Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Week 6 Reflection

Looking at the two schools that I researched, Alabama ACCESS and Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS), my view of them has changed slightly. If I had to change anything on Google spreadsheet, it would be student-student interaction. Although these two schools are probably better than many other virtual schools or courses (especially given that blended learning allows f2f interaction in classrooms), they still don't allow much social interaction between the students. I definitely think that social interaction is just as, if not more, important than academic learning especially K-8 level.

In CVCS blended learning model, students focus on learning primarily with their parents at home using K-12 Inc. curriculum. There's hardly any communication at all with their peers. They look through web interactive lecture pages with adults and take assessments. In school, they are more likely to interact with their student friends, but it is limited to "playing" with each other or spending time with the teachers to ask questions. I'm a firm believer that learning together is very important skill to learn at a young age - learning about how others think will help them develop creativity and know what it's like to think outside the box. I have personally looked at K-12 Inc curriculum and it looks fantastic, but schools should teach social skills as well.

On the other hand ACCESS is mostly about taking a class, mostly advanced level or AP courses, for students who do not have resources at his/her school. As a result, there's hardly much student-student interaction, but many are high level students wanting to take extra classes. From my own experience, AP classes were lecture-style classes; consequently, I don't think students would lose out much, in term of student-student interaction, by taking real-time interactive videoconferencing (IVC) courses. AP courses are primarily designed to help students pass the AP exam to get an advanced college credit, so the motivation for actively following the class is already there. However, I still believe students would benefit by having greater student-student interaction (e.g. using an interactive board to discuss sample AP test Q&As).

I believe the two programs are headed in the right direction. Maybe it's because American students have lagged far behind many advanced countries in terms of scores and that is why more "academics" are in place, but I believe it will only result in lack of social skills and creativity if cyber schools don't start making changes for the better.

1 comment:

  1. As you probably know, AP courses are coming under fire precisely because they are just chalk-and-talk and some of the more elite schools are dropping them altogether. I think it would be a pity that the possibilities of online learned were lost by replicated the f2f version online. Certainly IB courses, which are very academic, are quite interactive in their online versions.

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