Jim Best and Bill Gates Remark on GOA at National Conference
Associate Head of School, Jim Best, with other Global Online Academy consortium members, presented to a full house at the National Association Independent School conference in Seattle, Washington. Jim and GOA colleagues followed on the heels of NAIS Conference Keynote Speaker Bill Gates, who mentioned that the Global Online Academy is an outstanding example of fulfilling technology's educational promise...
In his keynote address, Gates described how the Global Online Academy gathered excellent independent schools, took some of their best teachers, assembled small online classes, and allows students to delve into a specific topic in-depth. This NAIS report paraphrased Gates' remarks about GOA:
Online education allows our schools to innovate in exciting ways. Hear from a Global Online Academy teacher, student, board member, member school head, college counselor, and the director of the GOA about what it took to start a new school and how it's transforming teaching, learning, and our institutions.
GOA allows students to interact and learn divergent viewpoints from others as the class can come from around the globe. Now in its second year, enrollment keeps growing and the range of classes exciting. At the very basic level, the variety of students gives you unbelievable access to diversity in the classroom.
Many High School students have taken advantage of the unique and rigorous global online courses the GOA program currently offers.