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eLearning That Goes Beyond Text and Graphics

Posted on: Thursday, 6 October 2005, 06:00 CDT

By Bilyk, Robert

Minnesota educators use lodeStar to bring Cyber Village Academy into the homes and hospitals of ill and injured home-schooled children.

In Minnesota, the eLearning explosion translates into many new opportunities for students. High school students take both core and elective courses online, making up missing credits and advancing their studies; three charter schools provide virtual high schools; seven district schools have formed an eLearning collaboration. Nearly every state college and university, and every private college offers online courses to its students. In 1998, however, things were quite different. That's when another teacher and I started an online learning school. And in that year, in our community, we were all alone.

In 1997, I taught computer programming at the Saint Paul College. By then I had a range of experiences in instructional technology: I had earned my MEd in curriculum and instructional systems through the University of Minnesota. I had built the college's Instructional Technology Center, helped to launch Minnesota Satellite and Technology, and taught technology-mediated instruction to college teachers and developers throughout the state.

Then the call came from Gary Warrington, executive director of Special Education for Minneapolis Public Schools, inviting me to build the first online learning charter school to serve seriously ill children and homeschoolers. The district had a roster of hundreds of children battling leukemia and different forms of disease. Two kids were homebound because of gunshot wounds. Minneapolis Public Schools and surrounding communities also had their, share of homeschooled children who weren't being served by the district. At that time, Minnesota parents taught 12,000 children at home.

In response, I invited Cherie Neima to help me. Cherie Neima had been both a classroom teacher and a software designer/content specialist for the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC). Her credits include the CD-ROM Africa Trail, and MayaQuest, the online expedition led by adventurist Dan Buettner. So, together with Neima and an administrative assistant, I started Cyber Village Academy (www.cva.kl2.mn.us'). a Minnesota online/on-campus charter school. Our goal was to choose the right blend of teachers, technology, curriculum, and services to bring the "larger than life" school to the homes and hospitals of these children.

But spring 2001 brought a decisive turning point, and we had to face up to several serious shortcomings:

* The learning management system that we had chosen in 1997 was designed for postsecondary education and corporate training; it wasn't working for us. Thus, we needed a system that was student- centric and not course-centric.

* The integrated learning systems that we had subscribed to had their own proprietary gradebook and didn't report to our eLearning platform. Also, lessons couldn't be edited and supplemented, and many were boring and unengaging.

* We were tired of text, graphics, and quizzes. We needed variety. We needed a tool that could create fun, engaging, educational activities that could live inside our learning management system.

The decisions we made that spring to overcome our challenges changed our school entirely-and for the better. Several innovations emerged. First, Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com) released a learning management system that was initially designed for K-12. They called it Encarta Class Server, but later changed the name to Microsoft Class Server to avoid brand confusion. Cyber Village Academy would soon become the first application service provider (ASP) for Class Server, its students, and for other school districts. The application service is currently marketed by Broad Education Inc. (www.broadeducation.com).

With Class Server, parents and students could log in and see in one place all of their assignments from every subject area. Students were no longer floundering, drilling into this course or that, opening a resource folder or an assignment folder. Their first screen greeted them with what they needed to do.

Additionally, assignments remained accessible to parents and students for the entire year or beyond, together with student responses, teacher evaluations, and rubrics.

Suddenly, with Class Server, Cyber Village Academy didn't need to subscribe to different integrated learning systems for different curricula. Companies like Ancept, Absorb Learning, Adventure Online, Interact, and many others were developing resources that would behave nicely in our "playground"-our learning management system. Students could access activities from a variety of developers in one coherent environment. Results would be reported to one central gradebook.

Today, Cyber Village Academy is at the top of its game. CVA teachers can choose activities from a library of thousands of resources or create their own. Through Class Server, and with the help of lodestar (see box), an eLearning content development tool, teachers are no longer restricted to text, graphics, and quizzes. They engage students in wonderful, meaningful activities that precisely meet the students' needs.

Matching Learning Objectives with lodeStar

In the summer of 2001, a small team of instructional designers and programmers, led by Mark Burrs and Robert Bilyk, launched an alpha version of a new tool that would finally realize their career- long dream in instructional technology. Their goal wasforteachersto use onesimpletool called lodeStar(www.lodeStarLearning.com) to create WebQuests, flash cards, games, timelines, slide shows, quizzes, presentations, and more-all by filling out a form. With a click of a button, teachers could publish to Class Server, or with several clicks, publish to Blackboard, Desire2Learn, WebCT, and other learning management systems (LMS). With lodeStar (not another authoring system or LMS), teachers can quickly create activities that closely match their learning objectives. LodeStar is a simple step-by-step program that lets teachers create activities quickly; there are no features that make the product confusing or impractical forteachersto use.

Today, lodeStar is used by US and Canadian teachers in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools. To date, lodeStar has been translated into two European languages and meets both the IMS content packaging specification and the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM).

"Today, CyberVillage Academy is at the top of its game. CVA teachers can choose activities from a library of thousands of resources, or they can create their own, no longer restricted to text, graphics, and quizzes."

Robert Bilyk is the director of CyberVillage Academy, and co- director of lodeStar Learning Corp. (www.lodeStarLearning.com) He holds an MEd in curriculum and instructional systems, and has been engaged in computer-assisted intruction at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels for the past 20 years. E-mail: bbilyk@cva.k12.mn.us.

Copyright Edward Warnshuis, Ltd. Sep 2005

Source: T.H.E. Journal; Technological Horizons in Education

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