More on Virtual Charter Schools
There’s a new article at the Christian Science Monitor about virtual home schools. It doesn’t say too much more than earlier articles I’ve referenced, but it does include a few interesting comments from a sophomore from Forks, Washington about what it’s like being a student from a very isolated location taking online classes from the national Virtual High School.
A lot of the discomfort is not on the online nature of the learning, but on the role of for-profit companies in many virtual charter schools. In particular, the K12 company founded by William Bennett keeps coming up, not only for it’s for-profit status but for the quality of the curriculum they provide.
The article does also point out that, contrary to what many people might assume, online learning is not necessarily an impersonal experience. Properly constructed, there can be better student-to-student interaction and student-teacher interaction than in many classrooms. With the spread of high-speed home Internet access and simple videoconferencing systems like iChat and Yahoo messenger, it’s possible now for students to converse with each other and their teachers (although I’m not familiar with any virtual schools doing this as yet). In three or four years, it will be such a commonplace technology that it will seem as normal as a telephone for many of our kids. As a matter of fact, it will probably BE a telephone!