(Disclaimer: So I admit even this headline has a little bit of an age bias to it. While we adults might think of being grounded from the Internet as a ban from laptops and desktops, kids might be more ticked off about the inability to log on from their touch-screen iPhones. So really, the whole "keys" pun kind of goes down the drain. But bare with me).

A recent Washington Post story explores the relationship between parents, children, technology, and discipline, noting more parents than ever are revoking cyber privileges as a form of punishment also known as digital grounding. In contrast, their own parents might have locked the Oldsmobile in the garage. (Or am I guilty of projecting everyone's father in the 1970s as Red Foreman?)

Anyway, the story notes how more parents are wising up to the reality that the computer or smartphone is their child's most prized social tool, thus making revocation an effective measure. Reporter Donna St. George, who weaves vignettes of family examples with context about teens' social reality, also noted that some experts warn revoking such privileges should only be done when it relates to the offense—such as misusing a device during school hours or accessing improper websites at home. And for the record, this isn't an entirely new process—I can remember being grounded exclusively from the computer and video games during my childhood.

But my question would be how parents' own technology use affects these decisions. St. George indicates parents understand the social importance students place on their cyber connectivity. But are parents with their own Facebook page or Twitter account more or less likely to use this form of punnishment? And as their tech savvy increases, would they be more or less willing to strip their children of a device whose benefits they are truly beginning to grasp?

Posted by Ian Quillen at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

How do you know online learning is reaching mainstream status?

Well, you could look at the online education proposals included in the second round of Race to the Top competition, the numbers of students and parents taking online courses according to recent studies, or even the emphasis on online learning in the Obama Administration's education technology and broadband plans.

But you REALLY know it's big when you find out that Online Education for Dummies is available at your local book store. Or on the Web, of course.

Authors Kevin Johnson and Susan Manning aim to help students understand how to learn in online courses as well as how to choose the right course in which to enroll. While that might sound self-explanatory, several online learning experts I've talked to have said so much focus goes into training virtual instructors that helping virtual students adjust to an online classroom sometimes gets ignored.

The book, which came out late last year, progresses from an introduction regarding just what online classes are, to how to choose a class and enroll, to how to succeed in class, to special considerations regarting virtual education, to a conclusion that dispells myths about online education and points toward nationally recognized online schools. All that in just a smidge over 300 pages. (Relax, you'll be reading it on a Kindle so it won't feel so heavy.)

Take a look at the table of contents and the first chapter. No word on whether a fully online version of the book is coming out, or whether publishers think that would be dangerous for their target audience.

Posted by Ian Quillen at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A summary of findings from a four-year study released Thursday concludes that Algebra I teachers who were trained in and used a program that allowed them to monitor students' progress on graphing calculators led to significantly improved achievement by their students on a researcher-designed test.

The study, part of Ohio State's Classroom Connectivity in Mathematics and Science research project, illustrates a direct link between the implementation of classroom technology and professional development with academic achievement, say the summary's authors. The research, conducted from 2005 to 2009, was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education. Texas Instruments supplied classes with the TI-Navigator program, which allows instructors to view students' work in real time and offer feedback.

"There's details that we don't quite understand about how teachers did it," said Jeremy Roschelle, the director for the Center for Technology in Learning at nonprofit research firm SRI International, and a consultant on the study. "But there's so much noise out there [about technology] and so few studies out there that have significant results, that it's very important when one of these comes out."

Roschelle's comments indicating a dearth of research surrounding education technology echo those by other experts in the field. Even Karen Cator, the U.S. Department of Education's ed-tech chief, has stressed the need for more thorough research as one of the major pillars of the National Education Technology Plan released this past spring.

The study included 127 teachers from 28 states and two Canadian provinces in its first year. Roughly half of the 1,760 students enrolled were placed in a treatment group where their teachers received a week of training in the TI-Navigator system before the year began, as well as continuing professional development. The other half were placed in a control group where teachers received neither the program nor the training.

Of the more than 1,200 students who yielded dependable data, those in the treatment group tested about 10 percent better, on average, on an exam created to reflect Algebra I standards in 13 states that accounted for the majority of students studied.

In subsequent years, teachers who taught in the control group the year before were placed into the treatment group, and compared not only against the control group of that year, but also against their own results as the control group the year before. In all but one year, students in the treatment group continued to make statistically significant gains against the control group from that year. Gains by teachers in the treatment group who were part of the control group in a previous year were also consistent.

