Some virtual education advocates insist that negative press befalling their field is just a consequence of the field crossing from the fringes of K-12 education into the mainstream.

But there are perhaps some cases where negative press could potentially have a concrete impact on any organization's health, and especially a private company.

For example, the recent New York Times article criticizing virtual school operator K12 Inc. appears to have sparked a class-action lawsuit against the Herndon, Va.-based company.

The suit, filed by a K12 shareholder on Jan. 30, argues that the company's stock traded at artificially high prices prior to the Times story, because K12 officials misinformed investors about the schools' academic performance and business practices, which the suit alleges violates securities law. And during the week after the story's release, from Dec. 12 to Dec. 16, the stock plunged 34.4 percent, though it has since somewhat recovered.

Moreover, the suit alleges, the Times itself uncovered some of that deception, reporting that K12 chief executive officer Ronald J. Packard told investors student performances on standardized tests at Devon, Pa.-based Agora Cyber Charter School exceeded those at other schools. But data showed the school's performance to actually lag behind the state average in both reading and math, according to the Times.

From the beginning, K12 Inc. has objected, saying the story "is unfair and one-sided, and advances an anti-parent choice policy agenda" in a company statement. It also questioned many of the Times' conclusions about achievement at Agora, based on the federal measure of adequate yearly progress, or AYP.

The speed and breadth of K12's response in its statement suggests that, while press pushback may be a symptom of entering the mainstream, virtual education companies see media image as important.

Meanwhile, the Idaho Statesman has questioned Idaho state schools superintendent Tom Luna about the lawsuit, in part because of $44,000 in campaign contributions made by K12 to Luna's successful re-election bid in 2010. Under Luna, Idaho's board of education has pushed legislation requiring students to take two high school credits online to graduate.

It's unclear whether the media firestorm will spread, though I wouldn't bet against it. However, if things look bad for K12 now, remember back to last summer when education technology solutions company Wireless Generation seemed to be under constant media pressure because of its sale to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation Conglomerate.

The residue from that episode has mostly faded now, to the point where Wireless Generation was noted as one of the federal governments key partners in its educational technology efforts during Wednesday's national town hall meeting for Digital Learning Day.

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U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski were on hand to unveil the new "Digital Textbook Playbook," a resource designed by the Digital Textbook Collaborative to help guide educators in their transition to electronic resources, as the pair headlined a national online town hall meeting for the inaugural Digital Learning Day.

Genachowski also challenged states and educational content suppliers to ensure that all students nationwide have access to digital educational resources within five years, and he announced he will be convening the chiefs of major digital education companies in March to create a plan to meet such a challenge.

"Our country has proved over and over again that we can do anything," Genachowski said. "We'll use every lever we can."

The announcement headlined a 90-minute town hall session that also included Skype visits to schools around the country in various stages of digital transformations, a video presentation with Khan Academy founder Sal Kahn, and an interview with National Online Teacher of the Year Kristin Kipp.

The Playbook is organized into four sections that roughly follow the chronological chain of issues schools must address when making a transition from primarily print to mostly digital resources: switching content to digital formats; establishing Internet connectivity throughout the school; establishing Internet connectivity throughout the community the school serves; and tailoring content to meet the capabilities of the particular devices owned or used by students.

The Digital Textbook Collaborative, a group convened by the U.S. Department of Education and the FCC, includes members from more than two-dozen companies and organizations, including Apple Inc., Microsoft, the "Big Three" of textbook publishing, and Sprint and Verizon. (Apple and the Big Three—Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson—have also teamed up in Apple's new digital textbook venture announced on January 19.)

In all, 39 states and the District of Columbia observed Digital Learning Day, organized by the Alliance for Excellent Education and championed by its president and former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise. While Wise's group is also a co-leader of the Digital Learning Now initiative, he said the day's focus was more on teachers' instruction, as opposed to educational policy.

"One of the messages for Digital Learning Day is this is about the teacher as much as it is about the technology," Wise said in an interview. "It's bringing teachers in and making people understand that."

While Wise conceded that neither the National Education Association nor the American Federation of Teachers, the nation's two largest teachers' unions, had signed on as official partners of the day, AFT President Randi Weingarten did join a panel discussion about how technology would be a key tool in an AFT-led initiative to revitalize the schools and communities of McDowell County, W.Va.

The NEA, meanwhile, has recently issued a policy brief expressing support for the practice of blended learning, which combines elements of brick-and-mortar and online instruction.

Some highlights from the states observing Digital Learning Day, according to the day's website:
• Alabama kicked off its own Digital Learning Month, an initiative from the state department of education that will aim to share digital success stories from within the state;
• California students showed off some of their digital writing at an event held by the California Writing Project that was described as fusion of a science fair, poster session, and gallery walk; and
• Indiana's department of education kicked off its Web 2.0 Challenge, in which it will use its blog to highlight a new digital educational resource every day for all 29 days in February, as well as tips and tricks for using each featured resource.

