School Choice Offers Opportunity for the Teaching Profession

As technology changes and evolves, the world of education and teaching will undoubtedly change. Teachers across the country must stay ahead of the curve.

Although some teachers and the unions see school choice as foreboding for the public school outlook, school choice encompasses empowerment for the parent to choose an environment that employs teachers in all arenas. A new era has been ushered in for education. Once limited to rigid traditional school terms and schedules, teachers are employed in traditional public schools, charters, private schools, religious schools, and online schools just to name a few. Educators will in turn have choices themselves when deciding when, where and how to teach kids.

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Best Online High Schools gets new design

Best Online High Schools has now been updated with a new design and new features. This new version will continue to provide you with the best information available on the Internet about online high schools.

Come take a look!

Middletown Faculty and Students Make Case for Little Compton

In a nearly two-hour pitch session Tuesday night, Middletown made its case to educate Little Compton’s high school students again beginning in 2012, with school officials enthusiastically presenting slide after slide of glimpses into scholastic life at Middletown High School that covered everything from AP classes to virtual high school classes, from discipline statistics to NECAP scores, from the championship football team to the award-winning robotics teams, and more.

Middletown School officials also offered the Little Compton School Committee a non-voting seat on the Middletown School Committee to help ensure Little Compton has a greater voice in Middletown.

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Pearson Debuts Four New STEM Courses for NovaNET Digital Learning Platform

Roliardi added, “With these interactive courses, students are preparing now for success in college and in their careers.”

NovaNET offers standards-based instruction for secondary and adult learners. The program can be used for education applications like credit accrual, dropout prevention, summer school, credit recovery, virtual schools and virtual learning

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West Hartford School Board Considers Online High School Courses

Tom Murphy, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said he wasn’t aware of any high schools in Connecticut that offer their own online courses, although a program through the Capitol Region Education Council provides them to 525 students throughout the state this semester.

The Connecticut Virtual High School Consortium offers courses such as oceanography and Advanced Placement physics to students in towns that include Simsbury, Rocky Hill and Middletown. The cost to schools that have a teacher conducting a class in the consortium is $130 per course for each student, or $450 for schools that have no participating teachers, said Cara Hart, a CREC program manager.

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Lyme-Old Lyme test scores show results

The high school has continued to push students academically in addition to providing additional help – in the form of a “CAPT Academy” and a Learning Center – to students who have struggled on the state’s standardized tests, Wygonik said.

Students took more Advanced Placement tests than ever in the 2009-10 school year, Wygonik said. In all, 101 students took 179 exams in 16 subjects, including six subjects not offered at the school that students took classes online, through the Virtual High School program.

Of the 179 exams, students scored between a 3 and a 5, the top score, in 141 exams.

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AT&T Contributes $25,000 to Global Virtual Classroom (GVC) Program

AT&T (News – Alert), a global IP-based communications company, has recently announced that it will be contributing its annual contribution of $25,000 to support the Global Virtual Classroom (GVC) program.

The program consists of a set of free, online educational activities and resources for shaping tomorrow’s leaders. The Internet is being used as a medium to connect students around the world, to promote a positive, stimulating learning environment, along with cross-cultural communication, develop teamwork. Schools need to apply online, on or before September 30, 2010.

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Computer classroom new at Wolcott High

WOLCOTT —For all of the distractions, temptations and misinformation on the Web, there’s at least one place where computers serve only educational needs: Wolcott High School’s new “virtual learning lab.”

The classroom, which is equipped with 22 computers and is next to the Library Media Center, will house two sections of students who are taking online courses. It’s one of the new technology-based teaching tools students will find when the town’s public schools open Monday.

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Regional education agency wins $4.3 million grant

“This is a very exciting opportunity. This will provide a model that all districts in Connecticut can adopt to transform what’s happening in the classroom,” Education Connection Executive Director Danuta Thibodeau said Monday.

“It’s a teacher-instructed class which uses the online learning environment. The teacher leads the course and all the materials are online.”

The program requires the grantees to provide a 20 percent match, which means about $860,000 in this case.

Thibodeau was confident the agency would raise the match and credited collaboration — especially among her agency, the state Department of Education and the state Office of Workforce Competitiveness — with the grant application being so strong.

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Torrington school committee to study future of online courses

TORRINGTON — The school district took the first step Wednesday toward establishing opportunities for students to learn online.

Administrators said a new state law requires districts to offer online courses for “credit recovery,” or students who have failed the in-class version of a course.

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