While traditional brick and mortar schools work for many children, they restrict many others. Formed almost nine years ago, K12 Inc. has become the leader in providing individualized, one-to-one online learning solutions to students from kindergarten through high school nationwide.
The K12 learning program is used by more than 50,000 students and 1,500 teachers in public virtual schools across the country. There are currently 21 states offering K12 online schools. The organization has a mission of providing every child with a world-class curriculum and education opportunities regardless of geographic, financial, or demographic circumstances. . In short, all children deserve to learn without limits.
Teresa Scavulli and Guadalupe VanDerPloeg are part of the K12 Teacher Effectiveness Division. As its name implies, the division provides professional development, program implementation and training, and specialized training materials and tools to help the organization's educators achieve the knowledge, skills, and unshakable confidence they need to thrive in a virtual environment.
Real-time Interaction Facilitates Learning and Assessment
In 2003, K12 determined that one way to support its growth and continue to provide its diverse student population with a high-quality learning experience was to increase real-time interaction between teacher and student. "At that time, Elluminate's enabling technology became a critical component of our national instructional model," Scavulli explained. "Today, usage of Elluminate Live! ® is an integral aspect to the role our teachers play and is a vital tool for real-time instruction and learning verification based on state standardized testing."
Professional Development Drives Teacher Effectiveness
We believe that professional development should not be episodic but ongoing and focused on skills. Elluminate helps us do this for our geographically dispersed teachers.
While our schools all host individual professional development sessions, K12 also provides monthly national professional development that's instruction related and Elluminate professional development that focuses on how to use the virtual classroom platform effectively.
In addition, we offer 60 hours a week of just-in-time training/teacher helpdesk. We've found it is more effective to show teachers using application sharing rather than use phone, chat, or email.
Teresa Scavulli
"Learning verification is a struggle for all online education providers, and for K12 it's a necessity," Scavulli continued. "Elluminate Live! is an invaluable tool for online assessment, enabling us to make sure the students are not only learning but are capable of mastering the concepts they have been taught. With Elluminate, teachers meet with students to focus on a specific challenge area, and students can demonstrate targeted skills so that they can proceed to the next level."
Elluminate Next>™ Adds Support for Entire Instructional Cycle
K12 also acquired the Elluminate Next> bundle with Elluminate Plan!™ and Elluminate Publish!™ to even further advance the quality of its classes. "Elluminate Next> brings the entire instructional cycle into the picture," said VanDerPloeg. "Plan! allows our instructional designers and more experienced teachers to create content and present it to novice Elluminate Live! users. In addition, we use Publish! to deliver recorded lesson content to students in a variety of ways."
VanDerPloeg also uses Elluminate Publish! V2 with multimedia movie production. "I see applicability for students who need some review not just with audio but with video as well," she added. "This changes the entire concept of education in that it doesn't necessarily happen in a single environment, which fits in with the K12 concept of anytime, anywhere education."
Teacher Interaction Equals Effective Instruction
"Our customer surveys tell us that teacher interaction is very important," concluded Scavulli. "Elluminate is our provider of choice because of the tools specifically geared for online collaboration and its focus on the education industry. K12 uses Elluminate Live! heavily as our methodology to teach both students and instructors. It's a great resource."
"Working with the Elluminate staff is a hands-down refreshing experience," VanDerPloeg added. "They are not just a company that sells technology. They have expertise in education and understand its culture and needs. Our mutually beneficial relationship with Elluminate allows us to develop and build the vital relationships required as part of effective instruction. This year, we've done many things with Elluminate to improve student achievement as well as connect students and teachers to increase our social network."
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