Distance Education

My family recently enrolled my 17-year-old brother in K-12 virtual online high school. I spoke with my mother and brother about what they thought some of the advantages and disadvantages of this program are as well as researched the websites that were listed in the handout.
For my family, and I know many others, the biggest advantage is that you can stay at home. My brother has several different medical issues that prevent him from attending school regularly, therefore he gets behind, and the Distance Education program fixes this. Even if he is not feeling well, he can still put in a few hours of schoolwork while being home. Another advantage is that you can pick the hours that you work. Research has proven that high schoolers need more sleep than elementary students, however, high schools tend to start earlier. When a student is enrolled in this program, the student can design the hours that work best for their needs. To go along with the idea that the structure is up to the student, for the most part so is how fast the student goes through the curriculum. Some classes prefer the students to stay together so that the teacher can easily help all of them. But the majority of the classes will allow the student to move at their own pace. Since the only communication with students is online; teachers have to post the student’s grades. As any student would claim, having instant access to one’s grades is so helpful and reassuring. However, in physical classrooms many teachers decide not to take advantage of this option. Online, there is no other option. Lastly, because we live in Washington, online high school is free. Though public school is free as well, normally, in order to get any kind of specialized school, you have to pay extra. The online schools for Washington do not require this .
There are also disadvantages to distance education. The first one that stands out is that there is no face-to-face teacher/student interaction. This can make learning difficult sometimes because you might have to wait a little while for the teacher to reply to the email the student. Communication is key in education and the distance education program makes it a little more difficult than normal physical classrooms. Another disadvantage is that students are not being socialized on a day-to-day basis. Children and teenagers need socialization to learn the ways of society, however, there are other opportunities than school to get this, sports and youth organizations can help compensate for the necessary socialization. Currently, our educational world consists of 8 am to 5 pm days generally. Schools start to enforce this kind of pattern for students. However, distance education does not support this at all, so students could easily get into a pattern of sleeping until 12 pm and working until 8 pm. It can affect a student’s sleep cycle. Another disadvantage is that the student has to be able to keep himself or herself motivated. In physical classrooms, students receive several reminders about assignments and what is going on in the classroom. In distance education programs, it is harder for the teachers to keep to the students focused and on track. It is largely up to the student. Finally, the integrity of learning is slightly sacrificed. Although, this happens in physical education as well, students can always cheat. But at physical schools, there are teachers who can watch for it whereas at home, it is up to the students to be honest.
There are many different factors that should be considered when deciding if a student is ready to enroll in a distance education program. According to Morgan, you have to make sure that the student can look at the “deep approach” versus just the “surface approach.” The skills that a student would need to do this would be to focus on what is emphasizes, relate and distinguish between prior knowledge and new information, relate concepts to everyday experience, relate and distinguish evidence and argument, organize the content being present and have an internal focus on the material and how it relates to reality (Morgan 1991). Since students lack face-to-face instruction and peer discussion, it is up to the student to delve deeper and invest in their education. The student has to be committed to their education. The student also needs to be very willing to ask for help when the student needs it, the teacher may not notice right away. Therefore, it is really help to the student to succeed.
The main thing that I would need to be ready to teach in an online environment is a full curriculum. The assignments, syllabus and class notes all have to be posted to the virtual space before the class starts. Therefore, the teacher would need to have everything compiled before the class began. It is also important that you choose the website carefully, since there are advantages and disadvantages to all virtual sites.