Saturday, April 4, 2015

K-12 online learning part 2

I think for the most part I was correct in most of the things that I posted in my initial thoughts on K-12 online learning.  I was correct in thinking that schools offer online classes that are not offered as part of the regular curriculum, ever I thought most of this was done as part of credit recovery.

I did however find some things that surprised me when going through the readings. One of which was how quickly the growth of the online learning environment has occurred. The amount of students taking an online course has increased greatly since the early 2000's. After doing the reading I was surprised to see that Michigan had one of the bigger virtual schools, with a lot of courses offered to different students. I also did not know the Michigan had eight fully virtual charter schools. Another thing that surprised me was how many schools with smaller enrollments used online courses and virtual learning. I would've assumed that would've been more popular amongst bigger school districts. Another thing that I was surprised to see is how much your virtual schooling is used for advanced students in advanced classes. My current experience with virtual classes has been mainly in elective classes and as credit recovery. I was surprised to see that cheating in online courses is not more prevalent than regular courses. 

12 comments:

  1. Like you I was under the impression that most of the online classes were for credit recovery. I knew that they existed for other reasons, but I thought that credit recovery was a huge reason students enrolled. I was also surprised that many smaller districts offered virtual classrooms. This seemed unusual because it is easy to assume that smaller districts have less money, but I forgot that this isn't always the case.

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  2. When I was reading your post, it brought to mind when distance education providers would advertise in the the Saturday or Sunday paper for people to enroll for GED classes. How far we have come! Now as you stated online course have evolved to the point where core and elective classes can be by students anywhere. With the increase number of students taking classes on line, I wonder how much of a competition do brick and mortar schools feel from the fact that they offer classes that they do not.

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    1. That is something I never thought of. I bet you that there are schools that have people that are worried about the shift online classes and them starting to take students away

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    2. I think this is why creating a virtual program with in the district will keep the student count for the school.

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  3. It is very interesting how online learning is attracting students and their parents, especially for core a class (Math) that they may have to repeat for in order to graduate or want to take a AP class. Yet, it appears to me that when these same course offerings are suggested in traditional education, they get shuffled under the rug based on education policy. Although, I believe public education can be more proactive with online learning it going to be interesting to see how they handle this change.

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    1. This reminded me of the scenario that talks about dislike for a teacher... I wonder how many students look for online options to remove themselves from this situation.

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  4. I also find that interesting that online learning is attracting students to repeat a class. I think their will be a lot of resistance to online learning within schools but overall I see the huge benefit to the online learning environment

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  5. Do you think that perhaps there is some resistance on the part of educators and administrators of allowing more online courses due to the fear of "more cheating will occur online?" Do you also think that perhaps some parents are hesitant of enrolling their children in virtual schools due to the cheating myth?

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    1. I don't think educators and administrators will resist implementing online or virtual courses due to cheating. I think they will keep trying, especially since in Michigan it is part of the graduation requirement.

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    2. I think that this is a great place to begin project-based learning. I know that it is difficult to do with all classes, but its a great way to develop a system that has less of a chance of cheating.

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  6. Hi Will, I am surprised about the cheating as I think as technology increases there will be more checks and balances for teachers. Today there are many software applications that can assist teachers in checking to see if student are plagiarizing in their writing, so I think it will be hard for students to cheat.

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    1. If there is a will... there is a way. If the student wants to cheat they will, its more of what we can do to inspire learning and repercussions for actions. We need this in the traditional classroom as well.

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