Final post/conclusion

     After a significant amount of research I have finally come to a conclusion. My conclusion is that yes, online schooling does have its pros and cons that equal each other out, however online schooling isn't for everyone. Some students may benefit from online schooling while another student can struggle with it. So in general online schooling is meant for a certain kind of schooling it was not designed to be used by every student.
      The sources that I found provided clear information which allowed me to come to this conclusion. most of these resources were first hand experiences from students while other resources were from professionals and or came from case studies.
      I really enjoyed this project and I hope to continue blogging because it is pretty cool.

I found this interesting article that describes 5 different perspectives about online schooling. These 5 perspectives give examples of why and how online schooling can benefit a student.
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/05/25/5-surprising-perspectives-online-schools/

          Here is another interesting article that gives a list of the pros and cons of online education I really like this article because both of the lists are even which shows that the author who wrote this article is not bias of online education. Definitely check out this article to see some of the listed reasons why online education can be good and why it can be bad.

http://www.topeducationdegrees.org/faq/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-an-online-education/

Online school Q and A

Heres a cool video of a girl answering questions from Instagram about her personal experience with online schooling.

Pros and Cons of Online Education by Dhirendra Kumar

       This was a really interesting article that brought a few new reasons why online education can be beneficial to education and be wrong for a persons education. This article is from the North Carolina State University and was written by Dhirendra Kumar. The author first goes into detail and explains how online education is now growing and becoming more popular and appealing to those looking for a higher education. The author attributes this growth to several reasons. one of these reasons are more students are wanting to start their careers while they are advancing their education at the same time. She also attributes the growth of online education to the fact that it is much cheaper than a traditional education. 

             However, the author does state that online education is not for everyone. In the article Kumar states that online education is meant for a special kind of student, one who is independent and great at time management. However a student who is more dependent and needs a structured class room should steer away from online schooling and continue with a traditional education. 

But over all there are definitely pros and cons when it comes to online education. 

            Kumar first goes over the pros of online education which goes as follows: convince, less expensive, technology, and additional benefits. These four reasons can definitely make online education seem more appealing than a traditional education. For example, when it comes to the technology of online education, a student who is enrolled in an online course can practically access their course work anywhere there is internet access which defiantly relieves the burden of having to go to a class room every day or every other day.

          There are some cons to an online education which can sway a student into the direction of a traditional education. The cons that Kumar gave are as follows: limited social interaction, technology cost and scheduling, Effectiveness of Assessments, and problematic for instructors. These cons are defiantly good reasons to stay with a traditional education. For instance part of going to school is getting to interact with your peers. If a student misses out on this because he or she chose to do online schooling they may not learn the social skills that a person in a traditional classroom will obtain. 

           In the end this article does give great reasons why online education is good and bad. The author,  Dhirendra Kumar, did a great job presenting the material and made the article very interesting. 

           
https://www.ies.ncsu.edu/resources/white-papers/pros-and-cons-of-online-education/

Six positives to Online schooling

       Here is a really cool video that was produced by the Wall Street Journal where the main character in the video, Anant Agarwal the founder and president of edX, gives six reasons why online learning is better than a normal in class education. Several of these reasons that he gives I really agree with, however some of them have their flaws.

     The first reason he gives to support online schooling is they are more interactive than a normal classroom environment. He explains that is a normal class a student goes to class for an hour listens to the teacher give his or her lecture then the student goes home and completes an assignment and or gets ready for an upcoming test. Anant states that online schooling is better because the lessons are more interactive and the student is actively learning. He explains that in a normal online class a student watches a video or reads some material then right away does an interactive assignment to reinforce what they just learned and then they move on to the next lesson.

      The second reason he gives that shows why online schooling is better is the student can get their grades back right away because their grades are graded by a computer. I do agree that this is convenient, however it is hard to get feedback on what you got wrong because the computer won't explain your errors on the assignment. However, this defiantly is a positive because I for one like to get my grades back as soon as possible.

        The third reason he gives is that a student can keep re-doing an assignment until they master the topic at hand and then move on. This is good because the student can repeat an assignment over and over until they know what he or she was doing wrong and then feel comfortable with moving on. 

Another great thing about online schooling that Anant mentioned is students are able to control the lecture. They can rewind a lecture incase they missed something or they can even go back and review a lecture a few days later. This is obvious advantage to face to face schooling because a student can only see a lecture once and after that all he or she has are the notes they took.

    And finally his last main reason why online schooling is better than traditional schooling is it can be more engaging for a student. When Anant says this he means online schooling can be more fun and more interactive with the student which will retain their attention. 

      These are definitely some great reasons why online schooling can be better than traditional schooling and I really liked how this video was put together and presented. 

A Negative Perspective on Online Schooling

          This week I read an article where the author gives a brief glimpse of her experience of using online classes. Her initial intention was to take these classes instead of face to face classes with the hopes of freeing up her time and allowing her to manage her own time. She said her online classes did give her this and it was beneficial however there were some down falls to online learning that she experienced. I was able to relate to some of these set backs to online schooling and found it interesting that someone else felt the same way as I did and experienced some of the same struggles. 

           Her first complaint about online schooling which I have also experienced in the past was it was hard for her to get feed back from her professor about the grade she received on an assignment. I have experienced the same struggle and found it very difficult to move on in the course because I didn't know what I had missed on the previous assignment. In a face to face class this was no problem and it was easy to understand what I got wrong and what I needed to go back and study up on. She even went into detail of how she would leave a note for the professor when she submitted her grade which ask for feedback on what she got wrong. However since the system isn’t used to that type of communication it made it difficult to have a conversation with the professor. 

            Another problem that she faced with online schooling was the lessons and videos that were supposed to teach her the course material were often times inconstant and made it difficult to take the quiz after it was completed. She stated that she became frustrated because the videos that she watch that were supposed to teach the material were inconstant when it came to the actors that were in them. I definitely agree with her, seeing a new person in each video would be confusing to me and would even become a bit of a distraction from the material. She also said that some of the questions on the quiz were not even covered in the videos. This problem could have been caused by the fact that the videos were not made by the teacher but the quizzes were. 

            Over all I do agree with her, these are definitely some negatives when it comes to online schooling. However, I do feel that these negatives are not found in all online courses and are only found a few online courses.

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http://www.itcnetwork.org/resources/815-pros-and-cons-of-taking-online-courses-at-the-high-school-level-a-students-perspective.html