Journal # 8

"Virtual Schooling"
By: Niki Davis and Dale S. Niederhauser

The article about virtual schooling addressed the present trend of online learning, and cyberclassrooms. Teachers are now able to go to different countries and podcast their experiences back to their students as learning tools. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that approximately one-third of public school districts have students enrolled in distance education courses during the 02-03 school year. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) reported that “More than 90,000 middle and high school students were enrolled in virtual schools” in the SREB states alone in 05-06. Due to the No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB), every student has the right to access with e-learning opportunities and every teachers has the right to access e-learning training. Reasons why students enroll in VS include access to advanced placement and other courses not offered otherwise, also flexible times and locations draw in many students. VS education also allows for students that are otherwise unable to attend public school to complete necessary coursework and graduate from high school. VS learning requires substantial shifts in teacher’s roles and makes delegating of responsibilities imperative to provide a positive educational experience. In order to be a successful teacher in VS one must be extremely organized and able to provide timely responses to emails and such as well as providing all the course materials for the students and creating lessons to establish the objective while being able to complete it without in class time. There are multiple roles in the VS system; teacher, facilitator, administrator, designer, technology coordinator, parent/guardian, and student are all necessary to keep the VS process working smoothly. The article says that the best way to prepare a teacher for VS instruction is through field experience. One of the major components to the success of VS is the collaboration of all the components involved, without that, the system would crumble.

1.) What are some positives of virtual schooling?
Virtual schooling in itself creates a more differentiated approach to learning for students that may not work well in the traditional school environment. It also allows for students that have surpassed the K-12 education levels at a young age to gain access to advanced placement and college courses while still in lower grades. Virtual schooling also allows for students with special needs who are unable to attend school to access the education they have the right to acquire.

2.) Does virtual school require more or less of a teacher?
From the description given in the article, it seems that in order to be a VS teacher, you must be extremely organized and have everything well planned prior to commencement of the course. A VS teacher must also make themselves constantly available to correspondence with students because they do not get the one on one personal contact that a student in a traditional classroom would receive. Personally, being a VS teachers seems like even more work than being a mainstream traditional teacher by FAR!

3.) Will this trend of VS take over and make traditional classrooms obsolete?
I think that there will always been a need for in class time where personal relationships are built, especially in the primary grades. There are lessons learned that students would not be able to obtain without spending time in a traditional classroom. Also children at young ages lack the necessary attention span to truly have VS schooling work at the K- 5 level without a mentor or tutor there. Another problem that will keep children in traditional schools is that the VS system requires active participation of all members. Unfortunately today, parental involvement may be hard to find in some circumstances leaving the VS system out of the question at the younger grades. Only time will tell as to the future of our education system.