Florida Education
One Size Fits No One
By Guest Blogger on March 26th, 2013
It’s legislative season in Tallahassee again. We know that March will come every year, yet every year it seems such a shock to us that FLVS must stand ready to defend its district against those who would cut first and consider later.
This battle is recursive—we do it over and over and over again. But, when you are a space-creator, you must also be a space-holder. Continue reading
Leap of Faith
By Guest Blogger on March 14th, 2013
There is a reason that I am at Florida Virtual School (FLVS) – my aunt made me take a leap of faith. In 1997, a friend interviewed for Florida High School, an early name for FLVS. When she came back from the interview, she said, “You need to go interview – this is made for you.” So, I went to meet with Julie Young and heard about the plans for this radical new thing called a virtual school.
After being offered a position, I went home and agonized all night. I had a nice teaching job where I knew what was going to happen tomorrow, and I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen next year and the following. This was radical – no one in the country was trying to create a public virtual school. It could fail before it even started. Continue reading
The Student Data Backpack from the Practitioner’s Point of View
By Guest Blogger on February 21st, 2013
Recently, I spent a little time reading the Digital Learning Now Smart Series whitepaper: DATA BACKPACKS: Portable Records & Learner Profiles. This topic is of interest and importance for the following reasons:
FLVS is committed to keeping the student at the center of every decision that we make. How can we be sure we are making good decisions if we have limited data?
The current process for retrieving the student data we can get is extremely time consuming, lengthy, and really just stinks all the way around. Continue reading