Distance Education

Cons:

1) Cost of videos and books

2) Doesn’t allow one-one, correspondence when needed. It can be impersonal when you can’t talk to an actual person and you’re confused about something.

3) Computer’s may fail at times.

4) Students may not have the chance to interact socially with other children their own age.

5) Field trips and guest speakers may be hard to schedule and fit in with a virtual environment.

6) Mis-communications may arise more easily.

Pros:

1) Helpful when kids need to stay at home with the family.

2) Allows for independence.

3) Gives kids the opportunity to learn how to work well with computers and be computer literate.

4) Allows the students time to choose when to learn on their own.

5) It is flexible, so when something happens (in the family, etc.), it’s easy to put off the work for another time.

There are a few ways to determine the readiness of students to participate in distance delivery. For example, placement testing and interviews with students/parents online or in person would be a few ways to determine student readiness. I think the online/in person interviews would be better than the placement testing just because people can really get to know and understand one another better when communicating one on one in person.

There are some things teachers would need to do to be able to teach in a virtual school. Teachers would have to know computers well and be computer literate so that if students or parents are having problems with getting the programs on their computers to work, you can guide them through the programs and some computer problems they may be having. The teacher will need to be available to the students even though they may not be in a physical classroom. The teacher would need to be the facilitator and would basically oversee the online lessons and class activity through the technology being used.