Online universities

[racetothebottom]

This is interesting.

When will LAs and the school system catch on to new ways of learning?

I know about those two and its great they are out there but they are not part of the formal education system's scheme of reasoning. LAs never think how they could help kids by offering these type of packages. It's in school or out. Yet universities are offering them.

The Open University has been offering distance learning using whatever technology is available since the 70s. Their courses are very much online (perhaps with a textbook or four) now.

And, as PolterGoose, says there are online schools. It would be hard to do reception online though, I fear.

Yes but OU courses usually have a residential element.

I know there are online high schools too.

The point I was trying to make by posting this is if this is being embraced mired widely by FE and HE, why is thinking at the school level so archaic. Yes, of course, you can enrol on one of the schools you have mentioned but if your child has a statement and you wanted to choose that for your option for secondary, do you think the LA would say ok? No. Because it wants a traditional school.

Embraced more widely..

The OU very, very often do not have a residential element these days. It costs them a fortune, so most courses have lost that part. The model these days is to be as electronic as possible.

OU did away with the residential element on most of their courses some years ago - cuts and all that. (I am proud to be a mature BA and MSc graduate of the OU - one of the last to go through when there was a very limited (one week/weekend) residential element)

When I home ed'd my 9 year old for a year, I looked at online courses but, apart from mainstream top-ups such as MathsWhiz and Education City, and specialist programs such as Nessy for dyslexics, there isn't anything much for this age group. I was actually shocked at how little there was. I vaguely recall that I did find several American online courses aimed at this age group, although most had a very definite religious slant which I am not interested in.

I agree that modern technology should be embraced and give alternative options to traditional school.

It looks very interesting Polter. I don't remember finding this one at all - although DS was 8 when I started to home ed so I might have discounted it.

Unfortunately, because of the severity of DS's dyslexia coupled with ADHD meant I did have to turn away a lot of mainstream stuff. He had weekly one-to-one face-to-face tuition with dyslexia specialist teachers. During the snow of last winter, we did consider skype sessions when the weather was too bad for the 1 hour drive to them each week. But we had to abandon the idea because the mix of his needs meant that only face-to-face works for him.