Distance Education

Distance education provides many experiences which are highly different from those experienced inside a traditional classroom. These programs have been becoming more and more popular among homeschooling families throughout the past decade. In the more traditional school setting, these programs have many pros and cons.

Pros:

• They provide an excellent way to include parents in an educational plan for students.
• They help children to connect their home life to their school lives.
• Students are able to work at their own pace, from their own chosen location.
• Students get one-on-one attention from a parent as they learn new things.
• For families that would otherwise participate in independent homeschooling, these programs provide important and needed direction and content for those students.

Cons:

• Many parents have a difficult time seeing the value of certain activities and the time which they take in their daily schedule.
• There is very little peer interaction in the online forums.
• Students can be limited by their parents knowledge and abilities.
• Activities, like science experiments, are simplified so that they can be easily done in any home.
• Students have limited access to the many resources of public schools (such as counseling services, specialists, ect.)

Teachers who work within these online schools must have all of the same credentials as any public school teacher. These teachers are also asked to participate in professional growth activities to enhance their technology skills. Teachers in these programs also must have very flexible hours as they do not only teach for six hour days; they are required to help their students throughout a longer range of the day. In addition to these important elements, teachers in these types of programs must have excellent skills in communicating with the parents of students, as the parents play a hugely important role in the education of their students.

Students who participate in online schools must be highly motivated and must have dedicated parents who truly understand the importance of the educational standards and content of their program. Students must also be able to work on their own for at least short periods of time. Students who thrive off of social interaction, and learn best in social settings would likely find it quite difficult to participate in an online school environment.

In the future, I can see online schools becoming much more prevalent. They seem like a wonderful way to connect students work at school to their home lives. By providing parents with specific instructions on how to teach things at home, students could have more opportunities to learn important things. However, in my experience with online schools, I have found them to only work for a fraction of the families who try them, as the entire family must be fully invested in the program and its process. I think that they work well for students who use it as a supplement to their public schooling experience. However for students who work only online, school can become too tedious and boring so that the students become more and more hesitant to participate in learning activities.

Although I can see some good qualities of these programs, I would not use them much in my own classroom, as there are other tools that could be used to provide the same connection of school learning to home. However, the one interesting aspect of these schools that I was intrigued by was the virtual field trips, as they could allow students to explore places which a public school class could not visit together.