Posted on 11/27/2011 6:32:17 PM PST by fight_truth_decay
A Virginia company leading a national movement to replace classrooms with computers — in which children as young as 5 can learn at home at taxpayer expense — is facing a backlash from critics who are questioning its funding, quality and oversight.
K12 Inc. of Herndon has become the country’s largest provider of full-time public virtual schools, upending the traditional American notion that learning occurs in a schoolhouse where students share the experience. In K12’s virtual schools, learning is largely solitary, with lessons delivered online to a child who progresses at her own pace.
Conceived as a way to teach a small segment of the home-schooled and others who need flexible schooling, virtual education has evolved into an alternative to traditional public schools for an increasingly wide range of students — high achievers, strugglers, dropouts, teenage parents and victims of bullying among them.
“For many kids, the local school doesn’t work,” said Ronald J. Packard, chief executive and founder of K12. “And now, technology allows us to give that child a choice. It’s about educational liberty.”
Packard and other education entrepreneurs say they are harnessing technology to deliver quality education to any child, regardless of Zip code.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefiscaltimes.com ...
I think it will work for some, but not others.
I think I would have functioned very well under this system myself.
K12 is an excellent homeschool program and was created by Bill Bennet.
Australia, which historically is one of the first countries to provide any form of distance correspondence learning, is considered a trendsetter pertaining to the development of virtual schooling and already has dozens of policies, regulations, and requirements that any online course which wishes to operate must follow and meet. (Chien, 2002).
http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/jwither/Essays/Education/Wojna_Essay.html
Massachusetts’ First Virtual Schoo
Story Updated: Sep 7, 2011
Josh Heffner’s favorite school lesson in recent memory didn’t involve using a book or sitting at a desk. Instead, he was dressed up in an oversized button-down shirt, his hair styled all wild and crazy. He was a mad scientist, working with his mom in his family’s kitchen-turned-lab. “I did a little experiment with super hot water and super cold water, to see which dissolved salt,” the 7-year-old from Greenfield explains. “That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?” Josh’s mom says he happily did science projects for most of the day and then completed a lab sheet about them - on the Internet.
“Cool” is a good place to be for a second-grader who had his share of struggles, including frequent disciplining, during more than three years of traditional school. Josh has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,
What would attract me to computerized teaching is the idea of studying something until you have total mastery over a subject.
That is not doable under a system where an education system is set up like a factory floor of continuously moving parts.
Back in the day when I went to school, the teacher threw erasers at our heads if we were not concentrating. Can a computer do that? Having a chalk-filled eraser hit the back of your head gets your attention! (Guess they don’t do that nowadays.)
A computer can’t throw erasers, but it certainly can erase all your game files if you’re not doing the work.
Many boys must be forced to learn,,,,
Many girls won’t learn even if you force them..
Classrooms have their place...
looks pretty good!But for math, I'm enamored with khanacademy.org. Free, and a serious attempt at fully exploiting the capabilities of the Internet to make an educational tool. Short lectures on YouTube, computerized drill and practice, full support for the teacher to know exactly where any given student is, and where his/her problems lie. And a merit badge approach to motivating and encouraging students.
Khan's ambition is to provide free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere, over the web. And not just grammar school and high school, either . . .
A friend told us about a new charter school, The Ohio Virtual Academy. They use the K12 curriculum. We attended a seminar and were impressed with the curriculum. Like home schoolers, we are the teachers. We have lead teachers who monitor our progress. We still are responsible for state testing. It costs Ohio 1/3 to 1/2 of what public school costs to educate him. We have the option and are encouraged to attend field trips. We are in our 10th year with OHVA/K12. Our son is now in 9th grade. We have to adhere to tighter deadlines and due dates and his lesson plan is heavy. We also have more virtual classes than in the past. To that end, he is also interacting more and making friends with other kids.
We get push back as home schoolers do about social interaction. We tell people that once a month we take him out back to kick his butt and steal his lunch money so he can feel like he's in regular school.
Public school @ home
Interesting idea. I know someone who tried it, they liked it. It let them go at their own pace.
I think online home schools, with this public school online thing as competition, could be a wave of the future.
lol
I've taken online courses as an adult, and I've also taken adult education courses in more traditional classrooms. While I found the convenience of online learning quite helpful, I also found the experience somewhat limiting. Interacting with cyber-classmates and a teacher I've never met just didn't do much for me. Classroom discussion and direct interaction with people are more nuanced and complex. In my experience, I learned more than what was on the syllabus, retained it better, and enjoyed it more when the course was taught in class.
Education isn't a one-size fits all process. Trying different approaches is, I think, a good thing. It's important though, that parents have good information on which to base decisions for their children.
something for toots etc?
Oh well, someone will remember.
Now imagine the worlds this opens for a deaf kid. :)
I survived and did quite well under the public school system.
But, I would have chosen to do this method in a heartbeat. I could have got all my qualifications FAR more cheaply. There is no reason for education to cost as much as it does, and I have found that my career resides firmly on the private side of the system, helping kids out for a fraction of the cost of the public schools.
Give me 20 hours and I can get anyone up to speed.
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