For the third time this year, administrators & teachers from Korea’s Air & University High School visited Everett Public Schools OnlineHS.

We continue to enjoy hosting our guest and sharing our program. OnlineHS is one of three stops the visitors make to Pacific Northwest area online programs. In addition to Everett, they also visit two programs in Vancouver, Canada.

This visit was special as we got a tour of their program and courses from Ms. Lee, Director of the Center for Multimedia Educational Research & Development, which builds their outstanding courses.

We all got a chuckle at the slow Internet speed, as Korea enjoys the fastest in the world at 200x greater then the US. They enjoy a robust learning management system and courses which are rich in multi-media.

Their systems are similar to those in OnlineHS, with each teacher teaching two online courses containing ~30 students in each class. Unlike the US, Air & Correspondence is a national program with ten schools throughout the country. They have 10,000 students aged 14 to 80, working to earn their high-school diploma.

The contingent continues to enjoy touring Sequoia High School and marvel at the posters and collages along the hallway and classroom walls. Schools in Korea are meticulous and there can be nothing on the  walls.

Lots of pictures are taken, handshakes, and gifts.  We’re pleased to enjoy a relationship with such an outstanding program!

Today was the first of three planned trips to Sequoia and OnlineHS.  The 35+ guests are from Korean Air & Correspondence High School, the largest online program in Korea.

A federally-funded initiative, the 39-year old program serves the nation’s youth and adults who couldn’t get a diploma because they were forced to work in the factories to support their families or because they couldn’t afford to pay for high school (yes,  students pay to go to most high schools in Korea). A high school diploma is a big deal, allowing someone to take a university entrance test or get a job in government or other higher-paid career.

The name “Air & Correspondence” comes from their early days when they used radio to deliver their lessons and mail to exchange student work. Since their beginning, they have taught over 300,000 students and currently have 15,000 students enrolled this year.

Now with the planet’s fastest Internet speeds—Air & Correspondence is a world Internet leader.

[quote]By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second. That would be a tenfold increase from the already blazing national standard and more than 200 times as fast as the average household setup in the United State’s[/quote] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/technology/22iht-broadband22.html?_r=4

New legislation regarding “nontraditional” coursework (defined as online, correspondence, independent study, software-based credit recovery etc.) was passed which outlined stringent criteria that must be met in order for a course to be used for NCAA initial eligibility purposes.

The application process was facilitated by Becky Ballbach (Curriculum Specialist-Challenging Options, SES, 504, School Counselors, Intervention Specialists, & NCAA Compliance Officer) and Terry Edwards (Chief Academic Officer).

[Show as slideshow]

Everett Public School District Administrators and School Board members came to OnlineHS for the annual “State of the School Review” where the year’s work on the school improvement plan is inspected and suggestions for improvement are given.

The board offered only positive comments at the job OnlineHS is doing to serve a diverse population of Everett Public School students and their increased success rate.

It’s always stressful to undergo an audit. Especially given the stringent Alternative Learning Laws which have many specific requirements unique to online learning. Even more so knowing that audits in the past year of other state programs had resulted in substantial fines being levied.

We’re grateful to our OnlineHS support staff and OnlineHS Registrar Pat Jones for their expertise.

Joining the State’s Digital Learning Department and three other public programs (Internet Academy, Spokane Virtual, and the new Tacoma Virtual), OnlineHS presented two sessions devoted to online learning.

Questions from participants including funding, content creation, Learning Management Systems (LMS), and providing student support for success.

• http://main.wavanet.org/

Sally and Kevin had fun going back-and-forth, with each playing the role of either the “advantage” or the “pitfall” and we had many audience members come-up to us afterward and tell us how much they enjoyed our style of presentation. [Presentation (PDF)]

The goal of our presentation was to help parents wade through all of the media/advertising surrounding online program opportunities and provide them with good questions to ask so they can make an informed choice.

There were a lot of good questions from the attendees about online learning and how to best select an online program or an individual class. A number of parents shared experiences with their child’s online learning and we were surprised at how many elementary-aged students were being provided with supplemental online learning experiences.

http://isandbeyond.com/2010/11/education-exploration-expo/

There were six programs that presented information to the committee (3 public & 3 private).

The Senators had questions about content costs, alternative learning law requirements, and supporting student success.

TVW: Washington State Public Affairs TV Network Video