Blog Post Five

Picture One

I do not think I started this project with a clear perspective on my topic, E-Learning. I simply only had my own views of online classes, from my own experience, but I knew that my experience wasn’t representative of all aspects of E-Learning.  I have only taken a few online classes; one was a health class in high school. I took this online class as an alternative to taking it in the classroom so I could take the different elective classes, like Spanish, choir and drama that I wanted to take during the day. When going into my counselor’s office to discuss this option, even she told me not to listen to the content of this online class, that I didn’t need to complete the community service portion of the class, and that I should just simply pass the class to gain the necessary health credit. While the project would have made the class more engaging, the only way they checked to see if we did, in fact, complete our ‘project’ was to click a button at the end of the class saying, “I completed my project”. I probably should have done this community service project, but as a high school senior taking 3 extra classes on top of my regular school day, plus working at 5:00 AM 5 days a week, that clearly did not happen. Up until this point, that was my only experience with online classes and E-learning. I have learned so much throughout this experience about the different ways to take online classes, the different reasons for online classes, and the different pros and cons for E-Learning. I have learned that the reasons for taking online classes span from a desire from students to take more challenging classes, but who don’t have schools who can afford to pay teachers to teach them, to students who simply need classes to work around their schedule. I really admire those students who take online advanced placement courses, because their school cannot offer those courses. It must take so much personal drive to take such challenging courses online, and a ton of self-motivation to complete these classes while actually learning and understanding the material.

                  From my research of E-Learning, I discovered The Online High School. This is a program that offers online classes to students. What is different about this school is the co-op model they follow. When a traditional school wants to get involved with The Online High School, one teacher needs to teach a course for The Online High School, then up to 25 students from that school can take any course they offer. This way, they keep the number of courses they can offer up, and class sizes down. I think this would be an awesome program to get involved with in my future teaching career. Also, doing the research for this project I have discovered that not all online classes are simply an electronic textbook with exams. Online classes can still have interactive and hands on learning. The idea of hands on and interactive learning that I have learned from this project does not only have to apply to online classes, it will also teach me to make sure that even in a regular classroom setting, my students are always learning in an engaging and interesting way.