Department of Elementary and Secondary Education embarked on developing an online state-wide Virtual High School by awarding eight Massachusetts school districts ARRA Priority One grants.As a part of this effort Boston Public Schools was awarded an ARRA Priority One grant to develop online courses. In accordance with the Superintendent's Acceleration Agenda the grant proposal was designed to target students who are falling behind and put them back "on track" to graduate by the time they reach grade ten. The result is the Logon Project, a collaboration between the Office of Instructional and InformationTechnology and the Office of High School Support. These Boston Public School courses will be shared with other districts throughout the state of Massachusetts.
BPS teachers worked with the support of two business partners, The Education Development Center (EDC) and FableVision Studios, to develop two online courses for 9th graders, Algebra 1 and ELA 9. The courses are currently being piloted at East Boston High School. Other BPS high schools are using the Logon Course modules to help students who need additional support and practice in particular areas of the curriculum.
EDC helped train a selected group of teachers to facilitate and develop online courses. With their help, 24 teachers worked collaboratively to develop and implement these courses with students. Fablevison Studios helped make the user experience of online learning better for students by designing and developing the LogOn portal page that welcomes students, allows some personal customization and contains access to many teen resources.
The courses themselves were developed in Moodle, an open source course management system, which can be used to supplement face-to-face classroom instruction, or, stand alone as independent online classes. BPS is exploring the possibility of expanding the use of Moodle to other teachers. The Office of High School Support sees LogON as filling a gap for students in grades nine to eleven who have fallen behind and are in need of support. If you have any questions about the LogOn project, contact Ed Considine at econsidine@boston.k12.ma.us.
