Week 5 Reflection

While reviewing the iNACOL standards, I noticed the changes that were made compared to traditional f2f teacher standards. I think more emphasis is placed on encouraging interaction and making a collaborative online learning environment. Additionally, prompt feedback as well as guiding ethical and safe usage were deemed important in the iNACOL standards. Although online contents should be more flexible in terms of teaching, I think the reality is that the teachers generally tend to follow rigid structure of course materials (e.g. K12, Inc. has a set curriculum and teachers don't deviate or use other materials as much as a f2f teacher using various supplemental materials in class).

I realize more and more that online teaching and f2f are really different even though it may look the same. Consequently, I think online teaching needs constant training and evaluation for quality assurance. There are more technology and resources available online and I think it's the teachers and administrators responsibility to implement and use them. I think that's where Chicago Virtual Charter School's "blended" learning method really would work well - using great K12, Inc. online curriculum and using various resources (e.g. doing a demo of a Google Map in a geography class in the f2f classroom) would really benefit the students. I'm really beginning to buy into the concept of the "blended" model - it has such a great potential and bring balance to f2f and online learning by utilizing the best of both worlds.