The Digital Divide

Introduction

Our program expands throughout the state of Iowa; therefore, about four times per year, I find myself visiting a variety of school districts and driving varying distances.  Last Thursday, was one such time.  I tend to catch up on NPR on the drive and listen to the debates about whatever policies are central at the time.  Last Thursday, On Point with Tom Ashbrook aired, "Global Internet Access for the Next Four Billion."  Since it finished airing right when I got to the first school of the day, I asked the TAG teacher what the experience had been for her students.  The response was that at school, the technology person was great and the interruptions in their internet service were slim to none, but she admitted that it was quite possible that not all students had internet access at home.  I posed the question to the next counselor I met with and he said that because their town had a cooperative, the internet access was fantastic.  So as I was returning from two very rural schools to the eastern side of the state, I pondered the question, "Is it a basic human right to have access to high-speed internet and how do we address the digital divide?"

The Broadband Report Summary

The Broadband Commission for Digital Development published its report The State of Broadband 2015: Broadband as a Foundation for Sustainable Development this month.  In this report, it addresses how the digital divide is being stubbornly persistent, especially with extending broadband access in spite of the last-mile requirements in remote and rural areas.  It also states that 57% of the world's population does not have regular internet access, but the amount of devices that wealthier parts of the world are connecting are at a ratio of six devices for every one person.  Also, the fastest growing market is in mobile technology.  

The State of Broadband 2015: Broadband as a Foundations for Sustainable Development writes about how the goal of the UN Commission was that every person on the planet would be within easy access of a telephone (meaning a within a day's walk) thirty years ago.  Now, with mobile technology at the tips of more than 50% of the world's population, and 90% of the planet having access to a mobile network, it's not as easy to know what should be done about the digital divide.

Why Does It Matter?

So, we're privileged to live in the United States of America (although income inequality is high and men and women still have wage equity disputes) and have been born into more wealth than people from some countries will see in their lifetimes, sometimes it's hard to care about what people in Africa need when it comes to technology.  However, we should.  We should care because having national broadband will help countries grow economically.

What are some ways it matters to you?

Accountability for At-Risk Students

Learner Persistence

Adult learners aren't forced to come to classes by compulsory attendance laws; however, programs with the greatest success rates find that their students show persistence.  How can a program help students achieve this?  By holding adult learners accountable for their learning.

The state of Iowa has switched to managed enrollment for adult education and English Language Learners, so students cannot just "drop-in" at their convenience and be catered to.  Students must register and be enrolled in a course before they can attend their classes.

In order to do this, Kirkwood High School Completion programs on the main campus offers different informational sessions, which are followed by a Pathways to Success course.  Once students have completed the Pathways to Success Course, students are then allowed to choose the diploma option that is right for them.

By asking students to invest time in their education up front, the program is seeing increased learner persistence.  The Pathways to Success course is designed to help students identify the barriers in their own lives and create connections to deal with the crises that life throws their way.

Accountability

Students must attend the 4 days of the Pathways to Success course before they are allowed to enroll in High School Equivalency Diploma or Kirkwood Adult High School Diploma classes.  If the student fails to attend any of the first four days, he/she must start over with the Pathways to Success course the next time it is offered.

The retention rate of students has hovered around 50-55% and this year the state of Iowa has a retention rate of 60%.  Retention of students is defined for the Kirkwood Secondary Programs as the number of students who complete a pre and post growth assessment, which means that they've been in the program for at least 40 hours of instruction.

In the past, we've tried to give students a disincentive of paying a re-registration fee of $25 and allowed them to continue in their same course; however, that doesn't discourage students from taking an incomplete in a course and playing "course-hop." The latest idea that we've had is to allow students four months (plus a one-month grace period) to complete their course.  If the student fails to complete the course in that time period, then he/she will be issued a failing grade and a zero and they will have to restart the whole course from the beginning.  

What have other programs done to hold adult learners accountable?

School-Related Factors for At-Risk Students

Factors Related to School Causing At-Risk Students

In the publication, Situations that Put Youth At-Risk, it identifies these factors as causing students to be at-risk:

• Conflict between home/school culture
• Clash of home/school values
• Ineffective discipline system
• Lack of adequate counseling
• Lack of relevant curriculum
• Passive instructional strategies
• Inappropriate use of technology
• Retentions/suspensions
• Disregard of student learning styles
• Lack of tactile/kinistetic learning
• Low expectations
• Inadequate teacher-preparation

All of these factors seem to be timeless and students who are at-risk benefit from having individualized instruction and active learning opportunities.  This is where online and blended learning can help.

