Online+Learning

=**Chapter 6** ............. **Fostering Online Learning with Educational Websites and Apps**=


 * Key Topics **
 * === Educational Websites ........... === || === Educational Apps ............. === || === Virtual Schools & Online Learning .................. === || === WebQuests and Virtual Field Trips === ||


 * [[image:Computer.png width="37" height="37"]]Go to [|Common Sense Graphite] for reviews of the best apps, games, websites and digital materials.**
 * ** 10 Websites Every School Computer Lab Should Bookmark **



Educational Websites
[|National Jukebox] from the Library of Congress offers historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge.

[|Thinkfinity from Verizon Foundation]selected as top website for free educational resources.

[|Annenberg Learner Interactives] offer engaging online activities for all grade levels and subject fields.

Click here for an [|e-Comic on Asian American]history from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

[|9 Amazing Math Websites You Should Explore]

Click here to go the [|Digital Library of America](DPLA).
 * For more on this amazing resource, see [|Digital Library of America Launches] from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

For a range of resources, see [|Online Interactive Learning Resources], a tag bundle we created on Delicious


 * Different Types of Educational Websites**
 * 1) Lesson Plan websites
 * 2) Student-to-expert communication websites (for example: [|Ask a Stat]from BaseballAnalytics.org
 * 3) Real-time and recorded data websites
 * 4) Archival and primary source websites
 * 5) Skills/Practice websites
 * 6) Exploration and discovery websites

Educational Apps
[|Apps That Rise to the Top: Tested and Approved by Teachers] from New Canaan High School in Connecticut librarian Michelle Luhtala (2014)

[|Favorite Tech Tools for Social Studies Classes] from Mindshift


 * [|Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West: Empowering Parents and Educators](December. 2012).** This report concludes that while digital products aimed at building literacy skills in young children are a significant segment of the market, many of these products may not be providing the educational benefit they claim.

[|4 Great Rubrics to Help You Select Educational Apps] from the website //Educational Technology and Mobile Learning//.


 * Different Types of Educational Apps**

[|The 10 Types of Educational Apps and When to Use Them], Carolina Nugent, posted on KinderTown, July 28, 2012 provides a useful framework for categorizing apps. Teachers and students can investigate different apps and assign them to the category they best represent.
 * 1) Classroom and Educational Best Practices
 * 2) Playful Learning
 * 3) e-Books
 * 4) Workbooks/Worksheets
 * 5) Puzzles and Games
 * 6) Hobby and Themes
 * 7) Interactive Encyclopedias
 * 8) BYOC (Build Your Own Content)
 * 9) Expressive Play
 * 10) Content Exposure

[|4 Great Rubrics to Help You Select Educational Apps] from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning blog/

Virtual Schools and Online Learning
The immediate future of education will include systems that combine "bricks" (school buildings and traditionally arranged classrooms) and "clicks" (computer-based and outside-of-school learning opportunities).
 * Clicks and Bricks**


 * Research on Online Learning**


 * Virtual, Blended Schools Growing Despite Struggles, Analysis Finds. Digital Ed Blog, April 20, 2016**
 * **Virtual Schools Report 2016, from National Education Policy Center**

[|Online Charter School Study 2015] from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Stanford University. **[|Keeping Pace with Online Learning: An Annual Review of Policy and Practice]** (2012) from Evergreen Education Group.
 * Students who take classes over the Internet through online charter schools make dramatically less academic progress than their counterparts in traditional schools


 * Blended learning involves students learning through a combination of online and traditional methods.
 * 619,847 course enrollments (one student taking a one-semester-long online course) in 28 state virtual schools in 2011-12, an increase of 16% since last year.
 * Two-thirds of the nation's 14,000 school districts had some form of online learning in 2012

[|K12 Faces Plenty of Criticism], from The Recorder (June 29, 2013) reports on issues facing the cyber-school contractor K12 in states around the nation.

[|Digital Learning Report Card, 2012] gives state by state rankings for the use of online and blended learning in K-12 schools.

[|Eighth-Graders and Algebra: Making the Case for Online Learning]. Peggy Clements & Jessica Heppen, THE Journal, July 2. 2012. This study found that "students who took the online course //knew// //more algebra at the end of eighth grade// than did students who took the usual curriculum (in what we call control schools), with an effect roughly equivalent to moving from the 50th to the 66th percentile in algebra achievement."

The //Portland (Maine) Press Herald// did a series on virtual schools in 2012.
 * [|Existing Full-Time Virtual Schools Earn Poor Grades], September 1, 2012
 * [|The Profit Motive Behind Virtual Schools in Maine], September 13, 2012

[|Online K-12 Schooling in the U.S.: Private Ventures in Need of Public Regulation]. Gene V. Glass & Kevin G. Weber, University of Colorado Boulder, October 2011.

See also [|Understanding and Improving Full-Time Virtual Schools]. Gary Miron & Jessica Urschel. University of Colorado Boulder, July 2012.

"Interaction is crucial to student satisfaction in online courses. Adding synchronous components (virtual classroom technologies) to online courses can facilitate interaction" is the key finding of a new study: "Examining Interactivity in Synchronous Virtual Classrooms." __International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning__, 2012;13(3):228-261.

[|How the Big Three Publishers are Approaching iPad Textbooks f]rom THE Journal (November 2012).


 * WebQuests and Virtual Field Trips **

[|What Google's Virtual Field Trips Look Like in the Classroom] (July 23, 2015)
 * For more, go to [|Expeditions]from Google which creates immersive, 360-degree tours out of a cardboard viewer and a smartphone
 * [|Google Expeditions Takes Students on VR Tours] of the Great Barrier Reef and Buckingham Palace
 * Go here for [|Google Expeditions Pioneer Program]

[|20 Wonderful Online Museums and Sites for Virtual Field Trips] (January 27, 2014).

[|Guide to Virtual Field Trips] from the site Simple K-12.

[|10 Web Resources for Digital Field Trips to Museums] from Edudemic (October 2013).

[|5 Ways to Make the Most of Virtual Field Trips]

Selected sites for Virtual Field Trips (from Teacher Advocate Magazine, Spring 2013)
 * Google Art Projects
 * Google Sky
 * Smithsonian
 * Panoramas
 * Oxford University of Museum of Natural History
 * 360 Panoramic Tour of the United States