While there is still some minor work being done, for the most part, Virtual School News is up and running again. It will be offering significantly more news about online schools and related subjects. I hope you will take a look at VSN 2.0.

If you are one of the several thousand folks that follow VirtualSchoolNews.com, yes, it is temporarily down. I am doing a serious upgrade to the site that should result in more and better articles and information. Check back in 48 hours or so. It should be done by then.

Some increased functionality happening over at Online Synthesis. My friend, Bob Martin, figured out a way to get the outbound links to open in their own window. Clearly, this is preferable for a variety of reasons, but the WordPress theme was not set up to do that. If your goal is to keep folks on your site, you need links to open in new windows. The site now does exactly that and I am pleased. By the way, if you are looking for someone to help you set up a WordPress theme, Bob’s your man. While I have some WordPress skills, he’s the guru! Worth paying someone to get it just right.

Yesterday, at my online high schools site, I had less traffic in one day than I have had since 2007 when I launched the site. I am not sure at all why that might be. Traffic was seriously down. When I saw it inside the cPanel, I actually went to the website to make sure that it was still up. The only time that I have seen anything like that occur was when there was a problem with the website. Today is slow as well.

Very odd.

You may recall that I mentioned a super-secret surprise? It is mostly completed, so you get to be among the first to see it. It is a brand-new website that pulls in RSS feeds about online high schools, online colleges, and educational technology.

The name? Online Synthesis.

I hope that you will consider taking a look. I am quite pleased with how it has turned out. Since these seem to be the three areas that I do a great deal of reading — online high schools, online colleges, ed tech — I decided that there are likely other folks out there just like me. Scary thought!

If you have been wondering where I have been of late, I have been putting in great amounts of time on the day job. Most of you know that I coordinate online learning for a large urban school district. Well, my efforts over the last year are finally getting some traction. We begin to offer courses on Monday and today was a training day. For the most part, that went well. Many engaged teachers wanting to try something new and also support students in their efforts. We are offering courses initially in only two content areas because we want to get this right. I am pleased on so many levels. Yes, there is a hiccup or two that I must deal with this week, but there always is in such things.

Another bit of time this past week has been a super-secret project that should become less secret by the end of the week. Busy, busy, busy…

As part of Edutopia’s Schools That Work section of their website, they now offer The Brave New Breakthrough in Online Learning. It is a collection resources and information related to K-12 online learning.

Key quote: A U.S. Department of Education analysis of more than 40 studies, including five focused on K-12 pupils, found that “students who took all or part of their classes online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.” Another study, by the National Survey of Student Engagement, reported that the online-learning experience yielded deeper use of “higher-order thinking, integrative learning, and reflective learning.”

Borrowed from one of the funnier places on the planet.

I regularly have several projects going on at the same time. One very cool and very secret project came to initial fruition today. My district, Fresno Unified School District, was selected to be one of four districts within California to be part of a pilot of iPads. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) and Apple are providing support for the pilot and converted an Algebra 1 textbook into a digital version.

This is a year-long pilot and in our district it includes four schools on two campuses. The pilot includes a research study paid for by HMH. It seems to present a unique opportunity to compare like with like.

You can read about it in the Fresno Bee here.

CSU Fresno professors are requiring students to purchase iClickers to use in the classroom.