In the Zone This Month: May 2009
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The History of Education…and Why NONE of It Matters!
Virtual Learning
by Andrew Moore
We must continually question and examine the work we give students to complete. If it is better suited online, provide it online.
I sit here today reminiscing about one of my first high school field trips. It was freshman year and I was getting my art requirement out of the way with a course called “Art Fundamentals.” I have since changed my views on art in education but to a 15-year-old boy, the work of the great artists was far from important. We had spent the last 2 weeks “preparing” for our trip. Slide after slide of famous works of art flashed on the screen in the dark room. The humming of the slide projector was soothing. Mrs. Smith’s voice, just as soothing. Mike’s snoring from beside me…not so much! Even as bored as we were during class, most of us were excited to get out of the classroom and see what was really so special about these works of art, up close and personal.
The bus left school in the morning, taking the freeway downtown to the Columbus Museum of Art. Now I considered myself well traveled in the world of educational field trips (more on that later!), but I had never been to the Museum of Art. I was kind of excited. After driving around the block a few times looking for a place to park our 35-foot yellow vehicle, we were finally allowed to enter the hallowed ground housing the works of Picasso, Monet, and Renoir. The entrance to the building was impressive. So impressive, it was hard for Mrs. Smith to get us off the ledges that ran alongside the multilayered steps heading up to the entrance.
Once inside, we were to complete a scavenger hunt. As we wove in and out of the museum's regular guests, we changed our quest from examining great works of art to finding all the answers before everyone else so we could hang out at the concession stand or on the cool ledges by the front steps.
We have all experienced these types of field trips. Is there a place for them in schools? Yes, I believe there is. Can we do better? Yes, I believe we can. The Internet and virtual learning can help.
Let’s take that same freshman art class and have Mrs. Smith work together with the ancient history teacher and study the great Egyptian works of art that are all over the world. During the study of ancient civilizations, students can travel to France and visit the Louvre and its amazing collection of Egyptian art.1 When finished there, they can travel, not by big yellow bus, but by a simple click of the mouse to the Smithsonian Museum and their African American Masters2 exhibit where they can find similarities between the artwork of ancient Egypt and those of the slaves in early America.
Virtual learning is not new! The Open University in England began as a mostly correspondence school as early as 1969.3 It finally reached wide acceptance in the late 1980s. The University of Phoenix began offering online courses as far back as 1997.4 Their enrollment is now the largest in the world at over 345,000 students. Why are they successful? Because online or virtual schools allow students to be self-directed. They typically have choices about which courses to take, when to complete the assignments, and where they complete their tasks. Many of us who have taken online classes are happy to admit that we have completed class assignments either in our pajamas or at the beach!
Successful online experiences occur not because they are online, but because they are part of good quality teaching.
Virtual learning is not just at the college level. The rise of online high schools has increased greatly in just the last few years. The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow “is the first and most popular tuition-free online public school in Ohio educating over 9,000 students in grades K-12.”5 The Ohio Virtual Academy was named the Great Schools’ Parents’ Choice winner for public schools in Ohio in January 2009.6
Virtual learning is not just about online classes. One of the best reasons to use the Internet in your classroom is to provide experiences and resources to students that can’t be garnered inside the walls of your classroom or during a typical school day. Most teachers today have access to school-sponsored or free classroom web pages. These pages can provide extension activities, curriculum ties, and self-directed learning opportunities to their students 24/7. Course management software like Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai are becoming popular with K-12 districts to provide online learning environments that support the face-to-face classroom. Teachers can moderate student discussions and chats on current classroom topics. They can also collect assignments and provide timely feedback to students through electronic drop boxes or online text assignments.
Are all online virtual learning experiences successful? I believe successful online experiences occur not because they are online, but because they are part of good quality teaching. Just as there are subpar face-to-face experiences, there are also subpar online experiences. What makes an online experience worthwhile?
They provide opportunities that aren’t possible in a traditional classroom setting.
- Virtual field trips
- Expanded research possibilities
- Moderated discussions where everyone gets to talk (not just the loud ones!)
- Experimentation that may not be safe in a real environment. Ohio University is holding many of their more dangerous or costly labs in the virtual world of Second Life.7 Many students are no longer physically dissecting frogs, but are doing so virtually at Froguts.com.
They provide opportunities that aren’t possible at their current school.
- Course offerings such as foreign language or AP in which their school’s enrollment isn’t high enough to warrant an entire class
- Remediation or credit recovery classes
They allow teachers more opportunities to provide timely and relevant feedback. The feedback can be:
- embedded in the activity.
- given by peers in a controlled environment.
- thoughtful and complete without as much time spent sorting through the piles of papers.
They can help provide an increased and authentic audience.
- Student galleries
- Online Blogs with community feedback
- ePortfolios
They can provide classroom resources “any time, any place.”
- Homework help/hotline
- Research links
- Alternative learning opportunities to meet various learning styles—animations, videos, tutorials
- Practice and review activities
Although not conclusive, this list begins to show the power of providing virtual learning environments for students. As mentioned earlier, good teaching is good teaching whether face to face or virtual.
The last question that many ask when discussing virtual education is, “Will online learning take over traditional face-to-face learning?” I personally don’t think so. How many of our memories of school relate to the sights, sounds, and smells (can you remember middle school locker rooms?) we experienced while learning about Manifest Destiny. How many of us remember the order of the planets only because of the guy in class that couldn't stop laughing every time the teacher said Uranus? These kinds of things only happen in traditional schools.
Can students receive a good quality education solely online? Yes. And there is good news if you are concerned about the social aspects of students who don’t attend school with their peers. Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever8 by John Wade and Mitchell Beck shows that students of the gaming generation are becoming great additions to the workplace.
I believe a mix is necessary. We must continually question and examine the work we give students to complete. If it is better suited online, provide it online. If it would be better face-to-face while trudging through the mud at the local land lab, let’s do that.
As someone who grew up with parents who liked to travel to places like Gettysburg and Jamestown on family vacations, I wish the Internet had been around back then. Maybe my parents would have been satisfied with the virtual tour and taken us to the beach instead!
References
- “Another Way to Visit the Louvre….” Louvre Museum. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
- “African American Masters.” Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
- “About the OU: History of the OU.” The Open University. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
- Levine, Shira. (1997, May 26). “Desktop degrees, University of Phoenix takes education on-line.” TELEPHONY Online. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
- “What is ECOT?” Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
- “K12’s Ohio Virtual Academy Named the Parent’s Choice Winner.” K12. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
- “Ohio University Second Life Campus.” VITAL Lab: Virtual Immersive Technologies and Arts for Learning. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
- Wade, John C., & and Beck, Mitchell. (2004). Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Andrew Moore is Educational Technology Lead in the New Albany-Plain Local School District, New Albany, Ohio.
