Susan Patrick
President & CEO, iNACOL

Welcome & Opening
Monday, November 16, 2009, 8:00 a.m.

Susan Patrick is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL (formerly the North American Council for Online Learning). iNACOL represents the interests of practitioners, providers and students involved in online learning worldwide.

She is the former Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. As Director, she published the U.S. National Education Technology Plan for Congress and managed research and technical assistance programs on educational technology. In addition, she co-chaired the federal government’s Advanced Technologies Working Group for Education and Training; and served as a member of the Secretary’s Rural Education Task Force.

In 2008, Susan Patrick was named by eSchool News, a leading national education technology journal, as one of the top 10 national education leaders who “have had a profound impact on educational technology” in the past decade for her work at iNACOL and at the U.S. Department of Education.

Prior, Patrick worked in Arizona on government technology policy and legislation under Governor Jane Dee Hull. She received the 2001 Governor’s Spirit of Excellence Award.

She is a former Site Director for Old Dominion University’s TELETECHNET distance learning program.

Patrick holds a master’s degree from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles and a bachelor’s degree from the Colorado College.

Susan Patrick has published articles and appeared in a variety of national news media such as CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, ABC News, NBC, CBS, US News and World Report, Christian Science Monitor, CSPAN, Computerworld, Forbes, National Public Radio, Education Week, New York Times, London Times, eSchool News, Converge, and numerous other publications.

Session take aways:

Inacol has 3000+ members now

VSS: 2005- 400 attendees   2009 - 1500 attendees

Demonstrates the explosive growth on online learning

National Education Technology Plan: https://edtechfuture.org/

INACOL working with Gov

H1N1 and online learning:

Keynote: Changed to Tom Vanderott

CAVE Island on Second Life is now done by INACOL

VSS Wiki: http://vss2009.wikispaces.com/

Virtual School

We need to make sure are providing the opportunities for kids to do what they are passionate about.

World Tour: INACOL is truly an international confernce

World tour: BC: Rural courses Training teachers to teach online

IB Program Started a program online : Global learning experience

Turkey: How can we scale up technology innovation: Gold standard online classes: Best teachers   now 15 million students taking online

SouthKorea: Anyone can take online

India: Educomp project: Digitizing all content  $10 laptop

Major shortage of teachers   “Leverage of best teachers”

Need 200,00 brick and mortar schools needed, cant do it.

Austrailia: 9-12 1:1 country wide 

China: Entire K12 is digitized  Trainign master teachers to teach online  100,000,000 new online students

Singapore 100% of all secondary are blended learning

World Future Society: Top ten breakthroughs that will change life as we know it: #8 Virtual Education and Online learnign

US: US is behind the rest of the world...but we are catching up. This message is a bit less than last year.

Keeping pace With k12 online learning (2009) http://www.inacol.org/research/docs/KeepingPace07-color.pdf

Florida Virtual School: 150K+ students enrolled in virtual classes

1% of the students are taking online learning today in US

Idaho, Texas and Montana are allowing online now

National Standards of Quality for Online Programs

http://www.inacol.org/research/nationalstandards/index.php

On September 12, 2007, iNACOL endorsed the National Standards of Quality for Online Courses.

The standards selected are based on the results of a research review and survey of online course quality criteria. These quality standards were evaluated and assembled into an easy to use document for evaluating online courses with common benchmarks.

“Standards help ensure the quality and consistency of online learning in K-12,” said Susan Patrick, President and CEO of iNACOL. “The National Standards of Quality for Online Courses offers an important measuring tool to help policy leaders, schools, and parents across the nation evaluate course quality and implement best practices.”

iNACOL conducted a comprehensive review of course standards available. Based on this review, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Standards for Quality Online Courses, used by the 16 states in the southern United States is adopted as the source for the iNACOL National Standards for Quality for Online Courses. iNACOL added a standard to include 21st Century Skills.

“The use of the Web (online learning) to provide academic courses is extremely important to students everywhere. For online learning to expand and grow, students, parents and policy- and decision-makers need assurance that the online courses are of quality. If providers of online courses meet these standards, there is little doubt that online learning will grow rapidly,” said Bill Thomas, Director of Educational Technology, SREB. iNACOL is building upon and validating the quality online learning/virtual school work of SREB to help programs nationally.

As a proven, practical method to enhance the critical learning experience, K-12 online learning is growing rapidly, 30% annually. Online learning levels the playing field for all students to access high quality courses and teachers.

Online seems to be better received than face to face.

Benoit College Mindset

Expectartions of Education: “Stand up talking lectures are deadly for this group”

Julia Coates: Recommendations for Gaming Generation

Race to the Top Guidelines: Priorities: