21st-century learning

The school day is about to get longer for some New York City school kids — and we’re not talking a couple of minutes. It’s about to be two and a half hours longer.

While mastering certain skills—like the ability to write a cohesive essay, or to solve basic logic puzzles—is helpful, and necessary to any entrepreneurial venture, entrepreneurship can only be learned through hands-on experience.

On Monday, Gov. Rick Scott signed a sweeping education bill that will revamp the state’s high school graduation requirements and place new emphasis on coursework that prepares students for high-tech careers.

Moore County commissioners seem inclined to pay for part of the school system's digital learning initiative, but they want to see results before committing to future funding. At the commissioners' critical issues summit Thursday, they indicated they want the school system to pay for more of the effort.

During its first year of operation, Florida Virtual School had 77 students. The next year, it had 476 students; then 2,489 students the year after that. Now, Florida Virtual School is a national brand, becoming the top online-course provider in America and serving tens of thousands of students every year, all over the country.

The first thing Bartow County Virtual Academy students learn is that online classes aren’t as easy as A, B, C. They’re also not for everyone. Those also were early lessons for district administrators who opened the academy in January 2012 to 50 students in a former high school located an hour northwest of Atlanta.

Imagine access to your district’s email system on mobile devices tripling in two weeks. This is what Deb Karcher, CIO of Miami Dade Public Schools and her team faced after Christmas 2012. “Santa Syndrome,” a term coined by Karcher, resulted in the 50,000 users accessing the email system on personal devices before winter break jumping to 150,000 when the schools reopened after the holidays.