Through the Virtual Academy, Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. students will be able to take for-credit classes online, on their own time.

Available courses will range from remedial help to Advanced Placement, and they come from all core subject areas, said Jason Bailey, the school district’s director of e-learning and instructional technology.

Regular classroom teachers also will be able to supplement their courses with material from the Virtual Academy, Bailey said.

“We also want to encourage students to think how this curriculum could help them get where they want to be,” Bailey said.

The EVSC is partnering with the Indiana University High School and Apex Learning, a provider of digital course curriculum.

The IU High School has students enrolled from 48 states and 35 countries. Apex Learning has served 660,000 students across the nation and world since 1999.

For the rest of the article, go to EVSC: New e-learning academy will help students, teachers

School has truly been out for the summer this year, as thanks to budget woes, many districts across the country have been forced to cut their summer school programs down to the bare minimum, or cancel them altogether.

One educator from Floyds Knobs, Indiana told Fortune that $6.Virtual School5 million had been cut from his school district’s general fund. But public schools have an obligation to keep kids on track, leading to an allegedly cheaper kind of education: virtual summer school.

After an 80% summer-school budget cut, 320 Floyds Knobs summer school students will be clicking their way through subjects like algebra, history, and chemistry using an educational software program called Novel Stars.

Floyds Knobs has accepted summer school students from nearby Langsville, Salem, and Greater Clark, all of which have had to cut summer school altogether for budgetary reasons.

For the rest of the article, go to Summer school goes online

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Indiana’s second virtual charter school is taking applications for students in first through eighth grades.

Spokeswoman Pat Laystrom says Indiana Connections Academy Virtual Pilot School will serve about 280 students from around the state.

Students receive personalized learning plans but do their work from home. A certified teacher will work with them in live, online classrooms and by phone.

For the rest of the article, go to Second virtual charter enrolling for fall

Laystrom said the school will serve a wide range of kids, from those who are ahead or behind academically, to those who simply need a different school environment.

That said, any Indiana student can be considered for enrollment, she said.

Connections Academy has 18 public schools in 17 states.

The organization also has a nationally accredited private virtual school called National Connections Academy that serves students in states in which the virtual public-school option is not available, Laystrom said.

Indiana Connections Academy is the second virtual charter school in Indiana, said Lauren Auld, spokeswoman for the Indiana Department of Education.

Hoosier Academies, a combination virtual and bricks and mortar school that opened in 2008-09, was the first.

For the rest of the article, go to Indiana virtual school to enroll students

Some summer education programs have wrapped up while others are in full swing as students throughout the county work through the break to make the grade.

“We’re just beginning the second half of summer school today,” Pike County High School Principal Mike Hall said Thursday.

The PCHS program will go through the end of July.

Hall said he likes to see small classrooms in the summer though and this marks the third consecutive year enrollment has dropped.

“Our numbers are down and those are numbers we like to keep down obviously.”

For the students who are attending, Hall said he is pleased about the method of their instruction.

“It’s all computer based,” he said of the curriculum run by the online learning program, ACCESS. “It’s very effective and very challenging as well, it really pushes the students.”

Goshen High School Counselor Buffy Lusk said her summer students are using ACCESS as well.

“I think it’s going real well,” she said.

for the rest of the article, go to Summer school still ongoing for some

The Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation continues its aggressive advancement into the high-tech age of computer learning.

This past school year, the EVSC equipped all public high school students with netbook computers, and now it is making direct Internet learning available through its new Virtual Academy, a for-credit online program.

It occurred to us that only a few years ago a dissatisfied public was demanding that the EVSC do more to elevate the academic performance of its students while better preparing them for college and beyond.

To that end, and since the hiring of EVSC Superintendent Vincent Bertram four years ago and the creation of a “strategic agenda” for academic improvement, the public has been getting just what it demanded, through nontraditional programs and an infusion of modern technological tools.

For the rest of the article, go to EDITORIAL: Virtual Academy

Welcome to yet another state-specific website for online high schools. Brought to you by Best Online High Schools, this gives you information on all that is going on in your state with online high schools.