Online Education Celebration!
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An educator puts his twist on an idea for a national celebration. It all began with a soft pretzel. Ken Hartman was reading the newspaper when a small blurb - an advertisement for National Pretzel Day - grabbed his attention.Hartman, who is both academic director of Drexel e-Learning and a member of the Cherry Hill school board, was thunderstruck. |
“If someone could celebrate Pretzel Day, why isn’t there a day to celebrate the tremendous growth in education in online learning?” Hartman said.
Hartman, an enthusiastic dynamo who has written books about and appeared on television programs discussing the intersection of education and the Web, got to work quickly.
Forget National Online Learning Day. Hartman, who’s worked as a university professor and administrator for 25 years, conceived, coordinated, and got National Distance Learning Week on the map. The nonprofit United States Distance Learning Association even named him chairman of the celebration.
Beginning Monday, schools and universities around the country will mark the occasion with virtual open houses, awards and a series of free “webinars” - seminars available on the Web.
It’s a chance to highlight a fast-growing part of the education sector.
These days, more than 2.5 million college students take online courses; more than 700,000 high school students take courses online, and “virtual” public schools exist in 40 states.
Hartman is awed by how quickly an idea to honor online learning has spread since he hatched it a little more than six months ago.
“It’s caught on like wildfire,” Hartman said of the celebration. “Colleges all over the country are participating - cyberschools, regular schools, business.”
There will be sessions on integrating virtual education into K-12 classrooms and blending home-schooling with virtual education.
Drexel University is hosting activities, including a ceremony to honor the best college online educators.
During his decade as educational media technology director at Egg Harbor Township School District, Michael Sweeder has watched online learning explode - and evolve in his district and around the region.
Next week, the district will participate by having its high school students in the Holocaust: Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity class “attend” a virtual lecture given by Hartman, whose grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.
Egg Harbor is the only local district to offer a lecture, but students from other districts will be able to register anytime over the week and join in.
Nine years ago, distance education came to Egg Harbor Township in the form of a single videoconferencing room equipped with $10,000 worth of gadgets. Now, each school in the district has its own setup, each of which costs just a few hundred dollars.
Egg Harbor Township uses videoconferencing for virtual class trips and course sharing between schools. Particularly popular are programs that supplement students’ education - connections with zoos, science centers and museums.
“We take kids to a place they normally couldn’t go - instead of putting them on a bus and taking them to Philadelphia, the Art Museum comes to them,” he said.
Distance education is nothing new - universities have offered correspondence courses for more than 100 years, but the Internet has changed the way teachers teach and students learn.
“Every student in my class is now an online researcher, and they can challenge me in ways they never would before,” Hartman said. “It makes teaching more fun, it makes learning more fun.”
Universities have been quicker than K-12 schools to embrace the changes, but every year, more primary and secondary schools begin to use distance education as a way to bolster their offerings, according to the United States Distance Learning Association.
“I think we’re starting to see a shift at the high school level,” said Hartman. “Online education gives schools flexibility to reallocate their resources so they can meet their greatest needs.”
Convenience is key, but in the end, Hartman said, it boils down to what a new, Web-savvy generation of students is demanding.
“Kids are ready for this,” Hartman said. “They’re at the starting gate, waiting for it to swing open. The only thing that’s keeping them back is adults.”
By Kristen Graham Philly.com Columnist
