Friday, 07/07/06

New Directions to continue offering online courses

The Dickson County school system will continue its experiment in cyber classrooms this fall.

School representatives attended a state-sponsored training session in Chattanooga last week to prepare them for developing online classes.

In December, the Dickson County system was one of eight school districts to share in a $3.4 million grant from the state’s e4TN program to fund online learning.

The system received $100,000 as one of the pilot sites for the program, which began last spring.

The goal of e4TN is to expand access to online learning statewide.

Dickson County will focus the program on the services it offers at the alternative school, New Directions Academy in Charlotte, but classes will be open to other high school students.

“This is a wonderful program for students who are looking for or need more freedom in planning their course load,” said New Directions Academy Principal Karen Willie. “I think the use of technology this way is definitely a future trend for education.”

The four Dickson County representatives at the training session included New Directions Academy teachers William Hunnicut, Belinda Rhoads and Brian Fitts and school computer technician Marylin Estes.

Hunnicut is responsible for managing the curriculum and maintaining a consistent level of communication between the students and the teachers involved with the program at New Directions Academy.

Hunnicut knew the school could use this program because of the varied backgrounds of the students that attend New Directions.

“Every student doesn’t fit the same mold, and I think the online courses address that,” Hunnicut said.

The summer retreat covered topics such as being effective online instructors, designing compelling courses, simulating an interactive classroom environment online and ensuring the student is the one completing the work.

Hunnicut was excited by the addition of a voice component to the program, allowing students and teachers to record and retrieve verbal messages to each other.

“The beauty of this program is its flexibility in scheduling for the students,” Hunnicut said. “They can log on whenever they need to, whether in quick spurts at odd hours or at specific times each day, whatever works for them.”

Eventually, the program will offer elementary and secondary students access to challenging and engaging academic content through an online curriculum aligned to state and national standards. Districts must use 25 percent of their funds for ongoing, sustained, intensive and high-quality professional development.

“The system is pretty basic, just a browser based platform that students use specific course logons to get into the Web site,” Estes said. “Students and teachers will recognize most of the features like discussion boards and instant messaging abilities. Plus, there will be an online drop box for students to pick-up and leave assignments and for teachers to drop off the results.”

Estes sees the online courses being valuable to home-school students and students who might have to miss classes because of personal issues, such as a prolonged sickness.

“There is also plenty of security when it comes to monitoring a student’s progress,” Estes said. “Each course will require online assessment tests that will be timed. Once students log in they will have a specific amount of time to complete the test before the test locks up and closes.”

For more information, contact New Directions Academy at 740-6070.