In iNACOL's latest white paper, Using Online Learning for Credit Recovery:  Getting Back on Track to Graduation, the schools that are seeing the best success with their credit recovery program are utilizing learning centers where all of the students' needs are being met and are using programs that have both an on-site facilitator and an online facilitator.  This helps students receive the immediate feedback they need in regards to process and it also helps keep students on track.  The online facilitator can then be a resource when it comes to content-specific questions.

Kirkwood's High School Distance Learning program uses online facilitators to meet the highly-qualified teaching mandates.  In addition, schools that are using its resources are also encouraged to have an on-site mentor or coach for students to go to with questions.  This person can act as a liaison between the Kirkwood staff and the student, if necessary.

Schools that utilize holistic approaches to help students recover credits, see greater results than those who just throw them into computer-based software programs that have very little teacher involvement and do not prepare the student for college or careers.  By giving students the support of counseling, tutoring, and face-to-face instruction with teachers, the at-risk students are more likely to become more productive members of society and earn their high school diplomas.

Kirkwood HSDL Meeting Needs of Rural Schools

Background of Kirkwood HSDL

Kirkwood High School Distance Learning began more than 30 years ago and was known as the Kirkwood Correspondence Program.  In 2007, the name was changed to Kirkwood High School Distance Learning, as it began offering online programming at that time.  Students across the state of Iowa use the same curriculum that the Kirkwood Adult High School students use to fulfill their learning needs.  Some students take courses to recover credits that they failed, some take courses to advance their learning, and some students take courses due to their own interest in a subject.

How it Works

Students enrolling in Kirkwood HSDL begin by talking to their high school counselor.  If a Kirkwood HSDL course is the correct fit for the student, then the school counselor will fill out the registration form and submit it to Kirkwood HSDL.  Currently, schools determine whether or not they will pay for the course; however, beginning July 1, 2016, schools will be billed for all courses that are scheduled during the academic year.   Students may not start courses without a signature from themselves, their parents (if under 18), and a school official.  Once all those signatures are on file, Kirkwood HSDL enrolls the students in the course for which they've registered.

Some classes are offered exclusively online and Kirkwood HSDL offers a few courses exclusively by book (also known as correspondence).  In total, there are more than fifty courses that students and schools are able to choose from.  

Help for Rural Schools

The state of Iowa is home to more than 300 school districts, over 75% of them very small.  More than 250 districts across the state of Iowa had less than 100 students enrolled in twelfth grade as of March 9, 2015 (Iowa Department of Education Statistics).  Only 1% of school districts, for a total of 3, had enrollments larger than 1000 students in grade twelve (Iowa Department of Education Statistics).

So what happens when you live outside the populous centers of Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and the Quad Cities?  You go to a small school, which may or may not have all the classes that you need to be college and/or career ready.  In fact, sometimes a required class may overlap an elective course, which could put a student behind when he/she applies to college.  That's where Kirkwood HSDL can help.  If a student attending a small school can't fit a world language into his/her schedule, we offer Spanish and French as flexible enrollment online courses.  The student can then take his/her required courses for graduation at the time that they are offered at school and then can take the electives at a time that doesn't overlap, giving them the freedom of place, time, and/or pace.

Similarly, students who have failed courses, can retake part or all of the course that they've missed through Kirkwood HSDL.  This helps students who know one concept or skill, but not another, and prevents them from drowning in the drudgery of the seat-time for a concept they already know and helps them get back on track to graduation.

Could schools come up with programs to help their students recover credits or advance their learning without a program like Kirkwood HSDL?  Yes, but because Kirkwood already has the materials and the facilitators, it makes just as much sense to contract with Kirkwood HSDL to provide classes for one or two students at a time, rather than hire a full-time teacher or para-educator to provide services. 

Full-time teachers and para-educators that aren't busy worrying about developing the curriculum, aligning it to standards or benchmarks, or grading papers now have time to focus on the student.  By giving the student a support system at his/her local school, he/she is more likely to become a high school graduate and become a contributing member to our society.

Supplemental Online Learning for Rural Schools

In @nacol's latest publication, "Using Online Learning for Credit Recovery:  Getting Back on Track to Graduation," Kirkwood HSDL is mentioned for its use of supplemental online courses.  During the 2012-13 academic year, we had a 38% increase in the usage of our online tools for students across the state of Iowa from the 2011-2012 academic year.

Last fall, two members of our high school completion program, along with the staff from Clinton High School's offsite program, had the privilege of sharing "Supplemental Online Learning for Rural Schools."  This addressed some of the reasons that students don't finish high school and what Clinton, IA schools are doing to alleviate some of the problems.

You can view our Prezi here.

Asynchronous or Synchronous Online Learning

Here's a simple graphic to help understand the difference between asynchronous and synchronous online learning.

