SOCRATES

Online Learning in the SOCRATES Region

Offering certified courses to every secondary student in the south central region of Minnesota is sometimes a challenge. Scheduling difficulties, lack of available courses in the home district, or other circumstances, may not meet the needs of the student. SOCRATES has managed an interactive television network that often combines students from different districts; but what of the individual student who needs a credit in a core subject for graduation or for acceptance in a post-secondary program.

Using the experience of the Interactive Television program, SOCRATES initiated online courses in English, science, math and Spanish this past school year. Class.com was chosen as the curriculum provider because of its long term reputation and association with TIES in the metro area. TIES, and in turn SOCRATES, provided training to local teacher/facilitators to work with the students.

A key factor in any course and particularly online courses is a good teacher trained in facilitating and working with students in a new environment. The region now has a set of trained and certified teachers in business education, ASL, Spanish, life sciences, math, social studies, and vocational education. State law requires that an online class facilitator be licensed in Minnesota in the subject area, and be “certified” to teach/monitor online classes. Plans are in progress to offer an Advanced Placement course in American History this coming school year. Many other courses are available for individual students.

Experience in online education finds that a teacher that maintains a close personal contact with the student on a weekly basis assures better success for the student. The most successful online class students are also independent learners and self motivated. Online education is not for everyone, but it does answer a need for many of our students.

SOCRATES is investigating several other curriculum providers. Class.com www.class.com has over 47 courses and is an experienced provider having grown from a research project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln started in 1996. Florida Virtual High School www.flvs.net offers over 80 courses for high school and middle school students either facilitated or locally managed. Apex Learning www.apexlearning.com offers 33 courses of which 14 are Advanced Placement level. NorthernStarOnline www.northernstaronline.org is a recent consortium of school districts in the western metro region of Minneapolis, centered in the Intermediate District 287. They currently offer 40 courses from member districts, some of which have had a rich history of offering online courses locally. SOCRATES is investigating these providers in an effort to expand the quality and quantity of course offerings to students in our region.

For additional online class information, please contact Dale Carrison at dcarrison@projectsocrates.org or Dave Henning at dhenning@projectsocrates.org or 507.995.0165 to discuss working with teachers on online learning activities.

In today’s world of K–12 education, instructional technology and technology for school management is essential for effective and efficient educational programs and for the survival of rural education. SOCRATES has an opportunity to provide all of its member school districts with current technology and applications for improvement of instruction and curriculum development to respond to NCLB requirements and to respond to student and parent demands for higher level and more diverse educational opportunities.

Support for teachers and students using electronic resources from the Internet are one of the primary goals of SOCRATES in the South Central Region. Atomic Learning and netTrekker subscriptions were purchased for all SOCRATES school districts through a grant. Digital Curriculum is a video streaming program that was purchased at a reduced cost by many of the south central MN school districts. These resources, all of which are correlated to Minnesota academic standards, so teachers can find multi-media content to meet the bench marks, and all of which can be accessed by students, teachers, and parents from school, home and from their local public library.

• Atomic Learning www.atomiclearning.com provides software training in atom sized pieces 24/7 for 70 different Mac and PC computer applications used by students and teachers. The user simply types a question to begin a search for answers, chooses the short response that best fits the question, watches the video clip, and immediately applies the results. This resource includes 12,000 video clips and supporting materials (some in Spanish) and is constantly updated.
• Nettrekker www.nettrekker.com is a searchable resource that provides access to 180,000 high quality, pre-screened K-12 online resources recommended by educators available via the Internet. All content is selected by educators, so students access only appropriate content. Teachers can save and post the sites that they want their students to use. The resources available include primary documents, lesson plans, assessments that are appropriate to the level of the student.
  
• Unitedstreaming www.unitedstreaming.com and Digital Curriculum www.digitalcurriculum.com are online libraries of video streamed resources consisting of full length educational videos, key concept clips, graphics, and pictorial materials, teacher guides, and lesson plans. Materials can be put into presentations and used in development of curriculum materials. Teachers and students may view the video material on their computer or through a video projector for a classroom presentation. Over 3,000 videos of which 500 are closed captioned are aligned with current state standards.
  
• SkillsTutor www.skillstutor.com is an online comprehensive resource for diagnosing and meeting the needs of students. It gives students a guided review of basic skills covered by many national standardized tests. It also provides students with important practice for the standardized tests by presenting questions in the same format used by national tests in a variety of subject areas. Available to schools in our region through a Minnesota Department of Education grant, it has become a valuable resource.
  
• ELM (Electronic Library of Minnesota) is funded through the State of Minnesota for all citizens; the ELM is a rich collection of over 15 data bases accessible over the Internet. From the ELM website, access the Traverse de Sioux Library System web site at http://www.tds.lib.mn.us/ to register your username and password. Once registered, you can use these databases 24/7 from any Internet capable computer.
• Marco Polo: Internet Content for the Classroom http://www.marcopolo-education.org/home.aspx is a new free offering funded by National Geographic, NCTM, NCEI, The Kennedy Center, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Teachers can access student activities, lesson plans and web sites aligned with national standards.
  

For more information on Discovery Education’s Digital Curriculum/ United Streaming, netTrekker, Skills Tutor, or Atomic Learning, contact SOCRATES Director Dale Carrison at dcarrison@projectsocrates.org. Contact Dave Henning at dhenning@projectsocrates.org or 507.995.0165 to discuss scheduling a teacher training session for your staff.

More information on the ELM (Electronic Library of Minnesota) can be obtained from Nancy Steele, Director, SMILE, at smile@tds.lib.mn.us or 507.625.7555.