HI everyone. Sorry about the lateness of…

HI everyone. Sorry about the lateness of this post, but I’ve been out of the country for a few days. I originally had intended to do John Baker of D2L, but someone had done that already so I chose to do Stephen Baker. Please see below for my introduction.

 

Jody

 

PS ***Full disclosure: I currently am employed by VHS, so I tried to be as balanced as possible.

 

I would like to introduce you to Stephen Baker, B.Sc, B. Ed., OCT, the founder of http://www.virtualhighschool.com.

 

The Virtual High School of Ontario(VHS) had humble beginnings as Stephen created the first online high school course in Biology back in 1995. Together with colleague John Smallwood, in 1996 a second course in Canadian Literature was created and put online. These two courses formed the original concept of putting high school online in Canada. This foray into online learning led to one of Stephen’s sons, John Baker and his development of D2L, a learning management system that currently boasts over 8 million users. VHS uses D2L to host all of its courses. The online courses came from Baker’s belief that “not all kids do well in a traditional classroom setting. The Virtual High School allows for a student to receive a fluid and flexible education at his/her own pace.” (Cove, 2010). VHS sets itself apart from other online schools in that students can begin their courses at any time in the school year and they can complete them at their own pace over a period of up to 18 months. This allows for students to work in an environment that is completely directed by them.

VHS received its first official student in 2001. By its second year of existence, VHS had a whole 9 students. It wasn’t until 2003 that VHS was given official private school accreditation. And once this occurred, the enrolment began to explode. Today, there are over 4600 active students taking courses at the school; the staff includes 60 teachers and 14 administrative staff. Today, it is one of the largest online schools in Canada.

There is no board of directors per se at this venture, but the administrative team consists of a content development team, several subject area coordinators and of course its team of teachers and writers. Each of these team members brings a wealth of experiences from various backgrounds to the school. A quick glance at the biographies of the staff members illustrates this great diversity. It can be viewed by visiting: https://www.virtualhighschool.com/contact_us.asp.

 

I was very impressed with the quality of this online school so much so that I was honoured to be selected to become one of its resident teachers and writers in 2009. I have seen students who were not successful in a traditional brick  and mortar school flourish in this environment. VHS is the leader in quality online education in Ontario and in Canada. Currently, VHS is rolling out version 2.0 in a much more media rich environment.

 

Sources:

 

 Virtual high school grand opening. (2012, June 01). Retrieved from https://www.virtualhighschool.com/news/?n=1039

***The quote I used above attribute to Cove, 2010 was from a blog post from this site: http://crux-of-the-matter.com/2010/11/22/is-the-bayfield-virtual-high-school-simply-another-alternative/ . It, for some reason, no longer works. The article itself is a reprint from a local newspaper that does not archive stories online.

Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp