Saturday, April 9, 2016
Minot Daily News PROGRESS
Ed u cat i on
Page 11
Virtual CTE extends opportunities to area high schools By JILL SCHRAMM
Staff Writer jschramm@minotdailynews.com
SCHOOLS TAP INTO ITV
Jill Schramm/MDN
Students in the Lewis & Clark Districtʼs Berthold High School take a class through the ITV network March 16.
By JILL SCHRAMM
Staff Writer jschramm@minotdailynews.com
Berthold senior Cassidy Limke knew she needed the right high school classes to prepare her for the rigorous university coursework she would have to take to become a physical therapist. By incorporating classes from an interactive television network with her school’s curriculum, Limke believes she’ll start college in a better position to be successful. Limke is enrolled in sports medicine and anatomy this spring through the Great Western Network, an ITV consortium of 50 schools. Her school made special arrangements for her to take anatomy over ITV when its on-site anatomy class failed to fit into her schedule. “It feels like it should be a college credit class because it’s so difficult, but I love it,” Limke said of the class, broadcast from a Beulah science classroom. Although the anatomy course is fastpaced and requires absorbing a lot of information quickly, Limke said she can get one-on-one help. That help has been through email rather than face-to-face as in a live classroom setting, which required some adjustment for Limke. However, remote learning, while different, doesn’t have to be restrictive. The anatomy class includes the dissection of a cat cadaver. “It seems like a normal classroom most days,” Limke said.
to broaden student knowledge
painting and drawing to origami and beading. The state’s multiple networks are linked, enabling the different consortiums to share educational resources. Each consortium sets the tuition charged to schools for their students enrolled in ITV classes. The school providing the teacher is reimbursed, and the teacher also receives a stipend. The consortium provides training to teachers who are first-time instructors using the system, but McCracken said newer teachers typically come out of colleges already trained. “I have teachers that teach full-time on ITV and don’t have any students in front of them. They might be teaching 20 students in five or six schools,” McCracken said. An example is a Spanish teacher living in rural Valley City, who uses ITV equipment in her home to teach Spanish to students in Stanley, Velva and Burke Central. She added, though, that the consortiums have had positive experiences with teachers who are instructing a classroom of students but have students from a few other schools participating
It’s a really nice supplement to the curriculum.
– Peggy Person
Berthold High School principal
ITV classes have become a common addition to the curriculum for nearly every school not part of a major, urban district in North Dakota. Several regional consortiums operate in North Dakota to provide ITV services. In the Minot region, in addition to the Great Western network, the North Central Distance Learning Consortium merged into the Central Dakota Distance Learning Consortium last July, creating a service group of 38 schools stretching from Mohall to Zeeland and LaMoure to St. John. When ITV programs began about 25 years ago, the concept was for the state’s large school districts to share programming with the smaller schools, said Kathy McCracken, director of the Central Dakota consortium, Glenfield. As the system operates today, much of the programming comes from within smaller schools that have banded together to share resources. The state provides the bandwidth and telecommunications cooperatives have installed the infrastructure, which has been upgraded so all schools have high definition televisions and cameras. High-definition document cameras allow students to present their work in detail to the instructor. That’s useful in hands-on classes such as art, which is offered in forms ranging from
with them through ITV. ITV saw a surge in popularity when the state began offering college scholarships to eligible students. One of the scholarship requirements was the completion of two sections of a foreign language. That requirement since has changed, but it brought a number of students into consortium courses whose schools weren’t able to offer onsite language instruction. Now, ITV provides a way to deliver college-level classes in English, algebra, pre-calculus, psychology, sociology and some science courses. Science courses require an on-site science teacher be available to conduct laboratory exercises. Dual credit and foreign language courses are the most common courses offered through the ITV networks. Seth Wisthoff, Powers Lake High School principal, said the district wants to increase its ITV offerings to provide as many dual credit courses as possible so students can get a semester or two of college out of the way by the time they graduate from high school. He said the school also is considering offering welding and a class related to petroleum careers because of job opportunities in the area. “Maybe students aren’t really looking to go to college right out of high school, but we can prepare them the
best that we can to step right into the workforce and be successful,” he said. Stanley High School has seen such success running two classrooms with ITV courses that it is planning to equip a third classroom. Principal Jim Swegarden estimated about 15 percent of Stanley High School’s student body is enrolled in ITV courses. The school also is looking at becoming a generating site since it is fortunate to have two vocational agriculture instructors and a marketing instructor, which are positions schools find hard to fill, he said. At Berthold, students interested in German, sign language or becoming an emergency medical technician have the opportunity to take those classes, thanks to ITV. “It’s a really nice supplement to the curriculum,” Berthold High School Principal Peggy Person said. ITV classes involve more than just sitting in a classroom watching a teacher on a screen, she added. Three students in a medical careers class had an opportunity to work with two students in Kenmare to present at a statewide student conference on health occupations in Jamestown. The medical class was offered through an ITV program of Bismarck Public Schools and Bismarck State College. McCracken said the ITV isn’t likely to replace the live classroom. “For the majority of students, they learn best with the teacher in the room with them. There’s no getting around that. But when that’s not possible with the teacher shortage, the best bet is when they see and interact with a teacher,” she said. A shortage of teachers has helped drive the interest in ITV. Sometimes ITV could use more teachers, too. Wisthoff noted the Powers Lake school wasn’t able to get some students into a graphics design class because the class had filled. Funding can be a limiting factor for schools, too, because ITV courses come with a cost. “We kind of set it as a priority. We want to expand our curriculum as much as we can so we look at it as more of an investment,” Wisthoff said. However, the biggest challenge to ITV education is coordinating class times among multiple schools. When Dunseith went to a four-day school week, it swapped ITV for online courses. In an effort to make ITV courses more available, a network might schedule a class for 7:30 a.m. Stanley has sought to accommodate the ITV schedule by adding 10 minutes to the start of its school day and extending the transition time between classes. It makes for a longer school day, but Swegarden said the district is willing to make that concession to benefit student education. “It’s really our obligation to try to give them as much opportunity as we can,” Swegarden said. “It’s really important that we be open-minded that way – to say, ‘how are we going to provide a kid a marketing class if we don’t have a marketing teacher.’ It’s our obligation to get these kids college and career ready.”
