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November 21, 2009

EdVisions making tech learning interactive

By Tanner Kent

Teachers in EdVisions Off-Campus High School are building digital classrooms that blend the personal with the technological.

As Gigi Dobosenski, co-director of the school, sits down at her computer, she pulls up a screen that resembles an online chat room. A microphone at her computer conveys her morning greeting and a webcam displays her face to the handful of students who have gathered in her virtual homeroom.

On a community whiteboard that all students view on their own computers, Dobosenski jots a few notes and reminders. And before dismissing her pupils to pursue other activities, she privately chats with each one to check on their work and see how they are doing.

“It’s on the adviser to know the students,” Dobosenski said. “That’s why we work so hard on relationships.”

EdVisions began in Henderson and is based on a project model where students complete long-term, cross-discipline projects in lieu of smaller single-discipline assignments. But before working individually on their various projects, all students start their day in their adviser’s homeroom.

Each teacher works as an adviser for about a dozen students. That means helping them coordinate projects to meet the required state standards and earn the necessary credits to graduate. But it also means helping students manage their personal lives and interests.

Keven Kroehler, who co-directs the school with Dobosenski, said one of his students is a teenage mother. For her first project, he helped her develop a study on the physical and emotional development of children.

He said he has a few students in his homeroom who are interested in writing. Since he’s a math teacher by training, he simply enlisted another teacher with an English background to organize an online writers’ workshop.

“We have a lot of different students with a lot of different needs,” he said. “We want to meet them on their level.”

Some students at the school were bullied in their former schools while some posed behavioral challenges. Some are athletes with demanding training schedules and still others are gifted students looking for a challenge.

For that reason, the school has experimented with ways to develop deeper relationships with students despite the distance.

Now, the school holds monthly get-togethers for students and staff, twice yearly all-school meetings and an annual field trip (this year, the Grand Canyon). Staff also plan weekly interactions with parents and schedule a handful of face-to-face meetings each year.

“We may be 100 miles apart,” Kroehler said, “but we interact more in this environment. We can actually connect because it’s a smaller number of students.”

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