Online teaching tools catching on in traditional schools

Amy Hetzner:

When students from her 10th-grade honors class returned from summer break, Arrowhead High School teacher Kathy Nelson organized an online open-house activity to discuss three novels they had read during their time off.

After six hours, the English teacher at the Hartland school had a 178-page transcript of her students' dialogue and a new appreciation of the power the remote technology of the Internet can lend to the sometimes intensely interpersonal field of teaching.

"You think of computers as being cold," she said. "But they were really into some deep topics."

Even as fully virtual schools face an uncertain future after a state appeals court this week found one such school violated state laws, most of today's students are more likely to encounter an online learning experience like that practiced in Nelson's honors English classroom.

Instead of replacing the face-to-face interaction of a brick-and-mortar school with a virtual-school experience, Nelson and other teachers throughout the Milwaukee area are using online discussion boards, textbooks, surveys and collaborative features to extend class time beyond the traditional school day.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 14, 2007 8:19 AM
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