Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Online School for High School Students


The YouTube video: National Education Report provides interesting information about a new way to use technology for the classroom. In the program, outlined in the above YouTube video, students have online classes,much like college. Students and parents do have the option to go to school 1-2 days a week to meet with teachers in person. As, outlined in the video this type of learning is ideal for students with unordinary schedules or life styles such as singers, athletes, etc.

Student involvement
Students are completely engaged and involved in their learning-they have to be or they do not learn the material. I love this concept of putting the learning back into the students' hands. It makes them responsible for their own learning and places a higher value on their education. When students actually learn the information by doing or being involved it means more and they retain the information.
Parent Involvement
Parents can follow students progress on the internet, and by meeting with the teachers in person on their office days. Parents are a huge part of this program. Parents must motivate, encourage and teach students time management. I also love the involvement of parents in this program. Many times at the public school level parents are not involved in their student's learning and this program is focused on the parent and school as partners. A problem that would arise here is if the parents are not fully committed the students could easily become behind.
Teacher involvement
First, the teacher actually gets to teach in this program. Discipline and other classroom management issues are not a problem with this program, so teachers can focus on teaching and helping their students. Sometimes I know I get bogged down with the paperwork and discipline issues related to education, so this program really interests me!! I am sure there are downsides as well, but another fact of this program is that the teachers work from home 80% of the time, and that is really appealing, especially for raising children.
All in all this program has many positive factors that seem to outweigh the negative ones.

National education report. (2009, April 21). Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmfKzgaMZGw

3 comments:

  1. We are doing credit recovery at our school with a company called "Plato". Kids who fail a class retake it online. The kids really like it, and seem to be much more successful at it. I would like to know more about your sources, because a related topic is part of my thesis idea.

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  2. Here in Florida we have had online classes for High School for years, and now they are starting classes for middle schools students. And this is not just advanced classes. It is working well. You will see this happening in many states soon. In countries like Finland and Norway, everyone goes to school online.

    Linda Burns

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  3. We use Plato too. I just had Plato training last week as we are looking at it for use with new RtI initiatives that the state has put in place. It's a pretty neat program. I can see why kids would like it.
    Amy

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