West Elk HIgh School Online Classes

[W. Gray]

Last semester, Lindsey Taliaferro, a senior at West Elk High School in Howard, Kan., took a class.com course in oceanography -- a subject that is not offered at her school. Lindsey said she had thoroughly enjoyed the course and learned to take water measurements at a nearby pond. Now she uses a school library computer during a class period to take a personal business course.

Adults are around if she needs help, but self-discipline is still critical. ''You actually have to make yourself do the assignments,'' Lindsey said, ''instead of having a teacher tell you when it is due.''

Tara Hoover, one of Lindsey's classmates in the oceanography course, was less happy with her virtual high school experience and does not plan to take another online course. ''It wasn't very personal,'' she said. ''And if you had a question, you sometimes had to wait three or four days to get an answer.''

New York Times, February 15, 2001

[Rudy Taylor]

This is so cool!  I didn't know about the NY Times article.

[dnalexander]

That is so cool. I have never heard of class.com. I took a look around and it seems very good. If I can I think I may take the Spanish classes and maybe some of the others as a refresher course.

David

[MarkHall]

I was still teaching at WEHS in 2001 and remember when this was published.

The 'virtual classes' were kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, the kids who were self-starters did fine, and were able to get some classes under their belt that otherwise wouldn't have been possible.

However, the other 80% were frustrated and confused.

There were also some issues keeping the hardware/software working as it should (they called me when they had a problem).

Good concept though - but not yet perfected circa 2001.

-Mark