E-education for all
By Bobbie Nickel
May 21, 2009 10:27 p.m.
A new partnership between UC and a state program will make academic college preparation courses available to all K-12 schools in California.
University of California College Prep and K-12 High Speed Network reached an agreement after months of collaboration to form an official contract, said Rafael Granados, executive director of UC College Prep.
UC College Prep is a statewide program that offers educational material and courses online, and K-12 High Speed Network is a state program funded by the California Department of Education that acts to provide the state’s educational community with Internet services and online content.
The agreement will provide more than $8 million worth of multimedia online courses to California schools and education institutions. These courses are UC approved and often Advanced Placement material, according to the statement.
The two institutions will also develop a joint project that will make their resources more available to rural schools and areas of underserved populations, Granados said.
Educational challenges that exist in these places, such as technical problems with high-speed Internet connections or difficulties finding educators to teach advanced classes, are anticipated by UC College Prep and K-12 High Speed Network.
The online programs can offer California’s educational communities supplemental material to be used by teachers and advanced online classes for students who may not have access to the courses at their school. Even if there is only one student at an underserved school that wants to take an online course, they can enroll with students from different schools and form a class online, Granados said.
The current economy might financially restrict the development of educational resources elsewhere, but Granados said he hopes the fact that UC College Prep is offering its intensive material for free will be a great advantage to California schools.
“In these economic times, online education makes sense for many reasons. It allows you to meet the educational needs of students in rural schools and underserved populations, or to leverage already used resources,” Granados said.
Since UC College Prep’s founding in 1999, the organization has gone from being an online program to a publisher of course materials, developing its high-interaction multimedia to finally license materials to educational institutions, Granados said.
“What you’re finding now is that most students who are going to college have taken an online course. In fact, it’s expected to be part of their education.”
Last year, more than 83,000 students in California used UC College Prep’s online resources, only a fraction of the 153,000 students worldwide who accessed the online material offered by the University of California, according to the statement.
UCLA is also involved in UC College Prep’s development, as the Center for Digital Innovation is currently working on creating an AP economics course to join the multi-subject course catalog online, Granados said.
UC College Prep’s goal is to raise $1 million in funds annually for course development and innovation in the next five years, according to its annual report. Combined with the K-12 High Speed Network, it will develop UC College Prep’s already accessible catalog to expand to the entire state on high-speed servers.
“The education and value of education is technology,” Granados said. “It can be used to fight educational challenges.”
