Advantages and Disadvantages of Online School

1. What are three advantages to online school?
2. What are three disadvantages to online school?

These are the questions that my professor, Mr. Becksfort (introduced in a previous post), would like my/us to answer this evening instead of having class... which was pretty sweet...


For me three advantages of online schooling are:

1. For children who do not fit well into the "good student" stereotype, they are able to use online school as a way to learn at their own pace, without the distractions or pressures of a "structured" classroom.
2. I'm going to make the assumption here that by "online school" it does not necessarily mean replacing a school building. So, an advantage of online school, in this aspect, is that it is a way to extend subject learning beyond the classroom. The teacher can teach a portion of the lesson in the classroom, then instruct the students to go home and complete the other portion of the lesson online....
3. (Reason number 2 extends into number 3.) ...Thereby requiring the students learn independently, while also allowing them to explore the subject at their own pace and possibly following their own interests.
4. Since I only had to do three, I'm going to stop here, but there are many more I can think of.

The disadvantages of online schooling are:

1. I personally enjoy the classroom setting, being a part of a classroom with other students, getting immediate feedback from the teacher, along with certain level of accountability. So, for me an online school setting does not allow for these interactions. Thus allowing me/the student to not feel like I need to do the best I can do (possibly to seek approval from the teacher or my classmates) and doing only what is needed to get by... see point 4 above :)
2. There a quite a few children who are unable to be connected to the internet beyond the school building or a library. If the teacher would like her students to do an online activity as a part of the lesson, this fact may keep some of her students away from doing all they could do. Of course accommodations can be made, such as allowing them to do the work on the classroom computer or they could go to a friend's house. But this takes away the advantage of "working at their own pace"
3. The amount of distractions that are available to take the student off track are abundant... in the time that it has taken me to write these answers my mother has called me twice, I had to turn on some music and my husband is looking through another web page next to me and I keep looking over there... its practically a miracle that I have not checked facebook at least once. 

Online Presentation stuffs

Today in my Tech & Topics class we discussed the various online presentation tools available. Our professor, Michael Becksfort, has his own blog with a post about all we talked about so I won't tell you about it here... but I will link you to his blog post so that you can see what I saw.

But I do want to tell you about two of the ones I thought were most interesting.
**First, Prezi. When I first heard about this site, I was super excited! So excited that that weekend I went home and made one for a meeting I had that same week (you can see that first prezi in my previous post). It is just so exciting how I am able to take a presentation from a boring "linear" slide show to a visual pleasure. 
**Second, was the Glogger. Mr. Becksfort, just introduced this one to me, and I haven't had a chance to explore it very much, but it looks like great fun! Anything to make teaching and learning creative and fun, I'm game for!


I think that we are also supposed to say what we think of only presentations. My opinion is that they are GREAT! The ability to take our work wherever we want to, to work on it whenever we want to, and allow anyone to see it AND add to it, is just an awesome opportunity for teachers... and their students. Like Mr. Becksfort said these online presentation tools "gives [us] the possibility of an outside assignment," beyond the classroom walls... Its like an extra lesson without adding class time.

Alright, that is all I'm typing today. My battery is almost dead and there is lasagna waiting for me at home.

My first of many Prezi presentations

Enjoy this Prezi I made a few weeks ago for an Open House at my work/church.
(By the way, Prezi is a VERY fancy way to do presentations and is found at prezi.com)