Blog Assignment #13

"My Teacher Is an App"

"Nationwide, an estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, up 40% in the last three years." This article, "My Teacher Is an App" by Stephanie Banchero and Stephanie Simon, appeared in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. The focus of this article was "cyber-education". Specifically online school for grades K-12 vs. traditional schools. It touched on how standardized testing scores between the two compare. One factor the article mentioned was that some students test scores depend on how long they've been apart of the online program/school. Typically, the longer the student is apart of the program the better the test results. Another topic the article touched on was the possible financial benefits/disadvantages there are to online schools for school districts.

As a future educator, I'm somewhat torn with the idea of cyber-education. One of the reasons I want to be an Elementary school teacher is because I love being around children. So if I was a "cyber-teacher" I wouldn't get to communicate, teach and ultimately spend face to face time with the children. At the same time, I completely understand that some children are on a higher level than other children. In this case, I think that online schooling would be ideal for them, specifically the fact that they can be in a 4th grade reading class instead of a 1st grade reading class if they are already on that level. In that case, that would be the most beneficial situation for the child and as an educator I need/want to have their best interest in mind.