Virtual Schools

Online Learning the Next Resort

• Your a rural district with only a few hundred students total. A child wants to take courses like calculus, but they cannot feasibly be offered by your high school.

• This is where online classes would be beneficial. Students will be able to take classes that can’t be offered at high school. A pitfall would be cost of to the district to allow the students to take class. In a rural district where there is not much money to spare it might affect the funding of the programs that the district already offers.

• You're a principal of a school. An overbearing parent comes to you. Their first son had Mr. Siko for chemistry and hated him. He's the only chemistry teacher, and now their younger son has him. They want to pull him out and have him take it online. Can you prevent this? Should you prevent this?

•  If this what the parents want then why prevent it if they feel that I would help their child. The only thing that would prevent this is if the school or district feels that the online chemistry courses that are available do not fit with the core standards set by the state or rigor required by the district. After talking with other teachers that have worked with the child they would feel that the child would not be successful in an online environment. Then other accommodations would be considered to have the child remain in current chemistry class. Another alternative the child could have independent study for chemistry.

• A child comes into your class, having transferred from a 'cyberschool'. It is clear the quality was subpar. Any of this child's standardized test scores this year are tied to your performance evaluation under the new teacher evaluation guidelines.

• As a teacher, you already deal with this every day. It is not something that should not let consume much of your time worrying over. Students transferring in from another school district or state might be low in areas that as a teacher you are going to have to work with. All you can do is find the help that the child would need to be successful.

•  I am a teacher whose district is embracing online learning. It is attracting many students from other districts, and this generates extra revenue (students = $$). I am asked to be a 'facilitator' for these students, who are not required to attend during the school day. I am not given extra release time for this.

• This would be difficult to undertake without extra time to plan, but as a teacher you might face this type of situation. As the online facilitator, I would first try and change the way that I run my current in classes in to more of a blended learning or distance learning environment. That way instruction would be done through video lectures before students walk into class and the online students still get the same instruction. During class will be for discussion and applying the skills talked about in the videos. Online students can then join in the class discussions through a polling app or discussion board as well as the actives and group work. You could have the online classes be synchronous with your normal classes. Online student would log in at the same time as your normal class and then through audio visual (AV) online students can interact with class and teacher at the same time.

• I am a 12th grade student who was diagnosed with leukemia the summer before my senior year. I am unable to attend a full day of school while receiving treatment. I want to graduate on time with my friends.

•  This student could qualify for a 100% online seat time wavier and take all their senior classes online while having treatment. The course need to be taught by a Michigan certified teacher. Otherwise the student will to be provided an on-site mentor who will serve as the teacher of record while the students is on leave. The mentor too must be a Michigan certified teacher. The district is responsible for picking up the tab for all courses the student is enrolled in and the course should meet the districts standards and rigor related to that course.

     Do you think schools are equipped to handle these changes? Has your school/district been public about any changes they've made to curriculum and instruction, or have any changes gone unnoticed? How is your school handling this (consider asking your administrator to see how s/he is imagining the larger picture)?

• Most schools are not equipped to handle these changes due to the high cost of updating network infrastructure and providing technology to students. My district haves already started by supplying one to one technology to all students. They are going toward more of a blended learning environment where instruction is given on-line and classes time is used to apply the skills. Teachers are being required to put more and more of their content on Its Learning so students have access to it outside of school. Curriculum has changed to incorporate the use of technology next year they are changing the math curriculum to a program that will utilize an online tool called Zearn. I am not aware if the district has any student enrolled in an online program or if they are offering online programs. 

Looking into the Past: Virtual Schools Revisited

            I was surprised by the fact that cyber schooling and virtual schooling are two different things. Cyber schooling is done entirely on-line where the cyber schools provide the materials to the children and the parents are there to provide support and basically teach. Where the virtual schooling uses a combination of synchronous and asynchronous delivery models. (Barbour, 2009) Another think I found interesting was that virtual school teachers are better synchronous teacher than asynchronous teachers. According to Barbour (2009) this can be associated with the fact that the synchronous environment resembles a typical brick and mortar classroom. If you think about it that is true most of what is taught in an education program is how to manage a classroom, so in a synchronous environment you could use those classroom management techniques. In an asynchronous environment where students work at their own pace and at different times then you can’t use traditional classroom management skill.

            After the readings I found that most of what I said in part one was accurate. The asynchronous environment can clearly be done form the comfort of home and in your pajamas. The definition of cyber schooling were the students take all of their course online and the materials that are provided are used by the parents and students from home. (Barbour, 2009) When I was working on another assignment I did make the assumption that online teachers have easy job by saying that sometimes teachers take what they are doing in their traditional classrooms and convert the lessons to an online format with instruction done through prerecorded videos or Power Point presentation with audio explanations. Although teachers still might take a lesson or unit and convert it to an online environment the amount of work that goes into making the conversion so that the lessons are effective shows that it is not as easy as it sounds.