Georgia Virtual School
Georgia Virtual School is a program of Georgia Virtual Learning through Georgia Department of Education’s Office of Technology Services. The program is AdvancEd accredited and operates in partnership with schools and parents to offer middle school and high school level courses across the state of Georgia. Georgia Virtual School (GAVS) provides a teacher led, virtual classroom environment. It equips students with an online media center and guidance center to support students throughout their online course experience. GAVS has over 130 course offerings in the core content areas, world languages, CTAE, electives, a vast AP course selection, as well as the Credit Recovery Program. Georgia Virtual Learning supports open learning by providing free online learning materials to students, parents, and educators looking for quality, standards aligned content through accessing Georgia Virtual Learning’s Open Educational Resources. For educators, GAVL offer online professional development in conjunction with the state and provides courses in online and blended learning, data analytics, and more.
Projects and highlights:
- Georgia Virtual School (GAVS) began offering the free Effective Online Teacher (EFT) course in 2014. This course is driven by badge credentialing. Teachers complete the five modules in the areas of participate, navigate, communicate, create, and evaluate. The successful completion of each module, including evidence of competency in the area, results in a badge being awarded. Once all five badges are earned, the teacher has completed the course and is eligible to teach for GAVS.
- Georgia Virtual School makes its original course content available as open educational resources; about 70 courses, including several for Advanced Placement. A team of learning engineers work with subject matter experts in each respective area to design a course through a nine-month process. They are available at http://www.gavirtuallearning.org/Resources.aspx. The courses are bound by a creative commons attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
- Georgia Department of Education was awarded a Rethink K-12 Education Models grant in July 2019. The Georgia’s ReStart: Embrace, Engage, Expand, and Enhance Learning with Technology (GRE4T) Initiative focuses on personalized learning and extending digital learning platforms, technology assistance, and teacher training to Georgia Districts. To this work, Georgia Virtual Learning (GaVL) is creating an initiative based digital learning opportunity called PartnerUp. The objective of PartnerUp is to provide equity to Georgia students and to school districts who want to partner with GaVL to support technology and professional development required to develop and sustain a digital learning program for their students. GaVL will work with select districts to increase digital learning options through technology integration, teacher training, content access, collaboration while also piloting micro credentialed courses directly aligned to Georgia state educational standards.
