Charter/For profit school Wordle

Here is the Wordle from this year's Wallwisher words. I couldn't find the one from last year.

Charter/For profit school Wordle Spring 2011

State School Wordles

Here are Wordles made from the word lists created in Wallwisher (this year) and in a discussion forum (last year).

STATE SCHOOL WORDLE SPRING 2011

STATE SCHOOL WORDLE SPRING 2010

If you have never made a Wordle, go to http://www.wordle.net/ and see how it works.

Week 4: Instructional Design

A couple of things struck me about the reviews of different courses in terms of instructional design. The first was that there are now far more courses up there to look at than there used to be. The second is that a single provider might have both good and bad courses--it seems very hit and miss, but it may be that they are gradually upgrading, so the newer courses are better. Another was that K12, Inc. courses were pretty universally criticized--this is a surprise because they do a huge job of self-promotion. It also seems that all of the schools do better at laying out the course expectations, content, etc., than they do in actually delivering the course. I was also struck by how much the need to have multimedia has infused these courses. I think next time it would be good to go deeper on this one, to see if the multimedia is really used well or is just there to engage students (not that that's bad, but as an example, I don't think simulations work without really good scaffolding and structuring). And last, it was interesting how few of the examples were from state schools, which takes us back to the need to sell--state schools have less need to do this.

Weeks 2 and 3

It's interesting to read student reflections on how schools appear to outsiders. Overall, the schools seem to be either doing a poor job playing to their strengths or are great job obscuring their weaknesses with nice words. Hopefully some things will be clarified as we look further into what is actually going on in the schools and in the courses. But the lack of consistency in what information they present, and particularly in how they present their concrete achievements, makes it really hard to determine whether or not an individual school works for students, and also what the entire field looks like.

I am surprised at where some of the schools are placed on the spreadsheet and it will be very interesting to see if the spreadsheet changes when we revisit at the end of the semester. It occurs to me that it may not, because it may require a depth of knowing about a school that you can't get without actually talking to people who teach there, reviewing the courses, etc. and generally schools are not open to that. They clearly want to control the message.