Visit to America/Canada - Virtual Schools & Online Learning

Hi everyone I am an educator from New South Wales, Australia and am in the process of organising a five week study tour to Amercia and Canada in Nov/Dec this year on the topic of Virtual Schooling and online learning.

The questions I am looking to answer whilst on my study tour are as follows:

1. Organisation and functioning of a virtual school.
2. Identify the professional learning needs of teachers if they are to be effective in an online learning environment.
3. Identify the most effective instructional design and instructional processes in an online learning environment.
4. Pedagogical implications of the availability of online learning management systems.

At this stage I intend on coming to the Virtual School Symposium in Texas in November this year and then staying on for 4 weeks to visit schools. I have the funding to travel across America and also Canada. If anyone would be able to guide me in terms of what schools/programs to visit it would be appreciated. Obviously the idea is to visit best practice schools/programs and then take this information back to our education system in Australia.

I can be contacted via this forum or stacey.kelly1@det.nsw.edu.au.

Thanks
Stacey

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Permalink Reply by suehellman on February 8, 2009 at 9:11am

HI Stacey -- Most school districts in British Columbia (a privince in Canada) have distributed learning programs that stand beside bricks and mortar schools. In my district (Surrey) it's called Surrey Connect. In Vancouver, it's called Vancouver Learning Network. If you're interested I can put you in touch with people there.

Also, in BC, there is an umbrella organization for all distributed learning called LearnNowBC (http://www.learnnowbc.ca/browse.aspx) where you might be able to find out some information.

In Canada, each province runs its own education system and we seldom link up or overlap; however I have contacts in Saskachewan who are doing work wiht students in a lot of hard-to-reach rural areas, and I like their model the best of any I've seen here. They are definitely worth a visit.

Finally, there is a group in Classroom 2.0 called Canadians Mashup. I'll start a discussion for you and you may get some responses. Good luck!