Report October 30 2000

October 30, 2000

Please excuse the grammar and spelling in this informal report.

Midterm Report

Well, let me tell you how much fun this has been, this has been the most exciting, frustrating fun education experience I have ever been involved with. This form of education is unbelievable both for the teacher and also the students. Certain things that we thought would happen did and other things have surprised us, we are so far into the unknown that every day is surprising us with new achievements and challenges.
We have registered more than one hundred students, with a drop out rate of about 12 percent. This is slightly higher than I thought but just reminds us that this type of schooling is not for everyone. Some of the Sask Ed. people were mentioning that the correspondence school that has a drop out rate of 50+ percent. I believe ours is so much lower because of the teacher being available and the efforts to make the students feel like they are part of a class. We are teaching the three classes and on October 15 stopped registering students for this semester. All students registered after this date have been moved to the second semester. This will allow us to do some catch up when it comes to updating and finalizing the look of the courses. We are still working an in-human number of hours, but the payoff has been the fact that the courses are becoming more and more interactive. Students are starting to settle into a routine and are spending time learning. The discussion board area is the most interesting tool in the information processing class while the chat room seems to be more of a fluff tool. More of a social tool than an educational one. The marking of the tests has gone smoothly and most of the other tools work very well.

The turn over to the new server was a major improvement in the ability for us to work on-line. It is so much faster and more exciting. This is something we must keep in mind, the faster we can make things for the developer the happier they will be. The newer machines and chairs make the work a little easier.

Ken and Tony are both discussing the concern about their home computer. The two of them are spending a lot of hours at school because they do not have an acceptable machine at home. Therefore we are supply high speed at home to people who do not have machines to use it. Maybe this is something that we have to address in the future. Where do we stop supplying the tools for developers and presenters? What is needed to make their lives easier?

We may want to look at putting together a team of technical people to support the developers. The release time that we have been given may not have been enough. The learning of the computers skills and programs is starting to drag on the developers and making it difficult for them to keep the hours down. The learning curve is not getting smaller, it just keeps expanding based on newer, faster and better technology that someone has to learn and then teach the new stuff to the developers. This cannot be done if they are still trying to complete course material.

The room we are working in is a little tight...developers are back to back but the brain trust in this room is very very scary. We could take over the world if we could just find the time.

Dave Elder is finding teaching and extracurricular is getting in the way of him developing. He is getting very good at using some of the newer technology. He is using the high speed at home extensively.

The new developers have all been matched up with one of the vets and they seem to be working very well as teams...not a bad thought for the future. Having all the developers in one room has been a good idea...it has allowed us to brain storm ideas and work through problems collectively.

Administration wise...the registration procedure is getting cleaner but it is still very hard to keep track of students. Students who have decided to drop or change schools tend to throw curves into the process. We are building a filing system and data bank to keep track of these students. All the planning is keeping in mind that it needs to work for schools outside our system as well. At first I thought that the secretary would be good to have and would allow us to support the developers. To date the secretary has been only working on administration. It may be necessary to increase her to a ½ time secretary to assist in keeping contact with the contacts at the schools. We might also need to get her a machine to work on in the pod area. We think it might be necessary to meet with the people in each building that are responsible for the cyber school to see if there is any way we can make the registration and reporting period better. It still seems to be clunky and students do fall through the cracks. Since this time, I have gone to each of the high schools and have some ideas on how to make this process better.

The students are starting to find that this method of education is very exciting and they are starting to sell the courses for us . . . they talk and they are our best form of advertisement . . . however they are still inside our system . . . when we go outside we need to have a coordinated concentrated method of advertising and it might cost us some money. I am planning for this day.

I have started the process of becoming certified in WEBct. This is going to be a long and expensive process but I agree that it is a necessary one. I will make this happen.

A final story before I sign off...

I called a student named Zoe thinking this was a girl...I dialed her home number to see why she had not been on line for a large number of days. I asked if I could speak to Zoe...if she was home. The mother was very silent for a period and then stated that Zoe was a guy...I proceeded to tell her that this was his teacher and that this might be one of the drawbacks of this education. But it certainly eliminates sexism in education.

A final thought...

I also got an e-mail...it stated...I thought this was going to be fun...it is not I quit. It is important that we let the students know this is still a course and they will be expected to do 120 hours of work...it is not a video game.