INACOL VIRTUAL SCHOOLS SYMPOSIUM
At the end of last year, several thousand delegates gathered at the Inacol Virtual Schools Symposium to share ideas and learn more about the rapidly developing area of virtual school education in the United States.
Susan Patrick, INACOL President gave an insightful keynote. She predicts a global shortage of teachers over next 10 years. 70% of US school districts offer at least 1 online course. 45 have policies and state-wide programs. Online learning is reaching 1% of student population. In 2005 around 20,000 K-12 (5-18 year olds) made online course enrolments, but in 2009 that has already topped 1m. Florida Virtual School is a leader in the field and has 154,000 student enrolments.
27 states allow full time online learning. Virtual schools are being used for meeting the needs of students getting back on track, for gifted students to take more advanced courses (e.g. Stanford University online programme) and helping students develop skills for future.
In Turkey 15m students have used online education systems developed by ministry of education. Australia is aiming to provide a laptop for every high school student.
India – would need 200,000 new schools to cope with population demands, so want to use virtual instead.
In China – 100m virtual school students are anticipated in next 10 years.
Singapore closes down its physical schools for one week a year so teachers and pupils can use virtual learning instead. All educators are trained to use such collaborative teaching approaches. The country is wanting to ensure continuity of learning in the face of potential pandemics – e.g. H1N1(Swine Flu).
Reasons for continued growth:
1. Online learning expands options to study courses otherwise unavailable.
2. Online learning growing rapidly (30% annually) in the US.
3. Many research studies show online learning can be as effective or better when compared with face to face study.
4. Achieving equity in teacher distribution.
5. Supporting struggling schools, and a new model for sharing access to the best teachers.
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/
