What's New at Asora
Advancing
the Goal of Ending Education as We Know
It
For First Time
Visitors:
Welcome
to Asora Education Enterprises, which presently consists of
the Stellar Schools Franchising Project, the online
courseware brokerage, a speakers bureau, and the
achievement test analysis consulting service. To get
started, consider reviewing our home page where there are links to descriptions
of the many features of Stellar Schools. Then come back
here later to "What's New" and to "What Was New" to
learn more about our most recent
undertakings.
What Was New In Preceding Updates:
If you
have not seen our previous quarterly "What's New" updates,
then you might want to peruse our What Was New page.
What's
New In June 2010
June
Theme:
Reform
Is In Parents’ Hands
For too
long, too many Americans and parents of schoolchildren have
regarded education officials as the responsible parties for
ensuring the proper education in K-12 schools. While most
people agree that parents have the right to direct their
children’s education, most don’t think about
the parents’ obligations. We believe parents are also
responsible to supervise, arrange and manage their
children’s instruction. If parents agree, they will
do what they can and seek vendors providing the needed
materials and services. Below we discuss three activities
here at Asora that will help parents find ways to address
these needs.
Education Industry Association
Activities
Our
company, Asora Education Enterprises, has been a member of
the Education Industry Association (EIA) since 2006. We
have benefited greatly from the information shared by other
members at the Association’s two annual meetings.
This year we are pleased to be involved in two different
sessions at its 2010 Edventures Conference being held in
Chicago, July 22-24. More information about the conference
can be found at
www.educationindustry.org
. Our
roles at the conference are described under the next two
headlines.
Marketing Supplemental Services
Asora
Education is organizing a TableTalk discussion at this
summer’s Education Industry Association Edventures
Conference. It is entitled,
“Using Public School Guidebooks To Market
“Supplemental“ Services.”
In this discussion we plan to discuss how Asora’s
efforts in publishing such guidebooks can provide
information to parents and other stakeholders that will be
useful to them as they seek alternative and/or supplemental
services for children who have fallen behind as well as
those who are minimally proficient. In particular
guidebooks can provide lists of various organizations,
resources, vendors, products, and services. One of the most
important categories is that of after-school tutoring
services. While existing guidebooks and online versions of
them can help parents find a public or private school, they
generally will not help them find services that supplement
or replace the schooling being received by their children.
Asora does not aim to be a monopoly publisher of such
guidebooks and invites competition. There is more
discussion about Asora’s guidebook project below
under It
Takes More Than A Village.
Joining Tutors And Online Technology
As some
of you know, Asora has a plan to develop what we call
Stellar Schools that would employ self-paced online
instruction in physical schools. Other vendors are also
working in this area as well. Asora continues to seek its
niche in this area- and particularly seeks partners and
investors in this quest.
We recently have been excited to learn of a charter high
school in Chicago that provides most of its instruction
online in classrooms in which the teaching staff work as
tutors/facilitators. When the Education Industry
Association sought proposals for presentations at its
forthcoming meeting this July in Chicago, we offered a
session that would highlight this development. In this
session, which is now confirmed, there will be two
presentations: First, Asora will present an historical view
of self-pacing, group instruction, and distance
education. (You can download the
PowerPoint versions of that historical view
here.) That
should set the stage for Cheryl Vedoe, the CEO of Apex
Learning, who will describe how her company provides
online content and instruction for the VOISE Charter
School in Chicago and how this form of blended
instruction can grow in the K-12 space.
Get On Board The Time Machine To 1956
The just
mentioned historical view of distance education is based on
more than historical documents but includes Asora CEO David
Anderson’s own personal experience as a student in a
Television Physics Course he took in high school in 1956.
In his search for video clips of those lessons he has found
contemporaneous video of his physics teacher doing a
demonstration much like the ones that were in the course.
See that and more by boarding
the time machine to
witness aspects of distance education in its toddler
stage.
It Takes More Than A Village
We have
completed the guidebook to public schools and alternatives
for the Potomac Region and are looking at our options for
publishing it. The full title of our book reads,
“In the Potomac Region of Maryland, Virginia, and
Washington DC,
It Takes More Than A Village to
educate your child when out public schools are not up to
the task.”
Our guidebook answers the question: How do public schools
stack up in this three state region? And with this
information what
more parents
can do to ensure the proper education of their children.
Parents must do more than just choose a school for their
children. When the schools provide an insufficient
education (as they nearly always do in today’s public
and private schools) children need their learning augmented
by other means. The book addresses those needs under its
two themes of parental responsibility:
1. That of choosing a school
2. That of providing supplemental or alternative
instruction
The book aims to provide much of the information parents
will want to have to fulfill these obligations.
Starting A Small Stellar School
For
anyone who has read Asora’s business plan for Stellar
Schools, starting a school may seem like a daunting task,
but we think it will be easier than what one might first
surmise. What we are proposing is really not much more or
less than homeschooling that is done online. Many parents
master that role. Instead of doing it at home we do it in a
school. Here the parent is replaced by the
tutor/facilitator. The child or handful of children are
replaced by a larger group of children. We believe that
such a small school can be developed from resources already
available on the Web and in bookstores.
We think a school of perhaps ten children represents a good
starting place. With luck you may be reading about such a
school in forthcoming Asora updates.