Ellen Hart is the Project Advisor for our Online Language Pedagogy project. She is the World Languages Instructional Director for the North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS). She is responsible for teacher retention and recruitment and for managing World Language and Arts Education courses. Since 1994, her professional career has taken many steps towards a global understanding of culture. Her start in education was in the classroom as a lateral entry business teacher in high school and as a community college part-time business instructor. She taught at the community college for 2 years before starting her master’s degree program. She taught high school students for 6 years in the classroom before moving to the district level. During her time at the district level, she worked directly with educators in professional development for incorporating instructional technology. In the summer of 2007, North Carolina started the journey of developing an online virtual school. In her district-level position working with middle and high schools allowed her to expand her professional path to support eLearning for the local schools. Within that first year, she joined the staff of the North Carolina Virtual School (NCVPS) as the Professional Development Coordinator. Her path with NCVPS lead her to the current education administrative position as Instructional Director. The current programs under her direction are Career & Technical Education, World Languages, and Computer Science. Throughout her professional journey, she has been able to travel to Germany, Colombia, Japan and China to learn more about global education. One of these trips gave her the opportunity to deliver her first keynote speech at the 1st International Symposium on Bilingual Education in Bogota, Colombia, South America.
