Blog reflection due by Wednesday How has your thinking about online schools and online schooling changed since the first week?

There are a few things that have change in my perception of online schooling. The first is that it is a lot bigger and more expansive than I thought. There are lots of schools and there are tiers of different types of schools and offerings. Huge investments are being made into state and corporate schools (sometimes a state school is a corporate school).  There looks to be some regulation, though to me it is vague stats. There are an awful lot of coverage about the pitfalls about online ed, but not much beyond puff pieces about the advantages.

When I look at a students to teacher ratio of 40 to 1, I am a little taken aback. When I hear that a parent has to be available for the student for five hours a day, I wonder about all those parents who work. I guess some of them could get jobs a home, but this still seems to me that there are two tiers of virtual schools, one for stay at home parents, probably wealthy or poor but not middle class, and the cost saving online schools where students are herded into a classroom and monitored by a "monitor" (there was no mention of learning specialist/teacher/etc. there except out in the cloud).

I see a lot of potential in virtual classes, especially in offering kids a special experience that that could not get in their own school (either is was not offered, not enough students interested, or remedial/enrichment). I can't see teens managing themselves at home without some adult no less tweens. I am more convinced that a full online class could work in a school setting (before this, I was only convinced that a blended experience would work).