As I waited for the late afternoon education session to start at NCSL, I had a fascinating discussion with a woman who works for Connections Academy an online school for grades K through 11 that kids attend from home. It is a pilot, mostly charter schools in 12 different states. On first glance, it appears to be an interesting nexus of public schooling, home schooling and internet based training. Checking around, it seems like some home school purists view it as an effort by public school systems to get involved with and to gain more control over home schooling. Others view it is a useful resource. I’m wondering if any of the home schoolers that read this blog have any experiences of or opinions about Connections Academy.

The session started off with Marie St. Fleur, a State Rep from Massachusetts who talked about the Wireless Learning Initiative at the Lilla G. Frederick Middle School in Dorchester.

It was a very good presentation as Rep. St. Fleur talked about many things that are important to me in education. She talked about the need to think out of the box, to use an integrated curriculum and to foster a life long love of learning. She pointed out that it isn’t about bringing new technology into the classroom, but about getting teachers to think about how this new technology can be used in new ways.

She noted that in other communities, students have been allowed to take laptops home. There was concern about this in Dorchester, and the school came up with a great solution. Parents need to come in and get trained on the computers. Parents that make the effort get a refurbished computer that they can take home for their children to ue for school work. She said that if you invite the parents in and tell them what they are there for, they will come.

Many people suggest that some of the larger issues with schools and our society as a whole stem from a lack of parental involvement. Connections Academy and most of home schooling efforts are dependent on parental involvement and that may be a key to their successes. The Wireless Learning Initiative at Lilla G. Frederick Middle School appears to likewise benefit from improving parental involvement.

Yet getting a family a laptop they can use isn’t enough, if there isn’t access to broadband and Rep. St. Fleur also spoke about efforts to make WiFi available in neighborhoods in Dorchester. She spoke about how getting parental buy-in is important, but you also need to get teacher buy-in, community buy-in and business buy-in.

After her presentation, Tom Gluck from the Pennsylvania Department of Education spoke about efforts to get a laptop on the desk of every high school student in Pennsylvania. He spoke about changing the way teaching is done through the introduction of “smart” classrooms. Like Rep. St. Fleur, he spoke about the importance of professional development so that teachers could make the best use of the new technology.

Both presentations talked about students creating blogs or podcasts. I asked to what extent the student created content was being shared on the web with the other schools and the community as a whole. Both speakers said that this was going on. I was directed to lgfnet.org for the Lilla G. Frederick school, and to www.pde.state.pa.us/edhub for the Pennsylvania system.

Neither site has any student generated content up right now, but that is understandable since it is summer vacation. The Pennsylvania initiative does has a student produced video up at http://www.nasd.k12.pa.us/media/cff.wmv

It is great to see successful projects like these talked about amongst state legislators. Hopefully the ideas can be spread and expanded upon. Yet as people noted in the student produced video, the teachers at the Pennsylvania schools feel that they are just scratching the surface of how they can teach in new ways using these tools. By getting teachers, students, parents and other interested parties sharing more ideas and experiences, we can help our education system get even better at preparing today’s students for tomorrow’s economy and I hope we see a lot more collaboration between projects like these.