The Detroit Free Press, a great old newspaper, has these happy tidings today: the hoped for (in terms of cost and progress) hybrid of project-based learning with online web 2.0 offerings. The tiny URL for this article http://tinyurl.com/y3ntwsr allows you to read the entire piece.
It cannot come at a more direful time for American public education–a time in which budgets are in freefall, and typical districts are looking about 25-30% over-staffed to school boards who have to cut somewhere. [and if they do have to cut, let them cut the fat, not the muscle. Let’s get the metrics in here yesterday–we need to know who to let go and who can stay. It is bad for staff morale otherwise, trust me.] The program that Detroit is running sounds a lot like the sort of thing I am hoping to be able to do with low-scoring students in summer school starting in June: get them busy building skills and literacies through project-based independent and collaborative web 2.0-based learning experiences.
According to Lori Higgins,
The Westwood school is succeeding at a time when online learning is becoming even more prominent in Michigan, with new laws that pave the way for two new cyber schools to open for students in grades K-12.
Hey! Springfield! We need these schools! Are you listening?
[I am now determined to take this case to the state superintendent’s office. More later…]
The Wikiness 
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