CCRS

In the adult education world, you hear the term CCRS, but what does that mean?  It stands for College and Career Readiness Standards, but what does that really mean?  The College and Career Readiness Standards are designed to give adult learners a way to measure their learning as compared to other adult learners.

If our goal is simply to get students diplomas, that isn't enough.  Adult learners are already at a disadvantage because they didn't receive their high school credential on a traditional timeline and by lowering the expectations, these adults will not be prepared for jobs that pay a living wage.

The goal of the CCR standards is to prepare adult learners for college without needing remediation. Since the adult education programs in the state of Iowa are free, it makes sense for the learners to attend our programs and brush up on all their academic skills before entering the college atmosphere. This makes the most fiscal sense to adult learners.

To summarize, CCRS literally means College and Career Readiness Standards.  College and Career Readiness means that students can enter a freshman level course and be ready for the rigor that is demanded of them without needing remediation.

How To Personalize Learning in an Online and Blended Environment

In the previous post, I discussed the overarching concept of personalized learning.  Now, I'd like to delve deeper into the "how" of providing personalized learning.

First and foremost, online and blended learning isn't for every student in every situation.  Therefore, if you throw students into online and blended learning without giving them the tools and support they need, they will not succeed.  However, for those students who are ready for online and blended learning there can be so many ways to help them that didn't exist twenty years ago without a lot of human-intensive labor.

Let's take students who need to review the basic number system.  Twenty years ago in a third grade classroom, the teacher would take one unit to review the basic number system and label the ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on.  He or she would assign a worksheet or problems from a textbook and the student would continue on with his/her peers at a steady pace, allowing for not a lot of flexibility from the really bright students to the struggling students.

Today, those same students can enter into a virtual classroom and take a pretest to see what concepts they're missing.  Teachers can then personalize their learning to reinforce that concept, while giving the more advanced students more advanced learning opportunities, such as applying the place values of numbers to money.  The students who are struggling can then work in a smaller group and work on one-to-one correspondence and grouping objects into groups of ten to give them a more concrete example of place value.  Students from all areas of the spectrum are then able to do activities that meet their needs best.

Competency Based Learning
The goal of each grade level in the US is that students become competent at the skills they need before moving onto the next grade-level.  A school using competency-based learning is one where students aren't bound to their seats for a certain amount of time (Carnegie-unit), but rather learn the skill they need and move on to the next skill.  It's kind of like a 4, 6, and 10 year old who have never taken swimming lessons before.  The four year old has been exposed to the water, but has never formally taken lessons.  The six year old is terrified of the water and the 10 year old is comfortable, but he/she needs some basic skills before he/she can move to the next level.  In this case, the four-year-old is likely to be more competent in the skill of submerging his/her face than the six or ten-year-old.  The four-year-old will likely put his/her face in the water and push off from the wall demonstrating competency in the prone glide, while the level of competency of the six year old may be standing on the bottom step of the pool without crying.  In the case of swimming, they're all getting the same type of instruction, but it's being tailored to individual needs.

Standards Based Learning
To better understand standards-based grading, think about how you are evaluated in a workplace. You have a clear set of expectations that are given to you and you are expected to meet or exceed those expectations.  Standards based grading is giving students clear expectations of what they should be able to do by the time they finish a unit or lesson.  From there, you can assess whether a student is proficient, partially proficient, not proficient, or advanced and adjust your instruction accordingly.

Mastery-Based Learning
Mastery-based learning is a blend of competency-based and standard-based learning.  Mastery-based means that students have to master a skill or concept at a critical level before being allowed to move forward.  With online learning, you can easily adjust the mastery-level of assessments before allowing students to proceed.  So when a student takes a test or quiz and receives less than a 60%, for example, he/she would be required to retake that before the next unit will even open.



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CCRS

Personalized Learning

What is personalized learning?

Personalized learning is the new buzz-word in education and in some ways goes back to the one-room school house.  It is meeting the needs of each and every learner and allowing them to fully master a concept or idea before being taught a new one.  It basically means that a student who comes to school knowing his/her letter sounds can be taught to read while other students who do not know their letter sounds can work on phonemic awareness.  It also means that students who do well with simple instructions and prefer learning independently can do so while students who are social learners can learn from each other.

Who participates in personalized learning?

Anyone can participate in personalized learning, but those who attended classes through the 80's and 90's probably spent time sitting in desks, listening to teachers describe the process of multiplying by lining up the numbers and carrying the one have to wrap their heads around the teacher not being the center of learning.  Personalized learning would mean teaching the multiplication concepts in varying ways and allowing the students to choose which method works best for them.

When does personalized learning occur?

