Dear All-
When I read the following message I had to respond as an educator and an
online educator.
> My sister is in Pennsylvania, and their teachers union has told them that
> the biggest threat to teachers will be online courses,
My course is a grad course for educators but I have students who are
creating courses for their high school students so I am somewhat
knowledgeable in this area.
Online classes have existed in rural areas like Western Canada and
Alaska for awhile. That is because with the small student populations
it is not possible to afford teachers for advanced classes. According to
an article in US News, 80% of the students in Florida's Virtual School
are enrolled in regular public or private high schools and not only home
schoolers. In fact 55 students in the Florida program attend school in
West Virginia.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/elearning/articles/k12.htm
In my own area of NJ a local parochial high school has instituted online
classes for the AP Physics course. The regular Physics teacher is too
busy to teach another course but meets with the online students once a
week. The sort of student taking this extra credit is usually motivated
enough to complete the work.
As you can guess, with any online course one of the biggest obstacles is
student motivation. It doesn't matter whether the student is a teenager
or an adult.
Are all courses for everyone? Of course not but for some students they
are ideal.
Jo
***********************************************************
Josephine G. Dervan, Library Media Specialist
Strathmore Elementary School
Aberdeen, NJ 07747
Home-
rderva@infi.net
School-
jdervan@marsd.k12.nj.us
Staff Development for Technology Integration
http://www.uni.edu/profdev/staffplan
He who has a garden and a library, wants for nothing- Cicero
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