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The comments left on GothamSchools’ recent coverage of the Innovation Zone raised questions about the value of online learning similar to those we hear from our students and their families. As co-principals of the iSchool, a two-year-old school built around using online courses to individualize student learning, we thought it might be worthwhile to share the reasons we use online learning and how it works in our school.

Online learning means many different things at different schools. At the iSchool, we use the term to refer to courses where the content is delivered online only, and the teacher and student are not online at the same time. Each of our online courses is facilitated by an iSchool teacher, licensed in that content area, who designs the course, tracks student progress, and meets with students individually and in small groups when necessary. Our students spend about seven hours a week learning online at their own pace. Because of state regulations about awarding credit, these hours take place during the school day.

What does this look like inside our classrooms? Picture a traditional classroom with 34 students sitting in rows. Each student has a computer out on his/her desk and a notebook for taking notes. Each student is doing something different — some are watching a video of a teacher lecturing about the First Constitutional Convention (which students are pausing each time they take notes), some students are working on math problems, some are reading literature texts, and some are labeling the parts of a cell on a digital image.

We chose to incorporate online learning in our model for several important reasons:

1. Learning online is — and will continue to be — a reality for the world in which our students are growing up. Our students will be required to learn online during their college and graduate school experiences, as well as throughout their careers. If we are to prepare them to be successful in their future endeavors, we must prepare them to be successful online learners. (more…)