Distance Ed

Florida Virtual School Boosts CTE

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 02/16/17

 

The Florida Virtual School (FLVS), a statewide online public school, has developed two new courses to round out its career and technical education offerings. The new programs arrived during "CTE Month," a public awareness campaign started by the Association for Career & Technical Education, a national organization that promotes the advancement of education to prepare young people and adults for careers.

Digital Information Technology, which began this month, promises to teach students foundational skills for careers in "game development, web design, military defense and software engineering." Students will use Microsoft Office online applications and learn about digital design, emerging technologies and careers in IT.

Foundations of Programming is a follow-on course intended to teach the basics of programming using Python.

The Florida school already had 15 other courses in its CTE program, including classes on the use of business software, digital media, web design and networking and database usage. Several of those lead to vendor certification from Microsoft, Adobe, CompTIA, Cisco and Oracle.

"Companies are shifting their focus to employable proficiency, and we want to make sure our students are ready," said Jodi Marshall, executive vice president of business and school solutions, in a prepared statement. "Skills such as adaptability and managing complexities, social and civic responsibility and interactive communications are all very imperative to any job out there. Above all, FLVS wants to ensure student success, so we designed these courses to meet the needs of industry and academia."

Recently, the school said that it had reaccredited under AdvancED, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that conducts school reviews for teaching and learning impact, leadership capacity and resource usage. According to the school, the reaccreditation ensures that students can transfer the credits they earn from FLVS to other institutions.