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The Digital Backpack
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Your trusted source for K-12 online learning insights, teaching strategies, and success stories from Michigan’s leading virtual education provider. Join us as we explore innovative approaches to help students thrive in the digital age.
To serve and subsist: Reflections on finding the ideal registration window
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
How do online schools and curriculum providers attend to the myriad needs of teachers, students, and staff? This constant juggling act requires skill, tact, and most of all, data.To cite one example,
Is Blended Learning a Fairy Tale?
Jamie DeWitt
In Michael Horn (@michaelbhorn) and Heather Staker’s (@hstaker) new book “Blended,” blended learning implementation is examined and discussed. As the blended learning movement is exploding, it is nat
Calling all middle and high school online writing teachers!
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
We are posting this for Kristine Pytash and Jennifer Nigh of Kent State University who are conducting a study of online writing teachers. Please share this out with your networks.Two Kent State Univer
K-12 teachers needed for survey about OER
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
This request is from a doctoral student who needs teachers who are using OER to fill out a short survey. See her request below.I am writing to request your participation in a short survey about how K-
Michigan Virtual at MACUL in Detroit this week: See you there!
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
Michigan Virtual staff members will be presenting at the 2015 MACUL Conference this week on Thursday and Friday in Room 358. Please visit us at booth 145 and booth 614 in the exhibitor’s hall on both
Comparing virtual schools in Michigan to national trends identified in NEPC’s recent national report
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
On March 10, the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), released its third annual report on virtual schools in the U.S. In this report, entitled Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2015, the authors tackle
Call for participation – online secondary science education – student and teacher perspectives
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
Investigators at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Hartley University are looking for virtual school teachers and students to participate in a study called “The Experience of Online Secondary S
Episode 3: Christina Jean
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
Christina Jean, Innovation and Blended Learning Specialist with the Colorado Department of Education’s Office of Blended and Online Learning, is our guest in Episode 3. The work of the Office of Blend
SITE 2015: March 2-6, 2015
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
We hope to see you at SITE 2015 in Las Vegas this week!Below is a list of the sessions that are categorized under the Virtual Schooling SIG. Safe travels, and we’ll see you in Vegas![table id=15 /][ta
Cold weather doesn't stop learning at Michigan Virtual
Jamey Fitzpatrick
When it’s cold out. Really cold. Like it has been often this winter. Many schools shut down. That’s not news to anyone in Michigan, but Michigan Virtual online learning students are warm and toasty on
Looking for teachers, administrators and researchers to review modules
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
My name is Jason Siko, and I’m currently an assistant professor of educational technology at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids. My research interests included K-12 online and blended learn
Episode 2: Shawn Rubin
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
We sit down with Shawn Rubin, the Director of Blended Learning at the Highlander Institute, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit organization providing professional development and other educational service
Differentiation in a world without learning styles
Jeff Gerlach
My ExperienceIt was in an 8th-grade social studies class that I first encountered differentiation based on learning styles. At that time I was a student assistant, gaining classroom experience in prep
End-of-course assessments as quality assurance measures
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
Several states are using end-of-course assessments (EOCs) as quality assurance metrics for both online and face-to-face courses. Michigan is developing and implementing EOCs as part of the larger stat
Online Learning journal – call for proposals: special issue on K-12 online education
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
A special issue of Online Learning, the official journal of the Online Learning Consortium (formerly Sloan-C), will be published in December 2015. This issue will focus on K-12 online learning.Submiss
AECT 2015 – School Media and Technology Division looking for submissions
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
Proposals for AECT 2015 (in Indianapolis, Nov. 3-7, 2015) are due February 2, 2015.TopicsCyber and virtual schooling in K-12 education, the design of online and blended K-12 environments that optimize
Simply engaging and utterly consuming: #Givercraft 2014
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
Graduate and K-12 students engage in a new interactive learning experience combining the use of Minecraft, Wikispaces, webinars, and The Giver, by Lois LowryIn the spring of 2014, I was fortunate enou
School psychology: Bringing a virtually hidden field online
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
In this guest blog post, three Georgia Southern University associate professors, who authored a chapter in the Handbook of Research on K-12 Online and Blended Learning, discuss their desire to share t
Calling all instructional designers in K-12 online learning programs
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
A Capella University Ph.D. candidate is seeking research participants for a telephone-based study concerning the use of Instructional Strategies in the development of virtual courses designed for a hi
Supporting students online
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute
REL Southeast Blended and Online Learning Alliance developed the following video that talks about research in supporting students who take online courses.
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