How do you feel about virtual school?
My sister takes is full time, instead of going to a school building. She says they give out a lot more work that at a “physical” school. I’ve taken it for Driver’s Ed, and I do not like the phone calls I have to make with the teacher regularly.
Never gone to it. I don’t see why one would do it unless their parents/guardians had an issue with the public and private schools or the schedule didn’t work out.
I’ve never been big on the idea. I realize there are certain situations where kids cannot attend a regular school, but I personally think that the majority of students are better served by a real-life classroom environment. Having the interaction and friendship that an actual school provides is a very important social structure in everyone’s lifetime and ultimately affects your life beyond just education. Nothing against anyone who may fit into this category, but it seems that many cyber school students either have helicopter parents who are oversensitive to their child’s social development and wish to “protect” them from other students or beliefs, or have parents with unreasonable academic expectations and believe that normal schools aren’t fast-paced enough for their child’s ever so limited time to achieve. Both encourage the wrong priorities in life IMO.
A few of my friends in high school took extra-curricular AP classes online or over video conference. I guess that’s nice if you’re in some kind of rush to rack up a freshman year’s worth of credits before you even apply to a college, but I knew some who became so overwhelmed with the workload that they had to sacrifice all free time and sleep or they would quickly fall behind and fail, which some did. Call me an underacheiver, but the career-related stress we put on ourselves these days is totally not worth what small benefit it may yield for the vast majority of most universities and jobs. Give me a decent stable career that I enjoy, and I’m happy - I’ve got plenty of other non-career related things in my life that matter more.
However, I think online college classes are great. So far, I’ve taken two each semester in conjunction with real classes and have really found them to be helpful in organizing my schedule. Most professors understand that online students have jobs, families, or priorities that must coexist with getting a degree, and all that I’ve taken up to this point have had very fair workloads and deadlines. They’re nice for general credits that you need to get out of the way or subjects that you’re already familiar with and could ace without studying much.
Maine’s Universities have a system called ITV. Essentially, there is a building (or section of a building) at each UMaine campus that has several classrooms which have green screens, cameras, and adjoined control rooms, as well as regular chairs and tables for students to sit at.
There are also viewing rooms with a large conference table and a 50" LCD TV positioned at the end of the room. On the table there is a conference phone.
How the system works is a lecture is broadcast to these special viewing rooms from a studio/classroom on one of the campuses. At a different campus, students can sit and participate in the class by watching the lecture streamed live on TV and listen through the conference phone. The students can actively participate in the class by talking into the phone. Each viewing room also has a camera that streams a video feed of the room’s participants to a small monitor positioned on the instructor’s lectern. I bet since there’s so many locations around the state that would be connected at once, it is split-screen. All of the video traffic flows from campus to campus through the state’s massive fiber optic network.
In short, it’s like a huge multi-person skype call for a class lecture, except it uses proprietary systems.
I’ve never experienced one of these classes before, but one of my courses next semester is inside one of the studio/classrooms.
It’s an interesting concept. A bit of a bridge between in-class and distance education.
Never taken an online class, but I have taken a class in which the teacher does a video conference at a different campus.
I haven’t taken an online class however my sisterinlaw is taking online classes
I don’t prefer online classes. I think student need to get used to working in a “physical” environment, so they can be ready for the workplace up ahead, unless they have one of those few jobs where they work from home. My sister just didn’t like the workload, and the teachers “hated” her. She has now discovered that virtual school gives out more work. I will be taking Pre-Calulus Honors over the summer on virtual school, but that is all I will ever take on virtual school, unless I keep failing Spanish. I actually enjoy going to school, and get sad when I leave for the summer. It can be boring at home sometimes.
NewAgeServer, my school just has a schedule where students can go to our media center, and use one of the computer labs for virtual school classes. I would not enjoy having one of those virtual classes you were talking about.
lol, one of my friends told me that the thing virtual school teachers disliked the most about their job was the interaction with students.