Winnou - School and College Management Software, Hyderabad

The theme of this week is Virtual School. Try googling “Virtual School” and the number of results returned is, hold your breath, 144,000,000! So this must be quite a popular concept. So what exactly is a Virtual School?

Definition

Wikipedia defines it as “a school where students of all ages can do their coursework online. Most states in the United States have their own virtual school, and many of them have students numbering in the thousands. By providing a student's social security number the person is then entered into a database where they can chose which classes they want to take”. It further says that “Virtual Schools now exist all around the world, but are used primarily in the United States. The schools have now been integrated into public schools, where students sit in computer labs and do their work online. In other situations, students can be completely home schooled, or they can take any combination of public/private/home schooling and online classes.”

Hype or for Real?

As far as I could research, the first virtual school was launched in 1997 in Florida, right around the time, Internet was becoming popular. In less than 10 years hence, Google returns 144,000,000 hits for a virtual school. Is this something we can afford to ignore and continue to teach our traditional way?

If we take away the hype around it, a pure play virtual school would be more or less like a distance learning program, only with emails and ftp uploads of learning content instead of the good old postman delivering the learning material. It doesn't seem all that great and mighty. But did we dissect it right?

What is in it for us?

So let us dig into this concept a bit to see if it makes sense for our Indian schools. There could be a few benefits here. At a socio-economic level, it could be an economic way to provide learning material and engage high school dropouts, especially students that drop out due to economic reasons. If only they had access to a computer with broadband, we may be able to engage these kids back into higher education. It might seem highly inconceivable at present, but within a few months, we are going to see the launch of the $100 computer with built in broadband access, making it cheaper than a TV at home! When this can be shared by 5-10 kids, it makes it all the more affordable to large percentage of our population.

On a very personal level, our school kids carry a heavy load of books to the school every day. Is the day where the kids carry a laptop instead of the heavy book bag too far from now? I can't imagine it being more than a year or two away. My kids aged 7 and 6 respectively are well versed with handling a laptop. They have been familiar with one since they were very young. If we look at economics of the whole thing, it isn't all that bad. The books easily cost a couple of thousand every year, with only an upward trend as they grow into higher studies. The prices of laptops on the other hand have been decreasing every month, making them more and more affordable. More over a laptop can easily last at least 3 years. Even otherwise, with ubiquitous Internet and $100 computer around the corner, students could be plugged into the same content (e-text books and e-note books) either in their class room or at home. The medium could be a desktop, laptop, hand held computers, i-pod or any of the imaginable and unimaginable devices that are yet to be launched in the future. With the Internet firmly as a base, there could be n-number of devices that may be able to meet the need. I can hear some of you mutter, hmm.. computers instead of notebooks and textbooks? Well, let me tell you. I am sure the same would have been heard from some teachers of the medieval age when students started adopting paper instead of the traditional slate or the more traditional leaf based notes. Btw, did the fact that a few grumbled in offices when computers were introduced stop the phenomena? How many new jobs created in the last 10 years do not include working with a computer in one way or another?

My 2 cents

Whether we relish the thought or not, Virtual schools - where students have access to teaching notes, text books, tips and pointers from teachers, chat rooms and forums to access group knowledge when they want it – are going to be a part of life in the not too distant future. We are seeing the first glimpses of this phenomena with the educational CDs that schools send home with kids. It is up to us to embrace the change and adapt to the changing circumstances to ensure that our students and kids are better prepared for handling the challenges of the 21^st century.

Next Week

Impact of technology on education sector

Game of the week: The Grammar Gorillas at http://www.funbrain.com/grammar/index.html

Audience: Primary, Middle School

Theme: Let us get our language straight. Fun games to test grammar.