Online High

EarthTimes.org announced the opening of yet another Insight School, this one in Oregon. See below:
This week, hundreds of students will go online to participate in orientation sessions with Insight School of Oregon, Oregon’s new online high school. When classes begin on January 29th, students will log on to well-designed virtual classrooms that leverage teachers and technology to provide a quality education with flexibility.

A quote from J.D. McMahan, Head of School, about the new venture:

“Insight is an option that works for students who struggle with their traditional high school experience because they are advanced learners, pursuing full-time careers in athletics or the arts, holding down jobs, having a difficult time socially — you name it.”

Elizabeth Begley has traveled to Panama, El Salvador and Mexico to play tennis. She has hit ground strokes in Scotland, sliced volleys in St. Vincent and smashed serves all over the United States.

Guess how young Elizabeth finds time to earn a high school diploma? Yes, she’s an online high school student. In this case, a student at Laurel Springs School. LSS is fast becoming the school of choice for tennis players. The school now has 300 tennis players among its student body. By the way, 40% of the 3,000 Laurel Springs students are athletes.

As loyal readers know, one group that uses online high schools are those many folks engaged in serious training for sports. The Journal Times offers an article on Eric Thompson, a student at iQ Academy Wisconsin. iQ Academy is the largest online high school in that state.

Something particularly worth reading in the article is the fact that not everyone is excited about the prospect of online high schools. Note that the school mentioned is not iQ Academy.

The debate in the Legislature followed a lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state teachers union, against an online school run by the Northern Ozaukee School District. School district officials there are appealing the court ruling in December against Wisconsin Virtual Academy.

Since I know this is a topic of interest to many of you, I would like to point you in the direction of the new Cheap College Degrees blog. Eventually, it will have a great amount of information (because quite a lot has already been created and it is a matter of putting it up on the site).

See Cheap College Degrees.

I really like to receive questions and occasionally share some here. I received this one this week:

I am 20 years old and I don’t have a high school diploma because I dropped out of school. I really want it now. It’s been my goal for a while. I was going to go to Job Corps, but I am not getting along with my grandma, so I will be moving back home. Since I won’t be able to do Job Corps, I want to earn my diploma online. What do I have to do to get started and do I have to pay anything?

M.C.

First, let me congratulate you on the most difficult part: You’ve made the decision to change your life.

How can you get started? First, find out how much of a high school education you have already had. Don’t look at the number of years because that is often meaningless. Instead, look at the number of high school credits that you have earned. You can likely get a copy of your high school transcript from your old high school. If not, they can tell you where to go to get one.

Will you have to pay anything? It is difficult to know without knowing in which state you live. However, the one and only way not to need to pay for an online high school is if you live in one of those very few states that have an online charter high school. Because charter schools are public schools, they are free. Your state or county department of education should be able to tell you if you have one available.

Should you not have one available, then I would encourage you to take a look at the fine online high schools that we offer on this site. The costs vary widely if that is a concern. I think a good place to start is to contact some of them and have them mail you information.

After you have received the information, begin to ask the schools the right questions. One example would relate to how many credits they will accept in transfer. The answer should be most or all. Again, you do not want to repeat what you have already done.

I would encourage you to come back and ask another question when you get to this stage. I would be happy to help you come up with the right questions to ask.

I have written about this phenomenon elsewhere and I am glad to see that the Dayton Daily News has picked up on it as well. There is only one way to get a GED certificate and that is through taking a bottom-in-the-chair-in-a-classroom version. There is no online GED.

Yes, there are a few sites that provide practice for the test, but that is all. Any organization that says that they are offering the exam online is lying. Period.

Read the entire article here.

Rafael Granados, a leading educational technologist in online course development, has been selected to serve as executive director of UC College Prep Online (UCCP), a statewide program that produces and distributes online courses to benefit California K-12 students. Granados assumed the position on December 17, 2007, after a national recruitment.

To see his plans and to see the changes being made to this prestigious program, wander over and take a read.

In days past, most of the online programs at the college level were at second (or third or fourth) tier schools with the Harvards and the Yales not particularly interested. This has begun to change and, to me, this could be a real boon for serious high school students who want to learn at an elite level.

Either to supplement what you are doing in your public school or in your homeschooling, you should consider taking advantage of what is offered by MIT for free. This may be where some of the elites draw the line; not giving course credit. Yes, they might provide some resources for learning, but may not give you credit for doing so.

MIT has an initiative called OpenCourseWare that provides instruction for many of their courses. This includes lecture notes, readings, tests, and sometimes video lectures. However, no one is grading any of it, so you need to trust yourself not to cheat.

I think that this could work equally well for serious-minded college and high school students. To read more about it, see:

Internet opens elite colleges to all