Through qualitative analysis, researchers also found that teachers using the technology engaged in deeper and more conceptual discussions with their students about math principals than teachers who were not using the technology.

Lead researcher Doug Owens cautioned that the reasons behind the increase in achievement on the test were not completely understood, and that not all of the data had been analyzed. He also stressed that the results should be looked at as linking the combination of technology and professional development to increased achievement, rather than taking either the technology or the professional development by itself as causal factors.

"We consider the treatment to be all of those things," said Owens, a professor of education at Ohio State. "We have no ways to sort those out."

For more information on the study, check out this video.

Posted by Ian Quillen at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

DreamBox Learning, the Bellevue, Wash.-based creators of a stable of online math products that direct lessons to students in grades K-3, named Jessie Woolley-Wilson, president of online education giants Blackboard's K-12 division, as its new Chief Executive Officer Wednesday morning, according to a press release.

Woolley-Wilson, who also serves on the board of trustees at Editorial Projects in Education, the publisher of Education Week, has overseen Blackboard's expansion into K-12 education from its initial focus on postsecondary schools. She previously was president of LeapFrog SchoolHouse and, before that, she was vice president of marketing college solutions at collegeboard.com, the interactive division of The College Board.

DreamBox, founded in 2006, released its first K-2 online math program in April 2009, and followed that DreamBox Learning K-3 Math a year later. The products deliver online lessons based on standards established by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Posted by Ian Quillen at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Teachers who took online professional development courses improved their instruction and subject knowledge, as well as produced gains in student achievement, says a new study by e-Learning for Educators, a 10-state consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Ready to Teach program.

The 330 teachers in the study participated in three 30-hour online professional development courses developed by the Education Development Center's EdTech Leaders Online, or ETLO. The teachers included elementary and middle school math teachers, as well as language arts teachers.

"While a growing body of research demonstrates online learning's effectiveness at the college level, very few studies focus on K-12 and track the impact of teacher professional development to student learning," said EDC's Barbara Treacy, director of ETLO, in a press release. "It's extremely gratifying to see that the online model we've developed leads to such positive results across all states, grade levels, and teacher groups."

The research was culled from 330 teachers and 7,700 students.

Posted by Katie Ash at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A U.S. district judge Monday ruled the lawyer pressing civil charges against a suburban Philadelphia district for photographing two students at home on school-issued laptops deserves compensation from the district for work that helped halt the malfunctioning anti-theft program.

As a result, Mark S. Haltzman stands to receive about $260,000 from the Lower Merion School District, the Associated Press reports, even while he leads a civil suit against it on behalf of Lower Merion High alum Jalil Hasan and Harriton High student Blake Robbins.

To use a sports analogy, this is kind of like a Major League Baseball arbitrator telling the Philadelphia Phillies to pay a pitcher from the Atlanta Braves after the Braves pitcher made several Phillies hitters look so foolish that the Phillies decided to cut them or send them to the minor leagues.

The lawsuit is already unpopular among many parents within the district, and this doesn't figure to make Haltzman any more beloved. From a neutral perspective, though? Pretty interesting.

Posted by Ian Quillen at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, New Hampshire's first online school, was recently certified by the NCAA, the primary governing body of intercollegiate athletics, under the organization's newly adopted standards for online schools. The move reflects increasing legitimacy given to some online institutions and also a general acknowledgment of the range of quality in online education.

The NCAA adopted what it considered more stringent standards for online schools in May, in part to prevent student athletes from skirting rigorous coursework for what it worried were more lenient online classes. In June, it revoked certification from Brigham Young University's independent-study programs for high school students and the American School, a correspondence program based in Lansing, Ill.

To meet NCAA requirements, the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School had to meet standards for:
• length and content of core courses
• teacher-student interaction
• availability of student work for review/validation
• defined time limit for coursework

The last of those recommendations has drawn particular ire of some online education advocates who say one of virtual education's biggest benefits is that it can allow students to work at their own pace. NCAA officials have contended that students who cannot complete coursework in a set time are not prepared for college.

