RISTE organized a meeting last Wednesday morning for an opportunity to learn about Virtual Learning in Rhode Island.

The morning began with presentations by three RI educators who are using/managing virtual learning environments in their schools.

Christopher Savastano is the Associate Principal for Teaching and Learning at Middletown High School.  They currently contract 25 seats per semester from Virtual High School.  Chris taught Computer Science for Virtual High School and served as the school's Site Coordinator for the last 4 years. He is also the Mathematics teacher of record when their ALP program utilized VLA as a credit recovery tool.


Hersh Cristino works in Pawtucket Schools as a Teacher, Technology Coordinator.
He will be describing their use of Apex Learning which is based out of Seattle Washington.

The RI Dept of Education is looking at virtual learning as well and Holly Walsh joined us to describe their investigations into the various policy issues, learning models, and resources to support virtual learning. 

• Holly described a Model School grant opportunity that will be coming up in January

• She also made an announcement about a conference on February 11 that will focus on classroom learning, virtual learning and blended learning environments.