Online Education for K-12

This is an online course.  I know others who take a few courses online, and I know individuals who attend online universities.  However, do you know that online courses are a growing trend for students in K-12?  Did you know that sometime in the near future it would be mandatory for primary and secondary education?  I didn’t, after all what have we been learning all semester?  We have learned that technology should supplant ones education, not take over the job of educator. 

            In the school year of 2007 to 2008 more than one million students took such courses.  So far it has primarily been used for make up courses, to offer additional courses that the school may not have the money for and also for advance placement courses.  However, should online courses be mandatory?  Budgetary restraints make this an attractive option for schools with deficits in their budgets but who is behind this push.  Is online education being pushed because educators believe it will be an asset to students, or is it being pushed by online content authors who see this moment as they’re opportunity to create a new source of income?  This is reminiscent of the influx of technology initially introduced into schools.  The same questions could have been asked back then as well.

            As college students we have had a lifetime of conventional learning to help us navigate through online courses.  However, primary school students do not have this advantage.  As a teacher we are supposed to offer students multiple ways to learn content.  As different students learn in different ways.  I admit by utilizing the computer a student will have the benefit of the pictorial, auditory, and also the written word.  But what happens when they have questions that can only be explained in person by a human being.  I myself have learned many things online and still needed a real person to help me completely grasp something. 

            Read 411 has provided me with a lot of strategies to ensure that students know how to acquire new knowledge.  Will a computer program be able to do that for our students?  How will plagiarism be prevented?  Will the makeup classes be so easy as to help a school boost their testing data?  These are all things we have to ask our selves and our educational institutions and not till we have sufficient answers should online classes be mandatory.