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Comcast will double the connection speed of its nascent Internet Essentials broadband program and make an estimated additional 300,000 families eligible for it (or about 2.3 million families in all), according to a report released Tuesday from the cable and Internet provider.

The report also found that the $9.95 monthly service had already connected 41,000 low-income families with school-age children, and an estimated total of 160,000 people, including children and adults. Of those, about half reported learning about the program through their children's schools.

"Schools are our most important partners," said David L. Cohen, Comcast's executive vice president, during a conference call. "We find a strategically significant correlation in terms of the percentage of eligible population signed up and the amount of collateral material the school ordered."

Those declining to enroll in the service have largely done so because of a lack of digital literacy—not the cost of the service or of a computer—according to the report.

"All of our research demonstrates that the relevance of broadband, the ability to understand how important it is, the value to the family, and even to understand what you don't understand, remains an impediment to broadband adoption," Cohen said.

Overall participation so far—which represents about 2 percent of families that had been eligible—far exceeded expectations when the program was announced, Cohen said. The service was available to approximately 2 million families who were not already Comcast broadband subscribers, lived in Comcast service areas, and included students who qualified for free lunch via the National School Lunch Program.

It has now also been opened to about 300,000 families whose children qualify only for reduced-price lunches, and its connection speed will be increased to 3.0 Mbps (millions of bites per second), up from 1.5 Mbps.

The one place participation lagged was in an accompanying program to buy a discounted, Internet-ready computer for $150, with only 5, taking advantage.

"We expected a bigger take rate on the computers," Cohen said. "Our guess is that in the first set of families that signed up for this are people who had computers, and who may have had Internet before."

The report—which includes data taken from the early months of the initiative—also represents one of the broadest works of research on the Internet demands of low-income families, and should prove useful to the Connect to Compete initiative, a private-public partnership marshaled by the Federal Communications Commission that will aim to stretch the intention of the Internet Essentials program beyond Comcast subscribers, Cohen said.

Comcast agreed to launch its Internet Essentials program as a condition of the FCC approving its purchase of NBC Universal a year ago in January. But Cohen said the program had been in the works well before that purchase, and pointed to the company's vigor in promoting and expanding the program as evidence of its intentions to go above and beyond the conditions set by the FCC.

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Many of you have no doubt already informed yourself about your state's plans ahead of Wednesday's inaugural Digital Learning Day, an observance launched by the Alliance for Excellent Education, one of two education advocacy groups behind the Digital Learning Now initiative.

But if you'd like more information about what's going on either in your backyard or around the country, check out the state events page on the Digital Learning Day website. Several states are using webcasts to showcase best practices for digital learning from within their borders, and a few are kicking off larger initiatives.

You can also register for the webcast of a national town hall meeting in observance of the day, beginning at 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday afternoon. The event will feature U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, and National Online Teacher of the Year Kristin Kipp, among others. And we'll be sure to follow up with coverage of some of the day's bigger news.

The Alliance for Excellent Education is headed by former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, a Democrat, who fused a bi-partisan coalition former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education to launch Digital Learning Now in late 2010. The effort aims to push states into policy reforms that increase access to digital learning opportunities.

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Joel Rose and Chris Rush, the men behind the creation of the widely publicized School of One middle school adaptive learning math program, have reached an agreement to create a nonprofit that not only spreads those ideas to models in other school districts, but also re-establishes a relationship with New York City schools.

New Classroom Innovation Partners, a group launched about 10 months after former School of One chief Joel Rose announced he was leaving the 1.1-million student New York City school district, will launch middle school math programs under the name "Teach to One: Math" at both charter and district public schools in Chicago, McGinnis Middle School in Perth Amboy, N.J., and a third city yet to be named, according to a press release.

In addition, the group will work with the New York City Department of Education as it expands to four additional schools with a $5 million grant won from the federal Investing in Innovation (i3) competitive grant program, the release indicates.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—both contributors to Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit publisher of Education Week—is also among the donors to Rose's new organization.

Rose had initially expressed interest in creating a nonprofit group within the city's education department to stretch the effort beyond the city's jurisdiction. Upon finding that such an option didn't appear viable, Rose left to work on establishing his own group, uncertain that the city would approve a future collaborative relationship. It was also unclear whether New York City would be able to retain its i3 grant for expansion, as Rose departed right around the time plans to expand the program were temporarily halted.

The program had also come under some fire in New York City for its relationship with Wireless Generation, the Brooklyn-based company that partnered with the City's department of education to develop the analytical side of the model. Wireless Generation has faced scrutiny of its business dealings last year after it was purchased by multimedia-conglomerate News Corp., owned by Rupert Murdoch, with an education division headed by former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

(Larry Berger, founder of Wireless Generation, also serves on the board of trustees for Editorial Projects in Education, the non-profit publisher of Education Week.)

