At first glance, Crown Point High School (CPHS) might seem like a typical high school. But the 2,500 students and 120 faculty members that walk past the Bulldog mascot every day know differently. CPHS exceeds state and national education standards, blurs the lines between classroom instruction and online learning, and integrates college courses into the high school curriculum.

Welcome to hybrid high… and the future of education. Engage, Experience, Excel

Crown Point High School has three strategic initiatives: Engage, Experience and Excel. First year students are quickly engaged to ensure a smooth transi-tion into high school and to establish a plan for lifelong success. Students then participate in effective and relevant educational experiences that incorporate a number of learning technologies and authentic instruction. Finally, upper-level students are given the opportunity to excel and earn college credit through innovative academic partnerships with local universities.

“It would be impossible to meet our goals without academic technology,” explains Dr. Eric Ban, principal of CPHS since 2008. “The most critical technol-ogy for us at this point is BrainHoney because it allows us to enhance our tra-ditional classroom instruction in order to address the needs of the 21st century learner.” Today’s student needs a more flexible schedule to participate in ex-tracurricular activities, demands 24×7 access to class materials, and expects a modern learning experience. “Our teachers have found a number of ways to utilize BrainHoney’s capabilities to their advantage and we are all meeting our goals,” said Ban.

Grass Roots Implementation Aligned with School Initiatives

Jeremy Walker, Latin teacher, Latin Club Sponsor and Director of Learning Technology was given the task of training teachers on BrainHoney. “We didn’t force teachers to use BrainHoney or require them to use the system in any specific way. Everyone clearly understands the overall goals and each teacher who chose to work with BrainHoney found a way to make it work best for them. My job is to make sure that they have the support they need to succeed.”

Over the summer, teachers were introduced to BrainHoney by participating in online collaborations with their colleagues and with Dr. Ban. Once they were acclimated to BrainHoney, each teacher decided how BrainHoney would help them the most.

Adding Online Course Offerings

Dean of Students Chip Pettit spearheaded the initiative for adding online learn-ing to the school’s course offering. “It was a logical next step for us,” said Pettit. Students needed more flexible schedules and wanted a way of getting ahead as part of our Excel initiative.” BrainHoney, with its tight integration of Florida Virtual High School (FLVS) courses made it extremely easy. “And, of course, it really is 21st century learning,” Pettit added.

At CPHS, online courses are offered in three ways: virtual, “inside the walls”, and as supplemental instruction. They have allowed students to get ahead during the summer, enabled students to free up critical time blocks during the school year for extracurricular activities or jobs, and provided an alternative to traditional textbooks in difficult subject areas.

The transition to online learning was smooth for the participating CPHS instructors. “I’m one year from retirement, and wanted to try out online teaching before I called it quits”, said Jan Lowery, a math teacher at CPHS.

“The transition to online learning was smooth for the participating CPHS instructors. “I’m one year from retirement, and wanted to try out online teaching before I called it quits”, said Jan lowery, a math teacher at CPHS. “The transition from teaching face to face to online was really easy with BrainHoney and the embedded FLVS course. I was surprised that I actually got to know my students better teaching online classes through BrainHoney than I did in the classroom.

“I’ve only met one of my online students, even though all of them are here in the building right now”, said Dan Hartman, who is teaching an Economics course both online and in the classroom. “I keep track of the online students in BrainHoney and make sure that they continue to make progress. I’ve offered up face to face support but only one student has taken me up on it so far!”

The integrated Florida Virtual Computer Science course is used as supple-mental material to the existing textbooks because it provides an alternative, more student-friendly approach to the subject and lets the teacher focus more time on the students.

Supplementing Classroom Instruction

Science teachers Jerome Flewelling, Kelly Loving, and Bryan Trippeer are each using BrainHoney to supplement their classroom instruction in unique ways.

Flewelling has aligned his instructional activities to Indiana State Standards and uses frequent checks to track his students’ progress against those stan-dards. “Using BrainHoney to build quizzes for students and then monitoring their individual progress has allowed me to connect with my students like never before,” said Flewelling.