Interactive television isn’t just for the academic classroom. ITV is finding a place in career and technical education as well. In the Minot region, virtual technology centers exist with the North Central Area Career & Technology Center, a 12-school consortium based in Rugby, and the Great Northwestern Education Cooperative, a 16-member group in northwestern North Dakota. The North Central center provides ITV instruction in areas such as health sciences, family and consumer science and agriculture and offers online courses related to careers in computer science, energy and aviation. Member schools are Bottineau, Drake, Dunseith, TGU Granville, MLS Mohall, Rugby, St. John, TGU Towner, Westhope, Harvey, New Rockford, Sawyer and Velva. The Great Northwest center is just beginning to build its program, with Watford City, Mandaree and Ray currently taking the classes. Director Scott Wisness has hopes for the center to branch out next year to reach more schools and increase its programming. He envisions adding ag, family and consumer science, construction and business courses to the health sciences courses currently offered. Even auto mechanics and culinary arts could be offered. Wisness also wants to encourage businesses to get involved. “There’s a lot of businesses here that don’t know how they can partner with schools. They haven’t always made that connection,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunities where they could help the classes provide training.” Among the ways are internships, participation in career expos, field trips, classroom demonstrations, assistance with tools or donating supplies, Wisness said the ITV program could become a huge resource for schools, especially schools such as Mandaree, which doesn’t have its own CTE program, or Burke Central in Lignite, where a shop sits empty for lack of a certified instructor. “They are pretty excited about getting these new offerings,” he said. Burke Central Supt. Sherry Lalum said the district is looking to equip a second classroom for ITV to be able to offer CTE options. The school offers ITV art and Spanish but
There’s a lot of things that can be done distantly. Students are so tech savy now. —Scott Wisness Great Northwest director the opportunity to offer health careers and industrial arts is appealing. “Our kids are going to have a lot more options to take classes,” she said. Career and technical education used to be delivered in northwestern North Dakota by Williston State College. Students had to travel to the center, and with travel time, uncertain weather and heavy industrial traffic, schools were dropping out. With the virtual center, teachers from Williston or member schools can offer those same courses long-distance. In the case of Divide County Public School in Crosby, students are able to take a welding course through an ITV connection with an instructor in Grafton. Wisness said it has been a good experience. The teacher has come to Crosby a couple of times, and students use a document to show their work to the instructor. Wisness said there’s potential to conduct a construction class using similar teaching methods. “There’s a lot of things that can be done distantly,” he said. “Students are so tech savvy now.” He added that career and technical courses require more than showing a video and giving a test. There needs to be creativity in the classroom to offer students the kind of hands-on learning that’s required. Although having a teacher in the classroom is ideal, he said, providing a quality education is virtually possible with ITV. “I would say if you have a good teacher who is willing to go the extra mile, you could provide those opportunities,” he said. “If you have a good teacher, anything is possible.”
Online education expands options at Wolford
Interactive television isn’t the only way to deliver distance education. Wolford Public School, with just 21 students in seventh to 12th grades, has found online courses to be good way to provide elective courses to its students. “We have been pleased with it. The content and the rigor of the classes has been good,” said High School Principal Joel Braaten. “It has worked out well.” The school receives online courses through the North Dakota Center for Distance Education. Agriculture and college-credit courses are popular, but students also have had the opportunity to take classes such as photography, art, independent living skills and even strength training.
Submitted photo
North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler gets a look at the online learning being conducted at Wolford High School March 15 in this photo by Eric Wasvick. Online courses play an important role in the schoolʼs efforts to given students an expanded curriculum. Braaten said students en- at the school to complete rolled in strength training activities required in the can use facilities available course.
The school carves out class time during the day for students to work on their online courses. Because online courses are independent study, students can work on the material at their own pace. School staff monitor their progress to ensure they complete the courses on time. Braaten said a typical student might graduate with 6 to 8 online elective credits to complement the required core courses taught at the school. Each online course is a credit or half credit, depending on whether it is full year or one semester. Students need a combined 22 classroom and online credits to graduate. The Wolford school covers the cost of the online courses for students. – Jill Schramm
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