More tech solutions for split classes

I just received your message and am writing to share our experiment with blended courses. Perhaps they can be adapted for AP. I am the chair of the department of Languages at the University of Connecticut (as well as a professor of Italian). While we are based on the main campus, we have several regional campuses and so we are experimenting with blended language courses. We are offering 2 hours of language on Interactive television (thus allowing students from 5 far away campuses to participate) and 2 additional hours per week integrating web2 technology, wikkis, blogs, google.docs, Nings, etcetera. The textbook we use is Parliamo Italaino, with Quia. The Quia site is accessible from remote locations and has videos and audios that are compatible with macs and pcs. Besides Italian, we are offering a Chinese course that follows this model and, by Fall 09, we will offer Arabic and French. We hope that, at a time of limited resources, this type of blended offering will allow us to achieve the cap necessary to keep the courses open. I will be happy to share more.
Norma Bouchard