How To Create a Virtual School Session- by Janel

Expensive- need to reach students and increase student enrollments.

Types of students- wide range of student needs. Gifted students, move at a faster pace, teen parents, drop outs, family income job issues, athletics and entertainment careers, struggling kids for academics and social reasons, supplementing traditional students taking courses in a regular school (make-up work, course is not offered), homeschool families (record keeping, parents don't understand higher content),

Talking to parents- Has sessions about the virtual school

Reaching Families Through school officials to describe program offerings and pricing, helping to identify kids, OR reach and market to families directly (web marketing- found on web through search engines, buy lists to contact,)have a marketing budget. Purchased lists of homeschool kids, families that have purchased home school materials, PR- getting attention on the program and more through speakers, network outreach and networking with organizations like youth services and teen outreach centers. Educators are not trained in marketing and it is becoming more important in how schools are progressing and how they will be set up in the future.

Managing Virtual Schools School management and budget. See outline on second page of packet. Enrollment management is the biggest pain point. Entirely different ways of management. Separate enrollment and instructional. Orientation process. Instructional leadership team with a lead person from each of the core areas. Get the subject area people. Online teachers spend 75-80% of their time on administrative functions. Instructional Staff should not be more than 65% of budget. Cost Guidelines from the SREB. Click here for link.

Marketing NACOL has resources to find out what the customers actually want. Doing a needs assessment. Has some information on this activity to find out what the customers want and need as far as curriculum goes(parents, students, teachers, etc).
Types of courses- textbook online through to a highly interactive gaming environment. Budget is a huge factor in this. Instructional model will also have an impact here.
Communication between IT and educational processes Important to make sure that the communication is clear. Articulating the business requirements. Have to have a clear vision of what the technology infrastructure needs to do. Need to make sure that open source is considered. Moodle, Cyki, LCMS, LMS need to understand the business requirements. Have a lot of info and research available from Cisco. Don't build your own Learning Management System. Prepare for growth. Implications for future growth. Video capabilities on the network. Planning for growth is key.

Staff Development
e-Facilitator course. Has them go through to get professional development so that they are able to utilize their own teachers. South Dakota Virtual Schools has a lot of experience with staff development.

K12 Education
Online for K-12 schools, not just a high school thing anymore. Contracts are a bit of problematic because it is not based upon contiguous hours. Determining eligibility to teach (qualifications and prerequisites), parent and student contacts, how will you measure success, how are tests administered, who plays well in the virtual sandbox, how do you orient kids, technical problems and back up plans (student computer is down, what do you do), eligibility for sports, need a district office champion must step up, do a field study on the types of students, ELL

Policy Stuff Roundatable
Need to make sure there is enough money up front. The first year will be the most expensive right away. SREB has some great publication information. See link above. Important NOT to sell yourself short with timing. Many really good teachers are not able to effectively transition to online without training specifically for online teaching. Teacher supervision and training policies. Easy for teacher to kick back and walk away if there is no one looking. Many unions want to get involved with this. Certain policies affecting students who don't meet requirements or who drop out consistently. They have to be expelled through the legal process, you can't just drop them from your classes if you are taking state funding. You have to set our policies and let everyone know what it is right up front. Summer school is the most successful program because they are self paid. Students need to pass a student orientation course before they are able to complete an online course. It is a minicourse, 2 hours, all software and plug ins tha they could possibly need, walked them through all the steps, etc. Misunderstand that online courses are going to be easier and had unrealistic expectations and are not academically prepared. Need to have a self assessment available and determine academically readiness. They equate with correspondence courses and that is NOT the case. See if existing schools have existing policies in place. Check the ones that are presenting at the conference.

++NOTE++ The principal (Poemerring?) from New London is here because they are looking to create a hybrid virtual school.

Technology Outsourcing or Insourcing Roundatable Generally outsource the learning management system (blackboard, ecollege, D2L, Moodle, ucompass, WebCT) some provide hosting services for you- generally don't want to host your own- the focus should be on the education aspect NOT the technology side of it IT people should be managing relationships with the technology service providers instead of maintaining their own infrastructure, student information management system, and content, business process outsourcing. Skyward may not be able to handle SIS needs due to contact students (student log ins, pace measurement, teacher flags as far as when they are contacting, student questions, email settings, etc) Best question to ask any company is to build your exit strategy- if company goes out of business or is purchased. Need to know how you are going to get out. SCORM (sharable content object reference model) out of military standards that the providers should work to in order to provide the correct information and services that you need. Growth rate. Wait lists? Registration starts and endings. They outsource PR. They use sharepoint.

Student Recruitment Roundtable
KC Distance Learning. Waukesha iQ Academies. Training guidance counsellors on the online possibilities. the guidance counsellor should not have to be the gate keeper. They should be aware of these things to offer the students, but primarily the recruitment and information should be given to students and parents from a different method. Waukesha has most students full time from other schools in the state. Utilizing the guidance counsellor is not the way to go. Guidance counsellor services within the virtual school itself. A lot of it educating people on what the school can offer. Who the most appropriate students are. Independence with students is a big thing. Creative ways where they need to check in and be successful. Attracting students who can most benefit from your program so that they can have the most success. Formed virtual school think tank with TAG, ELL, Spec ed, administration, tech savvy, tech people, help to write the proposal. Data analysis project on students who are not on track for graduation and what class it is and what kind of kid it is and they create the program for that. Reading level is an important consideration.