Editor's note: We want to thank Scott Wilson for contributing this post. Scott's the Chief Executive Manager at Tutor Tango, an online tutoring service for grades 7-12.
A fast-growing trend in online learning has revolutionized both K-12 and higher education over the past few years. The offering of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in particular has even caught the attention of world leaders, who convened a special panel to consider their impact at the World Economic Forum last winter.
Not surprisingly, some of the nation’s most prestigious universities are leading the way in online course development, with MIT and Harvard teaming up to invest 60 million dollars in a delivery platform called EdX, and Stanford professors launching two of the most popular digital learning ventures, Coursera and Udacity.
Some Connecticut boarding schools are doing their part to prepare students for “learning’s next wave” by integrating both blended learning (the mixed-use of traditional and digital learning activities) and supplemental online offerings into their curricula.
The Indian Mountain School in Lakeville, CT, does not currently offer courses online, but has issued iPads to ninth graders, which include e-textbooks in sync with textbook websites on smart boards in the classroom. Sam Decock, the Associate Director of Admissions and a teacher at Indian Mountain, integrates the use of iPads into his 9th grade Latin class. “My students responded enthusiastically to the [blended curriculum] and have even taken it upon themselves to be creative in their use of this new technology,” Decock said.
Anne Tortora, Principal at Academy of the Holy Family in Baltic, CT, is excited that her school is developing new policies regarding online learning. “We are incorporating Skype in the classroom to expand our offerings this year,” she said, “and we so subscribe to e-books.” She added that all of Holy Family’s students took selected online courses this past summer, and that faculty will be developing their course pages this year via Blackboard Engage, a company that offers web- and mobile-based platforms for school websites.