Online Education | eSchoolNews.com Special Report: Blended Learning

Originally Posted By Jennifer Nastu, Contributing Editor @ eSchoolNews
22-JUL-11

Combining the best elements of face-to-face and online instruction, these six schools have adopted various blended learning models successfully. Here’s how…

It’s a typical weekday, and Leah Rogers is greeting students as they arrive at school. She hasn’t seen any of these kids in a while, because they haven’t set foot in the building for a week … but that’s by design.

Rogers is acting head of the Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS), an innovative school that is a cross between a traditional school and a virtual one: Students work online from home four days a week and come to school for the fifth.

In a typical school environment, all students in a classroom have to learn the same thing at same time. But at CVCS, students can work on material at their own pace, and educators can tailor their instruction to each student individually to fill the gaps in that child’s knowledge.

“In a traditional setting, students are at the mercy of the teacher, who decides how fast they’re learning [and] how much time they have to spend on the subject,” Rogers said. “We give those who ‘get it’ faster the ability to move on.”

Although students are working from home most of the time, they appreciate the chance to come to school one day a week to see classmates and their teachers face to face. The occasional face time is like an anchor that keeps them from drifting too far off their course of studies, supporters say.  Continue Reading…