Online education programs, such as Schoology, can greatly benefit our school systems if our educators know how to design and implement it. After working at an Alternative Education Program (AEP) campus for the last three years, I have learned firsthand that there are several types of students who would benefit greatly by adding online education as part of the districts’ learning curriculum. We have many students who are pregnant, or who already have babies and as a result have very poor attendance in school. We also have several who are fathers who must work to support their new families, and many can only work during the day. These are the most common, but only a few of the reasons that I believe online learning can be a huge benefit for districts preventing what would surely become drop outs from happening.
The course I have designed will be used for Exit level Social Studies TAKS preparation. The portion that I have already designed for this class was strictly for the United States History TAKS objective. In the future, however, I would like to add the rest of the Social Studies TAKS objectives as well. When complete, I will have an avenue that will allow my students to be able to catch up if they miss one day, or if they miss several days. This will also allow me to cover extra little interesting tid-bits that I otherwise may not have had the opportunity to share in class.
I plan to integrate this online course as a precursor before I cover the material in class either to help familiarize my students with the content or for them to review it if they have covered it in years past. This will also allow me to cover subjects more quickly, and to better insure that they know the material as I will now have another way to assess them.
I guess the only question that I have about online learning is where was it when I was in High School? Personally, I have never been a good classroom learner. It got to the point in High School that I just gave up because I felt that I could not do the work. I coasted along through High School, and my first three years of college with mostly Cs and Ds. After taking a couple of years off of school, I took a distance learning class, and realized, for whatever reason, that I could learn very easily that way. I have greatly enjoyed this online program that we are taking, and I feel that I am more able to learn easier using this format than I could if I was in a classroom setting trying to learning it.
Currently, our AEP School uses an online program for the purposes I described above. While it is a wonderful program, it costs our district lots of money to use. I have already shared the idea of using Schoology for next year with my principal, mainly because our district is cutting costs where ever possible, as I am sure many other districts are as well. I also plan to share it with my collegues. While I'm sure there are several other teachers who will run the other way, I think that using this tool can greatly assist teachers in the classroom help students become successful. To me, that is the goal that every teacher should have.
