VHS Staff at harwich High

In the Beginning...

The Grant: (Virtual High School - VHS)
Harwich was awarded a $20,000 "Technology Literacy Change" grant for the school year 2001-2002 written by Steve Wilson and John Ryan. Through this grant Harwich was able to join the community of schools at VHS, Inc., provide the required professional development for two Harwich staff members, expand the computer training lab capacity, and acquire instructional materials.

Training:
VHS, Inc. required that Harwich provide two individuals be trained.
15 week online course for the VHS Instructor - John Ryan
8 week online course for the VHS Site-Coordinator - Steve Wilson

Students Online:
Twenty-two students were enrolled in the "Introduction to Programming Visual Basic" taught by John Ryan, Harwich VHS Instructor. The students were from all over; MA, CA, TX, NY, PA, and Brazil. Two thirds of the students earned A's and B's. The majority of the students thought that it was challenging, more work than they had anticipated, and well worth the effort.

Students at Harwich:
Twelve students at Harwich High pioneered our Virtual education adventure. Visit the Students Speak page to hear what Harwich student have to say.

Support:
The success of the VHS project was in large part due to the backing from the Superindent, Dr. Joseph Gilbert, and High School Principal, Mr. Robert Krol. Both individuals understood the enormous amount of time and effort that would be needed and incredible opportunities that would be available to our students.

VHS Instructor
@ Harwich High

John B. Ryan

John Ryan is a technology instructor at Harwich High and the Department Head of Computer/Business Technology and Industrial Arts K-12. He teaches courses in Web Design and Management, Computer Technology, and Computer Programming.

As part of the VHS program, John teaches an online course, Introduction to Programming Visual Basic, which can be taken by students throughout the country and overseas. He has developed online courses for VHS, Inc. including The Power of Data Handling and Exploration of Computer Science. He also provided backup for the Site Coordinator.

He now serves as both VHS instructor and site coordinator.

Steve Wilson served the Harwich Public Schools as their Computer Technology Coordinator for a decade. He single handedly maintained the districts technology plan as required by the Mass. DOE, oversaw the district's technology budget, planned and implemented technology projects, provided system administration for over twenty servers, including a Web server and an e-mail server, and five hundred educational and administrative computers, and troubleshot technology problems.

Mr. Wilson was required to give up the Technology Coordinator and was moved to the position of Middle School Psychologist.

As the VHS Site Coordinator, he was responsible for the registration of students for classes, provided support to these students, received and distributed learning materials sent from other schools, sent and tracked learning materials going to students taking the VHS course offered by Harwich, and dealt with communications from other Site Coordinators and the VHS administration.

Original
VHS Site Coordinator
@ Harwich High

Steve Wilson
serving pizza to our VHS students
in celebration of their academic success:
All A's and 1 B+ for Term 1 of 2004