09 February 2011

Blog Post for Week 3

How has your thinking about online schools and online schooling changed since the first week?

I am pleasantly surprised to find that the concept of virtual schooling, specifically how to manage virtual schools and what they should be expected to accomplish is getting a fair amount of intelligent consideration. Some of the concerns I had that first week -- that I know to be concerns of others -- are things that are being accounted for in at least some sectors of the virtual school community. One of these is the question of academic integrity. It gives me more confidence to know that there are virtual schools that require some phone contact, and face-to-face contact, through webcam, and/or through random or regular proctored testing. I am glad to read too, that learning styles and effective strategies are being incorporated and there are more options on the K-12 level than just courses where students are reading pages and pages of text and left on their own to understand what they are required to learn with little to no help from an on-line instructor. I appreciate that there are those who are thinking through the process of authorizing virtual schools, and not blindly making decisions apart from the realities of how students learn and what is needed by LEAs and SEAs to be more effective in reaching students who are in need of credit recovery or a school day that doesn't require them to sit in a brick and mortar classroom from 8-3 pm five days a week. I was pleasantly surprised that the needs of students with disabilities are being discussed, and how to make online schooling a viable option for those Special Education students that might want it. I am also pleasantly surprised to consider that the online schooling option allows that a teacher may be able to give more one-to-one attention than in a traditional classroom. From before week 1 I was sold on virtual schooling as having tremendous potential, and the more I learn, the more convinced, yea, enthusiastic I become about it.

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