Your online school course
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Did you know anyone can now sign up for an online school course at a virtual school or a cyber school?
Although there are tens of thousands of commercial and non-accredited courses available online, the term “virtual school” in general terms means an “accredited school”.
Any online school course is given through the internet. If you check out the schools on this site, you will be able to read about different online courses. You can now complete an online course in just about anything. If you look in my home school section, you will find that even the BBC offers different online courses that could be easily modified for schools to use.
If you are looking for an online high school course, you must check it is accredited, or it will not be recognised, and while the course could be interesting or highly educational, it won’t be recognised or be able to be used to boost the number of high school credits you have.
Many of the states in the United States offer their own virtual schools, where a pupil is registered by their social security number and then offered a suitable school course. These schools can have thousands of pupils attending at any one time.
There are many ways to complete online courses. Instructional models range from fully independent self-paced courses to teacher facilitated courses. These different courses are useful to students who have different learning styles. Some like to be responsible for their own learning, while others – who don’t like attending school – may still need to motivated and guided along the courses. Students keep in touch with the teacher via web communication tools and collaborate with other students – just like in a conventional school. In some schools, the students can still communicate directly with their teachers via the phone.
Some schools that offer online school learning also offer a brand new computer for any student who needs one. Generally these computers will be running the Microsoft operating systems such as XP or Vista. You may also be given an Apple computer or one running on Linux.
If you do sign up for an online school course, you will find these are 4 different types of assessment.
- Written assessments are very common:- For these you will need to have access to a word processing package such as Microsoft Word or Sun’s free alternative (Word Compatible), ‘Open Office’. These files are then uploaded and marked by the teacher.
- Using worksheets:- These can include multiple choice, matching, short answers and other questions. These are ideal as these can also form examples of past papers – getting students use to the vocabulary they will need to use in their final exams. The other big advantage of this system is that much of this work can be self marking – meaning an immediate feedback. Teachers will also manually mark and comment on pupils work.
- Discussions:- These are very useful for teacher assessment, so that the teacher and the rest of the class can compare and test their understanding. These are rarely included in the final grade of a task – unless as part of an oral exam or an oral presentation.
- Exams:- These are the final way of testing knowledge. These normally account for a large percentage of the final score of an assessment, and are usually taken at the end of modules, or at the mid and end of points of the term. They are also very frequent at the end of schooling.
The scoring systems are generally the same as in any public school system in the United States.
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