The Effective Engaging E-learning Environment for Tennessee, or e4TN, held its 4th annual conference last month, gathering educators from across the state to talk about how to improve and sustain online learning.
The grant-funded e4TN program was created in 2006 to develop courses for high school students in Tennessee. Currently, the curriculum consists of 25 courses, including a new physics course first made available in Fall 2010. Also, e4TN provides e-education professional development opportunities for teachers, such as their two-day annual conference.
In four years, the program has evolved from a base of two educators in one district to a state-wide organization serving 64 districts in Tennessee, mirroring the exponential increase of online learning throughout the country and speaking to the wide-spread demand for online learning in Tennessee.
“We’ve seen exploding growth in funded districts,” said Wendy Oliver, the e4TN coordinator, in a press release. She attributed this growth in part to the work of Timothy Webb, Tennessee’s Commissioner of Education, who appropriated federal stimulus funding for state-wide online learning.