What do we call this thing?

The Riverside Virtual School teachers have been thinking again...

In fact, this "group think" has resulted in significant changes to our middle school program (grades 6-8) for the 2012-2013 school year.

Working with three "non-negotiables", staff spent the spring and summer talking, planning, and building.

1. Purposeful learning at all levels (students and adults)
2. High levels of rigor and support
3. Personalized learning pathways (path, pace, time and place)

This summer, we reorganized the school to create a space for a brand new, blended-learning program that will support student choice, while maintaining high academic standards. We are looking forward to the return of students and their first project - to name their school!

This includes on-campus learning opportunities for students, which will focus on applying the concepts they are learning at home. Students will come on campus mid-week for purposeful learning activities, including time in math, science, foreign language, art, and PE labs. They will have 24-hour access to their course content, including from classroom and labs on campus or from home.

On campus “flex-time” will provide supervised class time for working on academic content that will prepare them to be ready for transition to high school, while laying a college-ready academic foundation. Interventions, community service activities, and college visits will occur on Mondays and/or Fridays.

Students who demonstrate the ability to work well independently and desire more freedom will be granted the option to spend time on campus or work from home. In the new middle school program - whatever the students decide to name it - teachers, parents, and students collaborate to build a program that fits each child's needs and ensures academic success. At RVS, it really is ALL ABOUT YOU!

Please contact the school with any questions or attend an evening parent information session. Dates and times of parent information meetings can be found on the RVS website.

Ideas That Spur Innovation

Several years ago Kimberly-Clark, maker of paper products "Kleenex and Huggies", drove the morale of its employees into the ground after massive firings and outsourcing. It was a disaster that resulted in the rehiring of hundreds of old employees and engineers while continuing to outsource others.

Trust had been broken, low morale and very low employee engagement was the result.  The infrastructure organization circled it's wagons. People were in a self-preservation mode.

When Kimberly-Clark hired a new VP of Infrastructure four years later to turn things around, he implemented a program to spur innovation. The VP took a venture capitalist approach where any employee could submit an idea and if accepted, make a pitch in 30 minutes or less. If the idea had merit, it received first, then second rounds of funding. If not, the employee's idea still got lauded on the company's internal Sharepoint site. He stated, 'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. It's about what we learn from the failure. Not the failure itself. We celebrate that learning.'

Since then things have massively changed for the better.

Read the entire article  at: Creating culture of IT innovation includes rewarding failure

TED - ED

TED, the nonprofit organization, (Technology, Entertainment, Design), based on "ideas worth sharing", launched its latest initiative last week. TED-EDaims to engage students with unforgettable lessons. Mind-blowing lessons from world renowned educators are offered to anyone with an internet connection.

TED-ED is the latest in a wave of online education. Other contributors are the Kahn Academy and MIT.

Here are links to the nine videos that were initially released:

Introducing TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing

1. How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries
2. How containerization shaped the modern world
3. Symbiosis: a surprising tale of species cooperation
4. How pandemics spread
5. The cockroach beatbox
6. Evolution in a big city
7. Deep Ocean Mysteries and Wonders
8. The Power of Simple Words
9. Stories: Legacies of Who We Are

Public-Private Partnerships That Work - Part II

A new project, announced on the Makezine blog, aims to bring low cost innovation and alternative manufacturing processes to schools in hopes of turbo-charging the next generation of inventors in the U.S.  This is very cool stuff!

Dale Dougherty of MAKE and Dr. Saul Griffith of Otherlab, through an award received from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will integrate online tools for design and collaboration with low-cost options for physical workspaces where students may access educational support to gain practical hands-on experience with new technologies and innovative processes to design and build projects.

Their goal is to reach 1000 high schools over the next four years. They are starting with a pilot program of 10 schools in California during the 2012-2013 school year. The Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach (MENTOR) program is part of the DARPA’s Adaptive Vehicle Make program portfolio and is aimed at engaging high school students in a series of collaborative distributed manufacturing and design experiments.

Read the article at : http://blog.makezine.com/2012/01/19/darpa-mentor-award-to-bring-making-to-education/

Economy Impacts Seen by College Grads

Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce has a new report out called "Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal" and it analyses unemployment by major. It shows that students and their families that take on student loans aren't asking what their college major is worth in the workforce.

Too many students aren't getting on-the-job training while they're in school or during summer breaks. As a result, questions about employment opportunities or what type of job they have the skills to attain are met with blank stares or the typical, "I don't know." Worse yet, what they choose might lead to increased challenges in hiring after college.

The reports found that the unemployment rate for recent graduates is highest in architecture (13.9 percent) because of the collapse of the construction. Unemployment rates are generally higher in non-technical majors, such as the arts (11.1 percent), humanities and liberal arts (9.4 percent), social science (8.9 percent) and law and public policy (8.1 percent).  Click on the link to learn more...

The Georgetown Report

News From Apple

Apple will announce, on January 19th, its new e-book creation and social interaction tools at their media event taking place in New York. New York happens to be the heart of the publishing industry. The world will be watching.

Steve Jobs believed that the textbook publishing industry was ripe for digital takeover. At present it has the potential of an eight-billion-dollar-a-year paycheck for Apple and its new technology. Insiders at Apple say that Jobs was directly and intimately involved with Apple's efforts in the area right up until his death.

The company states that the tools help create interactive e-books— a "GarageBand for e-books," if you will —and expands its current platforms to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

Frustrated e-book authors and publishers have complained about the current state of software tools and openly expressed their desire for a simple app that makes the process "as easy as creating a song in GarageBand."

Apple heard their call and is now claiming to have the product. This has the potential of revolutionizing the industry, leveling the playing field for everyone, and being the first substantial new product for CEO Tim Cook in a post-Jobs era.

To read more about this go to: Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally destroy" textbook publishing.

UCR Students Link Learning to Future Success

A group of innovative University of California Riverside students has come up with an idea that they believe will solve the problem of high tuition and college debt that plagues the average college student in the present California University system.

Their idea is to let students get their education first and then pay after they graduate, when they are earners, rather than pay for school during the years they are at the university.

The plan requires graduates to pay five percent of their salaries every year for 20 years to repay the state for their education.

UC Riverside students propose new tuition payment plan