Meanwhile, Loving uses BrainHoney to post all of his class assignments On-line. “I love being able to tell my kids, ‘it’s all up there, go find it,’” said Loving. “And it’s great to have a central place to direct students who were absent and need to make up assignments or catch up on reading.”

For Trippeer, BrainHoney is a great way to reinforce lessons taught in the classroom. Making class notes, worksheets, and videos readily available to his students, Trippeer has seen dramatic improvements in quiz and test scores. “BrainHoney has allowed me to give my students a repeat of the information I’m teaching,” said Trippeer. “It’s the ideal backup.”

Transferring Responsibility: No More Excuses

With BrainHoney, teachers take on the role of facilitator and students are given a degree of control over their education — and that can be a powerful and motivating concept. Students can participate in online discussions with their peers, access course materials and submit assignments without the oversight of a teacher.

“I really enjoy the ability to give students class material on BrainHoney,” said Jeremy Walker. “Students can’t make excuses anymore about why they didn’t complete an assignment or why they didn’t do an assigned reading. Having those things readily available to students allows for more class time and more actual learning can take place during which students are more engaged.”

Dual Credit Courses

As part of the “Excel” initiative, Crown Point has integrated the ACT college readiness standards into its core curriculum and offers dual credit courses through an innovative partnership with Purdue University Calumet and Indiana University Northwest that allows students to earn college credit at a savings of up to 90%.

“BrainHoney allows sponsoring professors at each institution the oppor-tunity to engage with our teachers and enables them to empirically defend the hypothesis that a credit earned by a high school student in a high school classroom is equivalent to a credit earned at the college by a college student,” said Dr. Ban. “BrainHoney’s flexibility and the knowledge of the Agilix team has really helped us create an innovative and scalable model for dual credit in the high school.”

A Look Aheead

What is most exciting for faculty at CPHS is not only what BrainHoney is offer-ing, but how the school will continue to find new ways to utilize the tools.

“As we continue to use BrainHoney we will be able to establish new meth-odologies and processes based on what teachers learn from it,” said Principal Dr. Eric Ban. “And the more our teachers learn, the better our students will continue to learn and achieve their goals.”

CPHS is the new Hybrid High and BrainHoney is the education tool of the future. Together they are changing the landscape of education as we know it.

Met some of the teachers and administrators at CrownPoint High School who are bluring the lines between classroom and online learning to create Hybrid High:

 

  • Chip Pettit
    D e a n  o f  S t u d e n t s
    Added online learning to school offerings and piloting dual credit
  • Dr. Eric Ban
    P r i n c i pa l
    Measures outcomes of BrainHoney implementations relative to initiatives
  • Jeremy Walker
    L at i n,  D i r ec to r  o f
    L e a r n i n g  T ec h n o logy
    Supplements classroom instruction and supports BrainHoney implementation
  • Ryan Collier
    L at i n,  M at h
    Piloted credit recovery with online courses
  • Sabrina Shah
    S pa n i s h
    Monitors student progress with online quizzes
  • Jan Lowery
    M at h
    Successfully taught online last year before retirement
  • Linda Atwood
    F r e n c h
    Encourages student collaboration online
  • Kelly Loving
    S c i e n c e
    Organizes class assignments and resources online
  • Jerome Flewelling
    S c i e n c e
    Aligns curriculum to standards and monitors student progress with online quizzes

 For more information about Crown Point or how you can create your own “Hybrid High” please contact:

  • Dr. Mark Luetzelschwab
    Sr. Vice President Product Development and Marketing
    Agilix Labs, Inc.
    733 E. Technology Ave
    Orem, UT 84097
    pr@agilix.com
    tel: (801) 932 1441

Press and media relations, please contact our PR Agency:

  • Dittoe Public Relations
    2815 E. 62nd St. Indianapolis, IN 46220
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© 2008 Agilix Labs, Inc.