{"id":1667,"date":"2012-08-26T17:32:49","date_gmt":"2012-08-26T21:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1667"},"modified":"2012-08-26T17:32:49","modified_gmt":"2012-08-26T21:32:49","slug":"virtual-education-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1667","title":{"rendered":"Virtual education redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written plenty about the good, bad and ugly of virtual education<\/a>. I’m glad that some folk appear to be catching on to the fact that it’s not the grand education solution, as demonstrated to some extent in this Ocala Star-Banner article: Virtual schools help some students get ahead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But while parents’ and students’ demands for virtual school instruction are exploding, some educators are concerned that there are not enough data to determine whether the quality of virtual schools is as good as traditional brick-and-mortar schools.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

A report published in January by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado found that in 2010-2011 only 27 percent of the nation’s 93 privately managed virtual schools achieved \u00e2\u20ac\u0153adequate yearly progress\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as defined by the federal government under the No Child Left Behind Act.<\/p>\n

And a U.S. Department of Education study says data on virtual schools is limited and inconclusive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article does touch a little bit on how some students suffer from not having direct in-person contact with teachers, but one essential element wasn’t mentioned at all: how is science education done in a virtual environment? That’s an important subject that absolutely needs to be part of any virtual education discussion! How do you properly conduct hands-on labs and know you are doing them right without direct teacher supervision? Can you get credit for a chemistry course without actually handling any chemicals?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written plenty about the good, bad and ugly of virtual education. I’m glad that some folk appear to be catching on to the fact that it’s not the grand education solution, as demonstrated to some extent in this Ocala … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-qT","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":74,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=74","url_meta":{"origin":1667,"position":0},"title":"The look, and the feel and the smell","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a good article weighing the merits of virtual learning labs on the Internet. Should a student earn credit for mixing chemicals online rather than in a real lab? This article shows that there are no simple answers. It might be better to be in the lab, but what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1342,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1342","url_meta":{"origin":1667,"position":1},"title":"Dissections","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul Cottle wrote on his blog about an ABC news report focused on a push to reduce dissections in schools, replacing them with virtual dissections. There is a Florida connection here. A company is working hard to get its particular dissection program into schools and hooked at least one Florida\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1342#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1597,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1597","url_meta":{"origin":1667,"position":2},"title":"Virtual science education?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Should science education go virtual? To a limited extent, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good thing. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a horrible idea to rush headlong into digitizing entire science courses or replacing hands-on activities with virtual lessons. Unfortunately, a potentially bad trend is developing as politicians and businesses push for more and\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1597#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":413,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=413","url_meta":{"origin":1667,"position":3},"title":"Dropping the curriculum for FCAT","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"And now for some non-evolution science education news ... the FCAT is so dang important that regular science curriculum is being dropped in some schools in order to do an intense FCAT prep. (The FCAT is the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. It's a high stakes test that determines if kids\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2038,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2038","url_meta":{"origin":1667,"position":4},"title":"Accountability in voucher schools","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Companion bills in the state legislature are attempting to expand a school voucher program. The House bill recently got a green light from one of its committee stops, but news accounts point out that the House version may not quite match the version in the Senate. The House bill gives\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 10 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 10 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2038#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1045,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1045","url_meta":{"origin":1667,"position":5},"title":"Followup on FL Virtual School and evolution assignment","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The St. Petersburg Times education blog The Gradebook asked the folks at Florida Virtual School about the issue of students using the online school to opt out of course material they or their families don't like. Unfortunately, I'm still just a bit confused. The blog posts says: In response to\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 10 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 10 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1045#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1668,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions\/1668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}