Well I have heard more about that K12 internet program. I didn't hear rave reviews. At a conference I recently went to the speaker was talking about K12 and he said that it was horrible because it didn't take into account the individual student so ESL students or struggling learners could easily be left behind. I also think that there is a huge equality factor in online programs because not all students have parents that have the time or the education to extensively help their child with school. Many students have a really hard time learning on the internet with no human contact.


On a totally unrelated subject:

My daughter's friend got a rash so I was googling to see if I could guess whether it was a strawberry allergy or chicken pox so that I could keep an eye on my daughter if it looked like something contagious. I have googled illnesses many times, and I usually find several articles and a few pictures of whatever it is that I am exploring. This time a video came up where a pediatrician talked about strawberry allergies. What was interesting relating to this class is that I had never really thought about the literacy required to google a child's illness until the video came up. When I got to thinking about it, a person has to be pretty literate to get any help from those sites, digitally and otherwise. A person needs to be digitally literate in order to navigate the computer to find what they are looking for in the first place and they must also be able to read and understand high level words in order to make meaning of what the site says about the illness. Videos, especially if they are found on a very easy to navigate site like YouTube could create some equality for those who aren't literate because really, in the digital age, everyone deserves to be able to check their child's symptoms on the internet (even if sometimes that just leads to paranoia!). I remember when my oldest son was young my parents bought me a book of common child illnesses. Every time he got sick I would refer to that book. He is only 11, and now I would never think of looking in a book to find a child's symptoms. Interesting how that works.

My question is, is it better that things are so available in video now, or do you think that videos being available to people encourage people not to practice literacy. I feel conflicted. In a way I always feel it is a little sad when audio/visual things replace texts, but in a way I like that audio/visual things might make directions, instructions and information available to everyone.

http://www.k12.com/

So as a recent laid off teacher (unfortunately) I have begun the great job search for next year. While searching, I found something that I thought you all might find interesting. It is called K12. It is a free, online public school which uses real teachers to deliver curricula to students. In high school teachers give online lectures, they work with students individually, and they hold office hours. Students spend about 5-6 hours a day on coursework. For elementary school it looks like it is sort of a home school situation. It says parents should expect to spend 3-5 hours a day supporting their student's education.

I think this prospect of an online school is interesting, I am curious where it is going though. In the future will all schools be online? Will all homes have access to computers and high speed internet so that students can have equal access to online schools? There are definitely ups and downs to this whole idea. A major down right away is that many parents cannot work with their elementary school child long enough to make this work. There are also issues because I don't really see how students would participate in group work. This being said, perhaps if students are in virtual classes they get each others emails and phone numbers and do projects together? This would be pretty cool potentially (I am not really sure how it works, I am going to look more into it, but I couldn't find answers to my questions right away.

I thought of an Archie comic that I read once. They were showing how in the future there would be virtual schools and the kids thought it was really neat because they could get up later and go to school in their pajamas, but then they started thinking about things like (Archie) no girls, no prom, no sports, no theater, and generally no socializing. That being said, I think there are many kids these days who just want to get through school and don't care about those things. I was one of them! Now that I am older I regret not doing more fun social stuff in high school, but at the time I could have cared less. I know that many of the students at the school at teach at (this year, ha!) feel the same way. The web site also said that it is targeted at kids who are struggling, kids who are going too fast for their regular classes, kids who are home schooled, have military parents, or who are home bound. All of these things make sense for why a kid would take an internet course. Part of the reason that I like online classes is because I have a family and don't always have time to go to UNM to take classes. With the rate of teen pregnancy, it is possible high school students sometimes have this issue too.

I am going to explore the K12 web site some more. I am finding out some pretty interesting things. With the overpopulation of schools (sometimes not enough desks for the kids) maybe online schools are something of the future. Imagine the possibilities if schools didn't have to spend so much money maintaining a building. Wow, think of the implications. No heating, air conditioning, lights, maintenance.... states could save a lot of the money that is currently spent on education. With all the savings maybe they could afford to give scholarships to the kids that needed computers or internet? Of course, once again, the downside is that not all kids are self-motivated enough to attend an internet class that they don't have to be at (though I think that this would happen mostly in high school, in which case those kids ditch real classes so I don't know if there would be much of a difference) and I don't know if this could work for elementary because not all parents can supervise so much. It is an interesting concept though. I applied for a job at one of these, so who knows, maybe I will get to find out even more about how this works. For now I am going to surf their site some more and see what I can find out!

Jobs in our technological age

Alright, so the list of the best and worst jobs for 2012 came out, and I think we can go ahead and officially say that we need to get our kids some digital skills.

Worst Jobs

1. Lumberjack
2. Dairy Farmer
3. Enlisted Military Soldier
4. Oil Rig Worker
5. Reporter (Newspaper)
6. Waiter/Waitress
7. Meter Reader
8. Dishwasher
9. Butcher
10. Broadcaster

Notice that these are almost all manual jobs (don't use the computer at all). The interesting thing is that reporter and Broadcaster is in there. I was reading an article about it and it said that in the digital age less and less of us are reading the paper or watching the news on TV. I think that is really true. I almost never watch the news. When I get to work in the morning and my MSN homepage pops up, I look to see if there is anything interesting going on. If I hear whispers of something interesting I google it and find the news story. Newspapers might be a thing of the past in the near future. So the best jobs?

Best Jobs

1. Software Engineer
2. Actuary
3. Human Resources Manager
4. Dental Hygienist
5. Financial Planner
6. Audiologist
7. Occupational Therapist
8. Online Advertising Manager
9. Computer Systems Analyst
10. Mathematician

Most of these jobs have to do with the digital age. For goodness sake, software engineer is the first one up there! I think dental hygienist is a weird one, but I guess we all need great teeth. Still, I think the trend in general is pretty obvious. So what happens to our kids with limited access to technology? I guess they can become reporters.