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School Board focuses on technology during workshop

Grants Pass School District Seven focused on technological upgrades and online curriculum during their Strategic Planning Board Workshop.

Getting Innovation Started, a group of district administrators assigned with the task of developing the district’s online curriculum, gave a presentation to the board discussing a convention for educators that they attended.

Innovation members said that they witnessed demonstrations on many forms of teaching such as purely distance education, cubicle based teaching environments and blended teaching models where students work on computers and only receive guidance when questions are posed to teachers.

The district currently runs an online curriculum for students with deficient credits. 50 children were enrolled in the curriculum last spring semester and only 17 acquired the same amount of credits that children who attended classrooms acquired.

Superintendent John Higgins wants to develop a new online education pilot program for the 2012-13 school year. “We want to be able to pilot some offerings for the 2012 school year, ideally during the summer. We’d like to have a couple of sessions that are available that really offer things to a gamete of students. The kid who wants to make up a course, a kid who wants to take an advanced offering and hopefully we can do it across levels,” Higgins said.

Eventually, the goal is to have online courses for children at all levels of education kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Posted on 11/30/11 2:52AM by Jared Dill