Almost immediately after schools closed due to the coronavirus outbreak in spring 2020, we began to see anecdotal evidence that charter schools were reacting quickly and serving students well. This paper offers evidence that smaller networks and schools that represent over 65% of the charter school landscape were able to respond quickly and take…

Opening with the history, recent advances, and emerging ways to use avatar-based virtual reality, an instructor who has used virtual environments since 2007 shares how these environments bring more options to community building, teaching, and education. With the open-source movement, where the source code for virtual environments was made…

Virtual school programs--especially online high school courses--are gaining traction in school districts around the country. While offering online courses was once the exclusive province of large state, nonprofit and for-profit organizations and companies, districts and even individual schools are now starting virtual schools of their own. Not…

Second Life (SL) is a user-created virtual environment with possible merit for teaching and learning in higher education. In this article, two teacher educators reflect on their initial development in SL, considering the ways they worked within SL to meet their differing instructional needs and the ways they prepared students for these learning…

Blended learning is using online tools to communicate, collaborate and publish, to extend the school day or year and to develop the 21st-century skills students need. With blended learning, teachers can use online tools and resources as part of their daily classroom instruction. Using many of the online tools and resources students already are…

According to the 2008 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE): 82 percent of community college students surveyed have part-time jobs (and over half of this group works more than 20 hours a week); almost all (93 percent) reported commuting to campus and 21 percent said they spend between six and 20 hours a week in the commute;…

During the spring of 2004, the College of Staten Island (CSI) undertook an exciting project to connect our campus in New York City with three international partners in China, Turkey and South Africa using internet based videoconferencing. Based on a model developed by East Carolina University and funded by the State Department, the plan was to…

Across the globe, progressive universities are embracing any number of MUVEs (multi-user virtual environments), 3D environments, and "immersive" virtual reality tools. And within the next few months, several universities are expected to test so-called "telepresence" videoconferencing systems from Cisco Systems and other leading…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This April 2, 2004 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "Black Colleges and the Politics of Race" (Samuels, Albert L.); (2)…