Rush, meanwhile, later came on-board after helping Rose establish the initial version as the chief mastermind behind the algorithm that made the program famous. That algorithm takes content from assorted providers and directs it to students on an individual basis based on past student performance combined with a content map that tracks student evolution.

The School of One has received widespread attention both from Education Week and other mainstream media outlets. We'll see whether Rose's new program garners similar attention.

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If you're available, tune in to NPR's On Point tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern time to hear yours truly discuss the latest developments in digital textbooks. I will be speaking on a panel with a couple of others during the hour. If you can't tune in live, be sure to check back after the show for the link. We'll update this post with it as soon as it's up!

Update: Listen to the interview here!

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Just because teachers have classroom technology access doesn't mean they are satisfied with their level of access, according to survey results released Monday at the Florida Education Technology Conference in Orlando.

The endeavor from PBS LearningMedia, a digital division of the Public Broadcasting System, found that while more than 9 in 10 teachers who responded to a national survey said they have access to computers in classrooms, more than 4 in 5 said that technology access falls short of their needs.

Further, 93 percent of respondents expressed the belief that interactive whiteboards could enrich classroom education, and 81 percent indicated they felt the same way about tablet computers such as the iPad. The openness to both technologies was consistent to respondents across grade levels and school demographics, and is perhaps surprising considering the thought among some analysts that tablets were replacing whiteboards as the trendy tool in education. (Read more in our upcoming winter issue of Digital Directions.)

The survey was comprised of responses from 500 teachers across the country last December, randomly selected from panel that's makeup was to be indicative of the characteristics of educators across the U.S.

PBS LearningMedia was launched last May, beginning with a reorganization of existing infrastructure from PBS' digital library and local services from WGBH, WNET-New York, and Kentucky Educational Television, or KET.

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During a month when we were all made aware of how frequently we use open and informal Web resources, Virginia and Kentucky have both sponsored use of a relatively new digital literacy curriculum in their public schools.

The curriculum, created by online critical-thinking education group EverFi in partnership with business analytics consulting group Neustar, is targeted at 8th and 9th graders and will be available for free for interested state public schools. But it's unclear whether the product will be as thorough as some other free options out there.

EverFi is new to this particular line of education. Its other programs previously focused on educating students about financial literacy, student loan management, and substance abuse, according to the company's website. And its curriculum—designed to involve 3.5 hours of study, according to a press release—appears less thorough than some others that are also freely available, such as the program offered by San Francisco-based non-profit Common Sense Media.

Further, it's arguable that the target audience is older than the ideal, with more students becoming digitally literate —at least in terms of operating and having access to devices—at younger ages. Common Sense Media began by targeting students in grades 6—8, but has since stretched its curriculum to cover the entire K-12 realm.

The problem, of course, is that given that we're not certain of all the effects of digital media on our youth, there's really no evidence showing what kind of approach to digital literacy works best. And while it's good to see state governments taking note of the issue, that alone doesn't ensure that the literacy training that is offered will be effective.

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Posted by guest blogger and Education Week Staff Writer Jason Tomassini.

In a much-hyped announcement and demonstration in New York City today, Apple unveiled its new plans to enter the e-textbook market, paying particular attention to the needs of K-12 education.

The company is launching a new textbook section of its iBooks application, and a new application that allows individuals to create and publish their own textbooks. It has also revamped iTunes U, an online content repository for higher education, to allow teachers to create entire courses online and be more useful to the K-12 world.

To supply the textbooks, which can be purchased through the iBooks store on an iPad (and, it seems, iPad only, but more on that later), Apple has partnered with major textbook publishers Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, as well as children's book publisher DK Publishing.

The announcement signals Apple's long-standing intent to change textbooks (outlined by Steve Jobs before his death), mirroring its efforts to control the distribution and enhance the experience of listening to music as is done with iTunes. It's also the largest-scale effort offering e-textbooks, with the three biggest education publishers, to date.

Even so, it's worth noting that the announcement did fall short of speculation that Apple would bypass the publishing industry altogether by simply publishing its own textbooks.

Some important details about the announcement, followed by some remaining questions:

• Calling it iBooks 2, Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, unveiled new textbooks that would be available on the iPad. They resemble some of the more advanced e-textbooks already on the market.

• Using the tapping, pinching, and swiping methods familiar to most Apple users, textbook readers can zoom in on diagrams, highlight text for note-taking and browse photo galleries. Those notes students' take? The software will transform them into electronic notecards for later use. There are interactive Q&As at the end of each section and students can access any page using sidebar browsers.

• An Apple press release notes: "iBooks textbooks can be kept up to date, don't weigh down a backpack and never have to be returned."

