Online High Schools

This past week was focused on innovation: specifically, finding innovative ways to produce new learning content.

Given this topic of discussion, Professor Kim, brought in a few of the Edison Learning team members to talk to us about their innovative approach to online high schools. I was actually very surprised by what a solid product they seem to have. Among some of the most interesting things that they have done with this product includes building it in a very modular way, integrating games and visualizations, as well as integrating social contexts.

The modularity of the system is quite fascinating in that they can use only bits and pieces of their overall content and market it separately from the rest of the tool. So for example, if a client is only looking for classroom modules regarding Chemistry because they plan on taking the Chemistry SAT II test then, Edison Learning could potentially sell only those modules that are relevant for that upcoming test and not include every module available at the online high school. This seems to potentially be a very thriving line of business and something that is available to them in the future because they have taken these needs into account early in the design process. Such thriving business models however, leave me thinking that education is not necessarily core to the company culture. I would be curious about how large of a push there is to maintain high profits within their company and how strong of focus content really are.

The integration of games and visualizations, however, does speak to their general commitment to educational content and provides a different learning process for students enrolled in this online school. In other classes, we have begun discussing different modes of learning and visualization, games, and toys are among some that I feel are very powerful teaching aides. I was very excited to see that they had integrated these into their school and that they had even found ways to make these collaborative across different users.

Social contexts were also made available, and the application that was developed for this particular piece was very cool. Not only was it extremely modern in design, but it provided security and visualizations as well. Students could physically see a character that they represented move around a room and interact with other students. While this may provide an almost false sense of socialization, I felt that the way it was executed could certainly provide a medium for students to feel like they were socially engaging with others, which in my opinion is very important even if it not done in a more “real” manner. I am curious to know if they promote more socialization, by arranging face to face visits or outings, such as field trips to museums or other such events.

Overall I found this discussion quite fruitful and most definitely was impressed by the product that they presented. I would be interested in seeing more real examples of innovations and more guest speakers coming to the class.