Evidence Based Posting #3

After examining what Virginia does to make sure that new and current teachers do to meet technology standards, my next decision was to look at the Illinois State Board of Education website. I wanted to know if the state board directed any type of standard teacher assessment such as Virginia. From first glance at the website, Technology is not in any disconcernable place, but from experience, I know it is listed under Curriculum and Instruction. Venturing there, I noticed a link for eLearning. As a Technology Coordinator for a small south suburban parochial school, I have to admit some ignorance of the eLearning standards. Obviously, I had heard the tem bandied about at meetings (my school consistently is invited to the Southwest Cook Technology meetings). Thus, this post will attempt to examine the eLearning initiative, and what repercussions it has on teacher learning and certification.
After examining the Illinois Board of Education page on eLearning, I felt that I had not learned anything substantial. There were lists for grants, programs, and resources. One particular section interested me, specifically the Illinois Virtual High School.
Illinois Virtual High School is an online high school in the sense that one can take courses for credit which will transfer back to the home school, kind of like correspondence courses. According to the website, the Illinois Virtual High School has been in operation for six years and boasts that, “As of January, 2007 IVHS has: provided over 10,000 semester course enrollments to students throughout Illinois; had enrollments from 400 unique schools in Illinois; served students in 83 of the 102 counties in Illinois.” According to the informational packet provided on the website, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy runs this program for the Illinois State Board of Education. Now, what kinds of courses are offered for students? One would believe that these would be technology related courses, but perusing their course list offers a different analysis.
For the 2007 Summer Term, IVHS is offering a variety of courses, not limited in any way to just technology courses. One can take Fine Arts, Literature, and other core high school curricular subjects. From the informational packet, one can be reassured that a student cannot earn a high school diploma through the IVHS, and it is the prerogative of the school district on whether or not actual accredited school credit can be earned. The informational packet does refer to this credit as correspondence, which I thought was very interesting. Of further interest, on the bottom of the website were logos for eClassroom and eCollege. Clicking on the eClassroom link brought me to their website, which told me that they were a corporate entity, which states that eClassroom “provides complete solutions for Virtual Schools.” This made me even more curious, as it appeared that this corporation provided the state of Illinois with the framework for eschools. Visiting the state website did not illuminate me further, as the eLearning spot on the website simply listed the websites for the IVHS, the Illinois Board of Education, and other links for distance learning.
Thus, it seems as this eLearning trend speaks to a more specific distance learning trend. In fact, when I did a Google define, this is exactly the definition I received. It does not specifically deal with technology learning in the sense of learning about technology and technology skills, for either the teacher or the student. It seems as though I will need to go specifically to the source of the Illinois Technology Standards, the National Educational Technology Standards website, before I can learn anything further about what specifically Illinois requires its teachers to know so they can teach and students to learn.

Works Cited

ECollege. (1999-2003). eClassroom. Retrieved May 16, 2007, from http://www.eclassroom.com/

Illinois State Board of Education. (n.d.). eLearning. In Illinois State Board of Education. Retrieved May 16, 2007, from http://www.isbe.net/curriculum/elearning/default.htm

Illinois Virtual High School. (2007, May 9). Retrieved May 16, 2007, from
http://www.ivhs.org/index.learn?bhcp=1

Illinois Virtual High Schools. (2001, October). Information Packet (4th ed.) [Brochure]. Retrieved May 16, 2007, from: http://www.imsa.edu/programs/ivhs/pdfs/IVHS_Information_packet.pdf