Local Video
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| The rise of the virtual classroom |
By: DAVID HENKE, Staff Writer
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Posted: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 10:34 pm
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An online physical education course. It seems almost oxymoronic, at first.
But for a handful of students at the Northfield High School who spend 30 hours over the semester exercising on their own, take all their tests over the Internet and rarely, if ever, meet with their teacher, it’s a surprising reality.
The course, taught by Leah Sand, is part of a pilot program at the high school. While it’s currently the only online course offering in the school’s curriculum, the class is a sign of things to come, according to NHS Principal Joel Leer.
“I think we would be silly not to acknowledge that it is coming, that it is here,” Leer said. “It’s going to be purposeful and methodical, but I think in five years, we will have a handful of classes where students will have an opportunity to pursue a degree of online learning.”
Online learning has rapidly gained traction nationally in secondary education. According to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, 44 states have significant supplemental online learning or full-time online programs, while 57 percent of public secondary schools in the U.S. provide access to students for online learning. In addition, 173 completely virtual charter schools serve 92,235 students in 18 states.
But locally, the movement is just now gaining momentum.
Leer and several high school teachers are exploring the feasibility of expanding the school’s online curriculum. In a few years, Leer says, the high school may be equipped to offer online courses in all core academic or elective departments — or “hybrid” classes that fuse online elements with in-classroom experience.
Rebecca Messer’s Advanced Placement Physics class falls squarely into the “hybrid” category. Last semester, Messer introduced a software program called Tegrity to her class. The program allows Messer to make audio recordings of all of her classroom lectures, which are accompanied by notes and demonstrations that Messer makes on her classroom’s Smartboard, a digital, touch-sensitive screen that converts her notes into a computer file format.
“We’re just on the cusp, we’re just starting to play around with it,” said Messer. With Tegrity, Messer says, her students can turn in homework assignments online, access her class lectures if they miss a day and easily review prior to tests.
“I liked how I was able to look things up if I didn’t understand them in class,” said sophomore Atticus Christiansen.
Christiansen and fellow AP Physics student Jasmine Spaargaren were able to re-watch each lecture, pausing the recording and rewinding if they didn’t understand a problem or discussion point. The recordings, they said, made learning classroom material much easier. Students can even upload lectures on their iPods and watch them while they’re traveling to sporting events, Messer said.
While Messer’s course leans more toward the in-classroom end of the spectrum, Sand’s physical education course is a fully online class. The format, Sand says, gives students flexibility in their daily schedule, frees up space in the school gymnasium and allows students to set their own pace and style. But there are plenty of drawbacks.
Though Sand is able to virtually monitor the students when they take the course’s online tests over Moodle, a software program, it is easier for them to cheat on their work. The students also don’t have the opportunity for face-to-face interactions with a teacher or other students in the course, unless they schedule a special meeting, Sand said.
Interest in Sand’s class, however, and in courses that incorporate online learning, is growing. Last semester, Sand had six students enrolled in the pilot. Roughly 80 students have already requested to enroll in for this coming fall.
That growth, Leer said, is in part driven by high school students’ own technological literacy.
“To ignore the level of computer expertise that students have is a disservice to them,” Leer said. “We would much rather be on the front end than the back end of opportunities.”
Moodle and Tegrity are both software programs that facilitate online learning for students. Moodle, a software package aimed toward creating a virtual classroom, allows students to take tests, complete homework assignments online, chat and post classroom discussions through online forums.
Tegrity is a “classroom capture” Web service that stores and indexes lectures, information and assignments posted by a teacher to a classroom Web site. The software also has a search function that allows students to find specific discussions or classroom moments for replay.
— David Henke can be reached at dhenke@northfieldnews.com or 645-1100. |
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This article missed one important conclusion. How does one get PE credit online?