Anytime!  Anytime that a student is engaged in learning a concept personalized learning is occurring.  Does that have to occur between the hours of 8 AM & 3:30 PM?  No!  Personalized learning may be while students are playing with a jump rope and counting the number of jumps to learn one-to-one correspondence, or it may be while a student is learning to blow bubbles while swimming and the instructor is telling the story of the Three Little Pigs and using the "Then I'll huff, and puff, and blow your house down," to reinforce not only the action of blowing bubbles in the swimming pool, but to reinforce literary concepts.

Where does personalized learning occur?

Anywhere!  Personalized learning doesn't need to be confined to a brick-and-mortar school building.  It can happen anywhere, and it should happen everywhere.  It could be in the traditional classroom, the library, on a field trip, in a museum, online, in the park, or in a swimming pool.  The possibilities of where learning can occur are endless and students who receive personalized learning, learn concepts how and where they learn best.

Why should learning be personalized?

Learning should be personalized because we no longer live in a one-size-fits-all society.  The majority of us are able to personalize our entertainment beyond the big three broadcasters and many of us have ditched the concept of television as we grew up with it altogether.  So why should learning be any different?  Students are no longer going into jobs that have existed for many years, instead, they are going into fields that we may not even have the concepts for yet.

How do we personalize learning?

Students receive personalized learning by being surrounded by people that can provide them with learning opportunities at every intersection in their life.  In addition, the world of online and blended learning has opened up a huge window to the data that can help transform a student's learning. Read more about the "How" in the next blog post.





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An Intersection Between Traditional High School and Adult High School

The concrete floors glisten, the red, blue, or green lockers clank together while the halls smell of a variety of pleasant and unpleasant body odors and a mixture of both breakfast and lunch permeating from the cafeteria.  The noise is the buzz of what happened over the weekend and what the plans are to attend the football game on Friday night.  The 8:20 bell rings and students slam their lockers shut and hurry to their first period classes, where they sit and listen, well mostly listen, to their teachers describe the Civil War, infinitive verbs, verb phrases, tone, pitch, and the Pythagorean Theorem.  In this brick and mortar building, education is still running as a factory-style model for education.

Contrarily, at an adult high school, one is not likely to find lockers, cafeterias, or the buzz of what is happening over the weekend; however, the expectation is being set that when the clock says 9 AM, the door shuts and you're expected to be ready to begin class.  Students enter the adult education world for a variety of reasons with a varying amount of baggage, so it's our job as adult educators to get them to think beyond the baggage and start forward thinking.  Here, students are expected to identify their barriers and work collaboratively with others to hold themselves accountable.  The instructor guides them, but the work is theirs and connections are made to the students' daily lives.

But what about the students who are still high school age, but don't fit the mold for a factory-style educational system?  Are there resources for them?  Yes!  Kirkwood HSDL is the intersection between the traditional high school world and the adult education world.  Students still work through their brick-and-mortar high school, but they also are able to take some flexible classes through our program.  These classes could be by book or online and students are able to work at their own pace to complete them, as long as they complete them in 4 months.

In order for students, who are currently enrolled in a brick-and-mortar high school to take courses with Kirkwood HSDL, they must first receive permission from the school.  These students are then allowed to take the same courses that the adult high school diploma students take and transfer the credit back to their high school.  By being the bridge between what a traditional school has to offer and the adult high school diploma program, we are hopeful that more students will graduate from their own high school.

Think Twice Before Leaving High School

Almost everyday, my colleagues and I hear a million reasons why the traditional school setting doesn't work for a particular student.  Sometimes there are legitimate reasons, such as being bullied, or illness; however, for the student that thinks entering the adult high school world will solve all his/her problems, they may be surprised to find that it is not a swim in the wading pool to get to the finish line of a high school credential.  Instead, it may well be a dive into the unknown depth of the sea.

For students who have an IEP, it is likely that once you exit the high school doors, the support network that once engulfed you will not look the same.  Those teachers that help you succeed, monitor your progress, and assist your classroom teachers with modifications to your assignments may not exist in the high school equivalency diploma world.  That doesn't mean that the teachers you do get won't care; it simply means that the same level of support you have right now doesn't exist when you decide to leave your high school.

Our expectations for students getting their high school equivalency diploma are as follows:
1.) Come in for an informational session.
2.) Sign-up to attend a Pathways to Success course
3.) Attend your scheduled Pathways to Success course
4.) Take an enrollment test
5.) Meet with an advisor
6.) Take classes
7.) Take the HiSET® Tests/or high school diploma tests

To reinforce what it takes to complete your high school diploma through a Kirkwood's High School Equivalency program, take a look at this video.  Kirkwood High School Completion Programs hope that you will think twice before leaving your high school in hopes of earning an equivalency diploma, but will be here if you need us.