Speak Up Blog

We enjoy sharing the Speak Up data with educators across the United States through presentations and webinars. Just this past week, Julie once again presented the Speak Up 2007 results from Learning in the 21st Century: A Trends Update via a webinar hosted by, our partner, Blackboard, Inc. Janet Herdman from North Kansas City Schools and Cheryl Rowley from Cobb County School District joined Julie as panelists and shared their experiences implementing online learning. You can listen to the podcast or view the PowerPoint presentation.

Through these presentations, we have found that there is much to share and learn from our colleagues, in an effort to continue the dialogue about online learning, we will be creating a Speak Up social network in Ning. We are forging new ground so bear with us as we get up to speed.

In the meantime, feel free to share you thoughts or lessons learned about online learning through our blog. Here are some of the questions that surfaced during the webinar. If you would like to share your ideas or experiences about these topics, or pose another question - please feel free to post a comment:

• What has been the feedback from district administrators about making online learning a funding priority (along with curriculum and instruction)?
• In the age of ever rising full costs and issues with overcrowding in schools, are there examples of schools using online learning to decrease the in-school ’seat time’ of high school students?
• How are we going to address the increasing pressure for integrating 21st century skills and helping student grasp these skills if we feel not all students are ‘geared’ for online learning?
• Has there been any tracking of students with attention deficit disorder (ADD) in the K-12 online learning environment?
• Have districts had issues with teacher contracts?
• Is there any data or any information you can give us about the success rate of programs like this in smaller school systems?
• How are you addressing student support at the local school level, specifically with online courses that are coming from outside providers?
• In educational content, is it good to have faculties/professors to have as SME or industry professionals works well?
• What type of equipment are you using? (e.g. distance learning), and is it interactive?

This presentation was based the Speak Up report, Learning in the 21st Century: A Trends Update which can be downloaded from Blackboard, Inc.