• So how do you get these textbooks? One option is to purchase them through iBooks store. As of right now, all are offered for $14.99 or less and the aforementioned publishers provide many.

• The other way is to make one yourself. Perhaps the "most new" part of Apple's announcement is iBooks Author, which allows teachers to create their own textbooks using an iMac. In an application reminiscent of design software like Adobe InDesign or Illustrator (or Apple's own GarageBand), iPad users can pull media--text, video, 3-D models, photos, even slides from Keynote--onto a blank page to build a lesson. There is also a customized glossary tool. And there are tools to create interactive elements like Q&As and responsive media. And if you're a web developer, you can create widgets using HTML and JavaScript.

• Once the book is in place, users can publish it to iBooks immediately.

• The third part of the announcement surrounded a revamped iTunes U, the directory for educational content for higher education. In a style that may make industry-leader Blackboard nervous, teachers can create their own courses online and distribute them to students. Once primarily intended for college classrooms, Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said iTunes U is now expanding to the K-12 market.

• With the exception of having to actually purchase textbooks, all of the applications and software unveiled Thursday are free at the moment.

Nothing said today suggests any of these new products will be available on non-Apple devices. While the financial breakdown is still unknown, it's similar to the agreement Apple made with music publishers around iTunes, except with the authorship option. This, of course, leaves districts with an Apple or no-Apple decision, which is good for Apple but problematic for cash-strapped districts, or those with a non-Apple technological infrastructure in place.

While the announcement may have been more extensive than those still underwhelmed by Apple's iPhone 4S (and not iPhone 5) unveiling, it still leaves many questions. Will future iterations of the e-textbooks incorporate the social interaction and real-time classroom management tools seen in other learning management software? How much professional training will be required for teachers to be able to create their own e-textbooks, or will most authorship come from publishers and existing mobile app developers? Does this change the role of teachers at all, or will they simply be lecturing in front of students holding iPads?

It's also worth comparing the announcement to what was hinted at by Steve Jobs in his biography by Walter Isaacson. The plans seem to only partially accomplish what he outlined before his death. An excerpt, (via e-Literate):

In fact Jobs had his sights set on textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform. He believed it was an $8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction. He was also struck by the fact that many schools, for security reasons, don't have lockers, so kids have to lug a heavy backpack around. 'The iPad would solve that,' he said. His idea was to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions, and make them a feature of the iPad. In addition, he held meetings with the major publishers, such as Pearson Education, about partnering with Apple. 'The process by which states certify textbooks is corrupt,' he said. 'But if we can make the textbooks free, and they come with the iPad, then they don't have to be certified. The crappy economy at the state level will last for a decade, and we can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money.'

Photo: Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, discusses iBooks 2 for iPad on Jan. 19 in New York City. IBooks 2 will be able to display books with videos and other interactive features. (Mark Lennihan/AP)

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Online teachers, and eventually administrators, classroom teachers, librarians, and professional developers across the nation will be able to enroll in an educational technology national certification program that has the endorsement of national ed-tech advocates, under a new program announced Tuesday.

The Leading Edge Certification program, an effort founded by Mike Lawrence of the Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Computer Using Educators group that champions ed-tech causes throughout the state, is currently offering its certification for online teachers through alliance members that include the International Association of K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), as well as a couple dozen local- and state-level organizations, mostly from California.

The plan is to offer another credential to administrators beginning midway through 2012, and eventually create programs geared toward brick-and-mortar teachers and other educational staff. While the certification wouldn't act as an official endorsement on any state teaching license, Lawrence said it would mirror such programs as the Google Certified Teacher program, without the appearance of pushing a specific hardware or software maker.

"I think that's an important point to emphasize, that there's been no involvement by for-profit companies in this project at all," Lawrence said. "It's not something that is bent toward a platform or a tool or device."

The announcement follows a small movement toward certification programs throughout the ed-tech world. A few states—sometimes with the help of in-state teachers colleges—have moved toward creating certifications for online teaching that would hold up as endorsements on state-issued teaching licenses.

Meanwhile, the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking is developing its own certification for district chief technology officers, envisioned as the CTO equivalent of credentials bestowed upon certified public accountants and project managers.

The Leading Edge Certification online teacher program will be offered through alliance members as a 6-8 week program that includes roughly 60 hours of study, at a cost of $450-500 per teacher, depending on which organization teachers use to receive instruction, Lawrence said. The iNACOL National Standards for Online Teaching serve as the program's content framework, according to a press release.

The program for administrators is still in development, but is likely to be a 35-hour course of study designed to be completed over a few weekends, according to Rowland Baker, director of the Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership, who is leading the creation of the program for administrators.

The pair admit that, in its initial stages, the outreach may appear very California-centric. But Lawrence said he hopes the involvement of national groups like iNACOL and ISTE, as well as other state groups such as the New York State Association for Computers and Technology in Education, will help the program become a national brand.

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