinco, ocho, siete, seis.

The students then enter their number to check their accuracy.

Now here’s another message:

Hola! Mi teléfono es doce, cinco, cero, siete, cero nueve.

This provides a highly authentic contextualized task for them to complete.

This next activity demonstrates how we’ve interwoven ACTFL standards throughout the course.

In this activity, students are learning about the masculine and the feminine forms of adjectives. However, we’ve overlaid this on a lesson about the geography of the Spanish speaking world. This allows us to meet the ACTFL connection standard.

Enrique es Mexicano…

As students listen to audio clips of native speakers using these adjective forms, they’re also learning about the spanish speaking world.

So while they’re learning about these adjective forms, they may also be learning perhaps for the first time, the Dominican Republic is a spanish speaking country.

Now let’s take a look at our virtual world. In this world, learners can experience the visual feel of target language locations in a way that’s impossible in other approaches. Players will notice physical and cultural features of the world that will generate questions which in turn can lead to deeper learning.

Most learners are not typically able to notice social interactions between native speakers. In our world, they can listen, read, and study the expressions needed for a variety of interactions in the target language.

Our conversation system allows even low lever learners to participate in social interactions.

Students can also choose and personal an avatar to represent them in the virtual world.

Quests allow learners to interact with the 3D world as non playing characters and other student players. Players have to find objects and carry out tasks in a culturally authentic and beautifully designed environment.

Quest will require learners to use existing background knowledge and inference to promote thinking in the language.

The building interiors contain many games. Let’s look at the cafe game. In this game, the student’s avatar plays the role of a server in a cafe. Their goal is to maintain a high satisfaction rating that’s visible in the upper left hand corner of the screen. To do that, they need to get the orders right, serve the customers in a timely fashion and engage in appropriate small talk. First, the server needs to take the order of the customer. This shows the conversation interface. The student drags what they want to say to the speech bubble above their avatar’s head. Now that they have that order, they need to submit that to the kitchen to be fulfilled. To do so, they add it to the order board. This provides a classification activity where the learner must determine which category this order falls under. Once the order has been submitted to the kitchen, the learner is free to take other orders until the previous orders are ready to be served. Once the orders are ready, the student must quickly distribute it to the ordering customer. If they make a mistake, they lose satisfaction points. Getting it right of course, increases satisfaction. Depending on the number of customers and how quickly they arrive, this game can be challenging even for advanced speakers. Also, by changing the conversation engine perhaps from text to audio files only, we can change the types of skills that are being practiced. This provides a highly engaging, fun and authentic learning experience.

Our game aligns the linguistic goals with the game mechanics. The only way to be successful in the game is if you’re successful in the language.

Taken as a whole, the Middlebury approach represents a powerful new way of combining technology with language learning. We hope you have enjoyed this presentation and we look forward to working together to meet your language learning needs.

Learn more:
http://www.backbonecommunications.com/world-languages-for-elementary-middle-high-school-students/

Reading is life changing and it’s never too late to learn how.

For over 25 years, Reading Horizons has been helping instructors teach thousands of struggling students how to improve their lives through literacy. Across the country thousands of junior and senior high schools trust Reading Horizons because it is helpful and because it works.

Two of the greatest barriers to teaching older students are insufficient time to meet individual student’s needs and a lack of clear instruction and techniques. Reading Horizons overcomes these barriers with our interactive computer software.

This fast moving multi-century software is easy to use and understand without being childish or condescending. And… it presents a great opportunity for fun and independent student study leaving the instructor free to provide one-on-one help to students who need it most.

Students who have historically made little reading progress will make significant gains as they advance through this program, often improving their reading ability by three or more grade levels in just a few months leading to greater confidence and success in all areas of their lives.

So empower your students and change their lives.

Learn more:

http://www.backbonecommunications.com/reading-horizons-reading-intervention/

Please join us for a webinar on world language content. We will present you with a new world language option to help you provide your students an engaging and interactive opportunity to acquire a world language. Courses include Spanish, French, Chinese, German, and Latin for students in grades 3-12. 

Our programs can be used to supplement your current textbook or serve as a standalone solution with your current teachers or use our highly qualified and certified teachers. This is also a perfect solution for your online virtual school.

Please contact us with any additional questions.

News Anchor: In education news, a first in California, a charter school in San Francisco will combine online instruction with a traditional teacher in the classroom approach.

ABC 7′s education reporter, Lyanne Melendez, got a look at this new school and she’s here to explain how it’s going to work. Lyanne?

Lyanne Melendez: Well, you know Dan, there are educators at Stanford and Hartford who say that half of the public schools in this country will be partly online in the next decade or two. By this we mean students following the curriculum on the computer. That’s what Flex Academy in San Francisco set out to do this morning.

News Report: This is California’s first hybrid school.

80% of the instruction will be taught online and the remaining 20% in a traditional classroom.

Like any other school, students are expected to show up here five days a week from 8am-3pm.

Ariana Fisher, student: “It’s less distractions here. I guess everybody gets to focus on [their] own lesson plan.”

Milan Fisher, Ariana’s mother: “It just so happened that my daughter still wanted the socialization that a ‘brick and mortar’ school gave, so it was actually quite an easy decision for us.”

Lyanne Melendez: This morning it was time to ‘get acquainted’ and if this looks like a hotel conference room, well, it is. Classes started today at the St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco.

Of course, St. Francis is only a temporary location for them-this will be the new home for the new school, the old Press Club on Poe Street.

