State schools booting up to meet digital-course law

Monday, December 16, 2013

Starting next school year, every Arkansas public high school must offer at least one “digitally delivered” course, such as an online course or a webinar, to comply with the provisions of a recently passed state law.

And beginning with the state’s high school Class of 2018 - whose members will start high school in August as ninth-graders - every public school student must take one of those courses to be eligible for graduation.

Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said last week that multiple efforts are underway on thestate level to help school districts meet those and other requirements in Act 1280 of 2013, the Digital Learning Act.

Digital learning is generally defined as instruction provided via the Internet.

Speaking to several hundred locally elected school board members at the Arkansas School Boards Association’s annual conference in Little Rock, Kimbrell said Friday that lawmakers passed Act 1280 because it is essential that high school students experience courses taught via technology.

“If you haven’t had a child attend a higher-education institution or even technicalschools, you may not know this, but they have to know how to take digitally delivered courses,” Kimbrell said. “That’s the direction it’s moving.

“And it’s not just in higher ed. It’s not just in technical ed,” he continued. “Many of you who are in business have already moved in this direction. You don’t travel 400 miles for training anymore. You do it using technology. We have to understand and move in that same direction.”

The state Board of Education adopted a resolution in October, Kimbrell said, that commits the state to ensuring that all schools are connectedto a “robust broadband infrastructure” that can support the Internet access necessary to provide students with online, world-class educational opportunities.

Governor- and legislative-appointed committees are planning for that infrastructure, working with public and private providers of online technology to build the best and fastest Internet access possible for every school district, he said.

Ultimately, the recommendation will be to hook every school district into a network that will support digital-based teaching and learning.

The Education Department is providing technical support and guidance to the schools on the technology issues, Kimbrell said. That includes determining the current capacity for technology at the campuses and identifying the numbers of computers and other electronic devices needed at each school.

The state agency is also advising schools on attaining reimbursements for their qualified technology expenditures through the E-Rate program - Universal Service Administration Co.’s E-Rate program that subsidizes school telephone and Internet costs.

The E-Rate program ties the reimbursements to student poverty rates in school districts, with schools with higher poverty rates being eligible for higher reimbursements.It uses money collected from international and interstate telecommunication companies.

Kimbrell appealed Friday to the school boardmembers to become advocates in their districts for the necessary tools to support digital teaching and learning in the classrooms, including the expanded bandwidth.

Nothing is more frustrating, he said, than for teachers and students to get “kicked off” the Internet and lose their work in the midst of a school project because of inadequate Internet capacity, he said.

Some Arkansas schools will pilot the digital delivery classes in the coming springsemester as a result of the Digital Learning Act.

Beth Stewart, assistant superintendent for instructional services in the North Little Rock School District, said Friday that the North Little Rock system won’t be one of the pilot programs this spring, but the district will be ready next year with Internet access and a course offering.

“What we are looking at is doing it in health next year,” Stewart said. “It’s a required semester course that everybody has to take. We’ll probably partner with the Arch Ford Educational Service Cooperative to get the digital component so it won’t be a change in staff.”

Students will have class time, Stewart said.

“They may turn in their assignments online or do some reading online,” she said.

Another reason for expanding the use of technology in classrooms is that Arkansas will begin requiring students in grades three through 11 to take new, online exams in 2014-15. Those online tests in math and English-language arts/literacy will replace the state’s existing Benchmark and End of Course exams.

But Kimbrell said the new tests are not the only or main reason for the demand for more technology.

“Let me tell you folks, that is not what is driving this,” Kimbrell said. “If we don’t have capacity for teaching and learning in our schools, do you think your children and grandchildren are going to be able to compete with children in other developed countries and even underdeveloped countries?

“Many underdeveloped countries are farther ahead of us in broadband access,” he said. “If we want our children to compete, we have to provide the access for them - not for the testing, although that is part of it - but for teaching and learning.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/16/2013