Dr. Chris Peters will discuss positive ways that technology can be made part of any school’s dropout prevention strategy. Topics to be covered in this live discussion range from “big picture” issues such as developing realistic expectations of what technology can and can’t do, to spotlighting specific technologies that are both powerful and inexpensive. While aimed particularly at those working with students in the school setting, this program will hold valuable insights and recommendations for parents, community members and at-risk students themselves.
In his 2008 book ‘Disrupting Class’, Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and noted author on disruptive technology and innovation, suggests that within the next decade, U.S. high school students may be taking up to 50% of their courses virtually. While independent virtual schools have begun to proliferate outside of the traditional school system, Stuart will discuss alternative models of virtual schooling that schools and districts may embrace to keep students “within their borders.” In addition, he will examine the potential for helping to improve graduation rates through virtual education models.
Picciano, A. G., & Seaman, J. (2008). K-12 Online Learning: A 2008 Follow-up of the Survey of U.S. School District Administrators. http://www.sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/pdf/k-12_online_learning_2008.pdf . Newburyport, MA : The Sloan Consortium.
International Association for K-12 Online Learning (2010). National Standards of Quality for Online Courses/North American Council for Online Learning. http://www.inacol.org/research/nationalstandards/NACOL%20Standards%20Quality%20Online%20Courses%202007.pdf .
Software and Information Industry Association (2010). Results of the Spring 2010 SIAA Vision K-20 Survey. http://siia.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=2634&tmpl=component&format=raw&Itemid=318f. (2009)
Being a teenager today is very different from when most of us reading this description were struggling with our own teen angst. Today students have no privacy, no “safe place,” and an audience that is truly, truly global. All with the click of a mouse. They are the ‘digital natives’….
Doris Settles, nationally recognized Digital Culture and Safety speaker and author of the recent book, ‘Virtual Parenting’, will discuss solutions for the adult community, ‘the digital immigrants’, to make education, work skills, and social interaction relevant, rigorous, and safe for these ‘digital natives’. This always-on, always-connected environment is foreign to most of us, and the technologically immersed environment in which they live has little, if any, connection to the world run by adults, disengaging those already headed for dropping out even further. The solution, according to Settles, is to work together.
