When I was first exposed to students trying to get used to college-level courses, I could only sympathize and try to make their lives easier by helping with basic tutorials in Office software, especially Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Although they were masters at texting, and posting to FaceBook or You Tube, many were lost when it came to styling a research paper according to MLA or APA. Furthermore, many had no understanding of the demands a college- level course would place on their lives.
Distance learning is growing in ways faster than we can accurately predict. The very nature of the web allows for expansion in directions we could not have accomplished ten years ago.
Children growing up today will never know a world without internet access (or some variation yet undiscovered), and I believe we must offer them online options to complement traditional learning methods.
This fall, the Community College System of New Hampshire will begin offering eStart courses to high school students. These 100% online college-level courses will be taught by our facuty, and will enable high-school students to earn concurrent high-school and college credit.
This is very new for our System, and promises to grow as rapidly as our Head Start Program .
View the press release: http://www.ccsnh.edu/news/estart.html
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4 comments:
Imagine, "Children growing up today will never know a world without internet access". Make you think.
Related to that, is I remember cursive in school when I was growing up, do they still teach cursive? I try to write in cursive today and my hand wants to go in the opposite direction of my brain resulting in a scribbled mess.
Hum, English 101, Text Messaging.
I worry a little, though, about removing younger students from the social learning that takes place in a classroom. I was thinking about this recently when reminiscing about graduate school. The interactions that took place outside of the classroom had a lot to do with my development of the vocabulary and point of view of an academic in my field. Similarly, there is much to be learned for high school students in that particular social milieu (including some things they would be better off not learning, I know). The point is, I don't mind the idea of supplementing high school education with some online course, but I don't think it should be primarily online for most students.
Hi, Teresa,
I think it's great that NH is offering online course to high school students who may not otherwise get a chance to take that particular subject in high school. I am going to assume that most of these students will still be in the actual classroom for the majority of their courses.
David mentioned the lack of the social learning if all courses are taken online in high school and I thought of the many children in America who are home-schooled. What's the impact of the removal from daily social interaction with peers?
Christy
Christy,
I used to have a fairly negative view of home schooling until I started teaching some of them in college. They were, every single one of them, very bright, well-educated, and well-adjusted. I know that is anecdotal evidence, but since I am the one who experienced it, it has had quite an impact. Keep in mind that home schooled children do learn through the social interaction with a parent and siblings, and in addition, most home schoolers have a lot of social interaction through extracurricular activities--more than school kids I think.
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