KCDL’s products include Aventa Learning, with more than 140 core, elective and Advanced Placement courses; Keystone School, an online private school for middle and high school students; and iQ Academies, which are statewide online public schools for middle and high school students in six states.

For the rest of the article, go to K12 acquires distance-learning provider

When the solar panels are generating excess energy, the power flows back into the city’s main power grid at a savings for Vegas PBS, Axtell said.

Vegas PBS is a self-funded service that is sponsored by the district. Its new facility is home to the district’s Virtual High School, which offers online high school courses.

Axtell looks at school rooftops as an energy asset, much like a river or a ray of sunshine. Because many district schools share the same design, there would be economies of scale in planting solar farms on school rooftops across the Las Vegas Valley.

“You have a single property owner that has large expanses of flat roofs, that all have the same exact designs because you have cookie-cutter schools. It really allows for the efficiency in the planning and the installation of solar farms,” Axtell said.

“You do it for one high school, there’s probably 10 others that have the same footprint. So you don’t have the same expense of engineering.”

For the rest of the article, go to School district turning to solar

Advantages Online Private School

The for-profit e-learning company K12 Inc. grew 40 percent last year, generating $385 million in revenue by providing virtual courses to 70,000 students across the country. Connections Academy, another such provider, generated about $120 million in revenue serving up online courses to some 20,000 students. And last month, the education technology company PLATO Learning announced that it is now offering online Advanced Placement courses, marking the first time the company will do so as part of its courseware for school districts.

Experts say for-profit providers of online courses—long seen as an option for home-schoolers and a potential rival to public schools—are breaking into the public education mainstream as more schools mix face-to-face classes and online courses to expand their curricular offerings. With demand for that “blended” approach expected to grow, other players in the online-coursetaking marketplace, such as Apex Learning, Aventa Learning, Compass Learning, and Kaplan Virtual Education, are also seeking business in public schools.

For the rest of the article, go to E-Education Inc. Seeks the Mainstream

Lyon County School District is offering an extended summer school through its Lyon On-Line A+ Alternative/Distance Educational K-12 Program.

The program will feature open enrollment through Aug. 30, which is the first day of school for the 2010-11 school year.

Although it is available for K-12 students, Lyon On-Line is largely targeted at credit deficient high school or junior high school students to help them graduate high school on time or promote to high school.

For the rest of the article, go to School district offers summer school on-line

Vegas PBS has completed its move into its new Education Technology Campus after more than a decade of planning and construction.

The eco-friendly building is home to Vegas PBS’ operations and production services in addition to its emergency alert efforts, and also supports the Clark County School District Virtual High School facilities, which focus on distance online education.

The 112,000-square-foot, $45 million building funded through a private and public partnership, was under consideration in 1999 after a Federal Communications Commission order requiring broadcasters to transition to digital broadcasting.

Vegas PBS provides broadcast TV and cable over seven channels with an additional six educational channels provided directly to Clark County School District classrooms.

Eight sites were considered before officials picked the 3000 block of East Flamingo Road, east of Eastern Avenue, officials said. The old studio off Flamingo Road is less than a mile to the west.

For the rest of the article, go to Vegas PBS moves final gear to new campus

The Churchill County School Board approved the district’s use of the web-based A+nyWhere Learning System on Thursday to create an online distance education program for the upcoming school year.

Superintendent Carolyn Ross said the program offers free web-based education to students who cannot attend regular school because they need alternative education, live outside the home, have been expelled, dropped out, are home schooled, are out of school for medical reasons, need remediation or for other reasons.

Steve Leitz with A+ said the program offers an individualized plan for a student and provides everything needed to meet state standards and graduate.

“It really offers an individual learning plan for all students,” Leitz said. “You really can use this program to serve a lot more students.”

Program Coordinator Jacquelyn Burger, who already uses the program in her credit recovery program at Churchill County High School, said students are still required to come in for Measures of Academic Progress and proficiency testing. Burger said in the 2009-2010 fiscal year, 300 students graduated through the current program.

For the rest of the article, got to School district to introduce online distance education

Tom Axtell has seen KLVX-TV, Channel 10, grow from a single-channel operation to a multiplatform media company during his 16-year tenure as general manager.

The June 28 dedication of the $60 million Educational Technology Campus is the latest, but not the last, evolution of the local Public Broadcasting Service.

“We’ve thought through what we are,” Axtell said. “We are very good at creating content and very good at distributing content. Our role in the community as a local media company is to work with organizations to empower them through the use of the technologies and the distribution networks we have.”

The 112,000-square-foot facility on East Flamingo Road is home to operations and production services for KLVX-TV, also known as Vegas PBS. The facility also houses the Clark County School District’s Virtual High School and educational media database.

Besides seven broadcast channels, KLVX-TV oversees six closed-circuit channels, a vast Internet database of teaching material accessible to teachers and children, and a Homeland Security database of building blueprints for police and fire departments to access during a civil emergency, among other holdings.

KLVX-TV produced 23,700 hours of content last year, only 400 hours of which ever appeared on its seven broadcast channels.

The remaining content includes programs for the Clark County School District, the University of Nevada, Reno, and other groups in the state.

While programs for the school district are produced at cost, other organizations pay a small fee, producing an income stream for the nonprofit.

The facility also produced 160 courses for the virtual high school.

The key is to create a sustainable business model and never lose sight of the tradition and history of public service, Axtell said.

“That is very different business model than buying syndicated programming and putting it up at 8 o’clock and hoping people will tune in,” Axtell said.

For the rest of the article, go to New tech campus marks milestone for KLVX-TV

Nevada Connections Academy

Nevada Connections Academy