The new building should be available in two weeks with plenty of classrooms and computer space for the nearly 50 students so far enrolled at Flex Academy.

Students will have the K-12 online curriculum which is used my many kids who are home schooled. That curriculum offers 130 courses including five languages. It’s school at your own pace with individualized attention.

Mark Kushner: “So, for example, if you’re behind you get more help so you can succeed. If you’re very advanced and fast, you can go faster and that can differ at different subjects.

Lyanne Melendez: Humberto Cruz is only one of four teachers hired by the school.

Humberto Cruz: It’s not how interesting a lesson I put together or how much I can sort of entertain them, it’s really up to them to sort of get through the material and I provide support when I think it’s something really difficult.

Albero Berul: At my old school there were about 40 kids to a classroom. It was pretty overcrowded and it was just the teachers didn’t really have enough time for each student.

Lyanne Melendez: Like any other public charter school, they are funded by the state.

And, by the way, they do get their computers tomorrow. Now even though the school is located in San Francisco any student in the Bay area can enroll. Like I said before, they have 50 students- they hope to enroll 200 this semester.

Learn more:

http://www.backbonecommunications.com/virtual-school-program/

Ted Roland: 15 year old Christina Schultz and her 11 year old brother Jonathan are showing off their commute to school: down the stairs and into their separate classrooms. Once they get online they’re at school.

Christina and Jonathan may attend school at home but they’re not home schooled-there’s a big difference. They actually attend a public charter school through the computer. They have quizzes and tests and lesson plans which are all delivered from teachers through the computer. It’s a public school so it’s free to attend. In fact, all of the equipment that they need is paid for by taxpayers.

About 90 miles from Christina’s house in Los Angeles, Lisa Glesbrecht begins the first day of Algebra class from her home in Lake Elsinore, CA.

Christina’s other teachers are spread across the state. As for the students, watch this map light up when Mrs. Glesbrecht asks her algebra students to mark where they each live with a star.

Christina is one of about 200 students in class. Mrs. Glesbrecht teachers uses a combination of her voice, powerpoint type graphics and this cyber chalkboard which students see on their screen as she writes and explains the days lesson.

Mrs. Glesbrecht: “It’s amazing the kind of interaction we’re able to have. You can put quizzes inside of your presentations.”

Ted Roland: Students can ask questions through a chat panel the teacher sees on her screen. They can get extra help through email and phone calls with their teachers. Lessons are recorded for students to watch when they want which is what Jonathan is doing with his Spanish class.

Jonathan is a competitive ice skater practicing for two hours a day every morning. Going to school online allows him to pursue his skating. He’s also an advanced student. An 11 yr old freshman in high school which online school also caters to.

Jonathan Schultz: “It allows you to work at your own pace so you can do the math problems in twenty minutes rather than waiting for the whole class to finish.”

Ted Roland: But it doesn’t work without a parent or someone supervising. Jonathan, for instance, likes to play video games so mom usually camps out close enough so she can see his computer.

Across the country, 27 states currently offer some level of full time online public schools. Critics say kids miss out on the social aspects of going to school. Christina says she does meet kids online but..

Christina Schultz: “you don’t really get to know them.”

Ted Roland: “Is that something that you miss?”

Christina Schultz: “I would say yeah a little bit, because I was always willing to make a lot of friends in elementary school, but yeah, you miss it.”

Maureen Schultz: “They’re not sitting in the classroom everyday so they’re not sitting amongst their peers. And so they’re not getting that type of social interaction. BUT, when you hear the stories of what goes on sometimes in classrooms you say Oh, this is also a good thing that they’re not sitting around other kids who are influencing them in possibly negative ways.”

Ted Roland: The Schultz family does have some proof that this works. This is Christina and Jonathan’s older sister, Jennifer. She also went to school online from 5th grade to high school. Now she is here at USC. You feel as though online education works. Why?

Jennifer Schultz: “I think the structure of the school is a lot more similar to college than a regular school. I attended lecture once a week and the readings were all up to me. I think I’m really well acclimated to college already.”

Ted Roland: Jennifer was the valedictorian of her online graduating class of 450 students. Kids she met for the first time at this graduation ceremony.

Give us something that you think you did miss out on though.

Jennifer Schultz: “I really did miss out on the traditional social aspect of high school like running to classes, eating lunch in the cafeteria and just the interaction between people on the day-to-day basis.”

Ted Roland: A study released last year by the Department of Education concluded that online education is as effective as learning in the traditional classroom setting, at least in terms of academics.

As different as it may seem the formula for success online is the same as it is in class. Students need to work hard, have lots of support from home and they need good teachers. No matter where they may be.

Ted Roland, CNN, Los Angeles.

Learn more:

http://www.backbonecommunications.com/virtual-school-program/

Introducing Reading Horizons v5
Are you looking for a program that will ensure the success for all of your struggling readers?

Welcome to Reading Horizons v5, the most advanced reading program on the market. Our software contains 81 interactive lessons that guide students, focusing on the concepts of english, building up to the decoding of multi-syllable words; vocabulary development, including over 10,000 terms that are defined, used in context and displayed in a picture; over 225 high interest reading passages that are grade leveled and allow students to select material that interests them while they improve fluency and comprehension.

Experience Reading Horizons v5.

Reading Horizons: The foundation for reading english.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trMpePCFMYo&feature=BFa&list=PL3F1E22C6192DB6A8&lf=plcp

Learn more:

http://www.backbonecommunications.com/reading-horizons-reading-intervention/