Alex is a high school senior who has struggled with school all his life. A bright kid, Alex nevertheless has a hard time staying engaged in the classroom and consequently has a history of poor performance and discipline problems. His parents regularly meet with school personnel to try to find the key to unlocking Alex's potential.
This year, they may have found it.
Alex will attend school for only two hours a day this year. The rest of his time will be spent on work-study projects and a distance learning program administered by the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction's Division of Independent Study.
This fully accredited high school curriculum offers coursework for students in fifth through 12th grade. It offers both traditional independent correspondence courses and over 20 online courses.
"Working independently online has engaged Alex in learning again," said his mother, Sharon. "He is excited to be freed from the slower pace of classroom learning and is motivated to achieve more."
While correspondence courses are nothing new, computer technology can make them more practical and powerful for greater numbers of students. High-tech distance learning can be as simple as teachers and students communicating back and forth via e-mail, or as complex as interactive broadcasts through satellite and computer networking.
The keys are presenting curricula in a way that engages students in learning and making education accessible to students in even the smallest and most remote locations.
Benefits for Students
Programs such as Canada's Cyberhigh and its parochial partner, North Star Academy, connect real teachers with students online and facilitate chat rooms where students from around the world interact with one another in virtual classrooms.
"For students, the computer becomes a virtual window to the rest of the school," said Neal Peterson, associate director of educational technology for Wycliffe Bible Translators. "Once a student has logged in, classes in which he or she has enrolled appear as icons on the desktop.
"Teachers can attach lessons and assignments to e-mail messages or may tell students where to get information, in textbooks or in Cyberhigh's virtual library. Online meeting areas include boys' and girls' locker rooms and a parents' lounge."
Peterson helps coordinate North Star Academy services for families engaged in translation and literacy activities in remote areas of the world. These families eagerly participate in online learning to avoid sending their middle- and high-school students away to boarding schools.
"Distance Learning challenges many of our preconceived notions of what school is, but it is difficult to argue with its success," said Peterson. "It offers teachers new and exciting ways to deliver education to under-served populations of families."
Such families may include students who remain at home out of necessity (for health reasons, for example) or by choice.
As homeschoooling grows more popular, more schools may embrace the challenge of partnering with parents to shape a program that best meets the needs of each individual child. Technology-based distance learning will open more opportunities to these learners.