Athletes receiving scholarships to compete in the NCAA's Division I and Division II programs have to meet standardized test and academic grade benchmarks to be scholarship eligible. While the path for many athletes not meeting those benchmarks has traditionally led to an extra year in private preparatory schools, more appear to be turning online for credit recovery courses.

The Virtual Learning Academy Charter School has been operational since the winter of 2008 as a free alternative both for New Hampshire's traditional high school students and for students who have dropped out of the state's brick-and-mortar schools. It was not previously certified by the NCAA under its old guidelines, according to school CEO Steve Kossakoski.

The number of NCAA-certified virtual schools nationwide was not immediately available.

Posted by Ian Quillen at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL, has issued its congratulations to the 10 winners of the second phase of the federal Race to the Top grant competition, which my colleagues have done a great job covering over on the Politics K-12 blog. With the announcement, iNACOL has created a very useful wiki document that outlines the 19 finalists' plans to use online learning to achieve RTT goals and includes quotes from each application that are relevant to online learning.

Most winning states outlined continuing steps to provide online professional development. iNACOL's findings indicate that Florida, Georgia, and Ohio offered the most concrete examples of how they would improve and expand students' online education opportunities. Florida's application said it will be expanding programs that give preservice teachers coursework and internship experiences in online learning, something I'll be writing more about in an upcoming special report. Georgia indicated interest in replacing traditional "seat-time" requirements both in brick-and-mortar and virtual classes with the proficiency-based standards common in online learning. And while several states indicated a desire to use RTT funds to expand online learning options, Ohio expressly indicated those efforts would concentrate on increasing AP course offerings to underserved populations.

Of the winners, the District of Columbia's application appears to offer the least with regards to online learning. iNACOL's analysis only said that D.C. will "connect teachers to online resources." Of those that missed out on winning funds, Pennsylvania may have been offering the most online learning components. The state's application indicated it would use RTT grant funds to create 12 "high-rigor" online courses over three years to be available to the state's students as it moves toward establishing a virtual high school for students in "small, rural and low wealth school districts."

Posted by Ian Quillen at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Well, this gives The Mouse That Roared a whole new meaning, huh?

Social networking giant Facebook, whose site has 500 million active accounts, is suing the fledgling and yet-to-open Teachbook.com, whose 20 signed up members are hoping to access online tools to manage classrooms and share lesson plans, over the use of the suffix 'book,' according to the Chicago Tribune.

Facebook is arguing that the suffix has made the site distinctive, and that sites like Teachbook would be unfairly riding Facebook's coattails by using it. Teachbook managing director Greg Shrader contends—somewhat bewilderdly, according to the Tribune—that a site of its size and scope can't possibly inflict harm on the Facebook brand.

The irony, of course, is that neither of these is actually a book. But the reality is that if Facebook never existed, Teachbook would be named something else.

I'm not going to begin to guess whether Facebook has a case (OK, I lied, I will guess, and my guess is they probably do), but if I were Shrader and had less than a couple dozen members signed up to my start-up, I'd milk this for all the free publicity it's worth, and then acquiesce and change the name right before I'm asked to spend any actual money in legal costs. Then maybe I'd reorganize the site so that it also had a weekly news component. I could call it TeachWeek.

Oh. Right.

Posted by Ian Quillen at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Yesterday's announcement that Texas' department of education is launching a free iTunes education channel is another in a recent trend of government initiatives—both state and federal—to organize existing digital education resources.

The free channel, which the Associated Press reports will allow teachers to upload class material and expand upon their research, and students to download podcasts, videos and other multimedia lessons, comes after a nearly year-long effort by the state to gather the best of existing teacher training videos and programs for students. Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, told students at a Houston high school yesterday that the program "will really consolidate" existing content.

iTunes U, primarily a repository for postsecondary digital content, has hosted a K-12 focused channel since 2008, an effort resulting from collaboration between the State Education Technology Directors Association, or SETDA, and several state education agencies.

PBS, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Archives are partners on Texas' initiative. The Smithsonian is also a partner with the U.S. Department of Education in its work to create a national Online Learning Registry that was announced last month. While its format is still unclear, its aim will be similar: to take already-existing digital education material from federal agencies, and organize and centralize it for easy access.

We're still in an age of technological evolution—see the iPad—and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. But I've noticed an increasing shift from "What can we create with technology?" to "How can we organize what we've already created?" during my time on this beat.

Posted by Ian Quillen at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend