Distance Learning Is Nigh

The Sag Harbor School District is one step closer to adding a distance learning program to its course offerings.

Katy Graves, Sag Harbor’s superintendent, announced during Monday’s school board meeting that the district recently signed an agreement giving it access to an educational videoconferencing system hosted by the Otsego Northern Catskills Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

The cost will be about $15,000 per year, plus the initial investment of setting up dedicated classrooms at the elementary school and the middle and high school with the needed infrastructure. A mobile cart will also be equipped with technology needed for distance learning so that teachers can share the resources.

Ms. Graves said yesterday the set-up cost is not yet known, but that it will come from the $171,000 grant Sag Harbor received through New York State’s Smart Schools Bond Act. The district will then have access to about 50 courses taught remotely by teachers around New York State plus additional programs such as virtual field trips, career-specific conferences with industry experts, and collaborative projects, along with professional development options for teachers.

“This broadens children’s worlds,” said Ms. Graves, who served for many years on a statewide distance learning committee while she was a teacher and administrator in other New York school systems.

In January, Ms. Graves said, a group of high school teachers will head upstate to tour several schools already doing distance learning to learn how it works. She said she envisions Sag Harbor being able to save money on teacher training, particularly when it comes to the ever-changing training needs of students who are not native English speakers, by limiting the number of times teachers have to travel long distances for training. Ms. Graves also said she envisions distance learning as a community resource that could allow first responders such as emergency medical technicians and volunteer firefighters to complete training courses that also might have involved traveling long distances.

Tami Fancher, the distance learning coordinator for Otsego Northern Catskills BOCES, said by phone Tuesday that the videoconferencing program began 25 years ago with a closed analog system for 10 schools but has evolved into an Internet-based system that will serve 24 schools by the start of the 2016-17 school year. Currently, she said, the courses have about 600 students who come from school districts from all over New York, some with enrollments as small as 101 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The distance learning program requires two 68-inch TV screens, with appropriate cameras, plus a teacher’s computer station. Textbooks are provided by Otsego Northern Catskills BOCES, except for “consumables” such as workbooks that cannot be reused by other students. Laboratory materials are also paid for by individual school districts, with lab sessions facilitated in several ways. Class sessions can be recorded and distributed to students who were absent or need to review lessons.

Ms. Fancher said Sag Harbor will have access to virtual field trips, collaborative programs, and professional development this school year but will not be able to take advantage of the actual courses until next year. That is because the scheduling of those courses takes place in December.

“We offer electives to college-level courses and high-level Advanced Placement courses, right across the board,” Ms. Fancher said. “It’s not replacing what the school is doing, it’s just adding more flexibility. . . . [Students] are able to take courses they wouldn’t normally be able to take.”