Week 4 Reflection

What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important or interesting? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?

I observed that more established schools have a more developed webdesign of their homepage and are also more aggressive in their marketing. Like the bigger providers such as K12 Inc and Connections Academy, there is greater consistency in the way they market themselves to the public.

And I find it disappointing that, while there are virtual schools with established programs to sell to schools and individuals, there are still so many virtual schools that have yet figured how to present themselves to the public (as observed in some very poorly designed home pages or inaccessible sites). Afterall, without a physical building, I would see the way virtual schools present themselves online to be vital, yet, given the lack in consistency, many had not done a good job in presenting themselves.

As such, even the basic like marketing themselves is not done in an ideal manner, I wonder how is the quality of educational content and services delivered to numerous home schoolers and students seeking alternative education out there??

Given some basic standards drawn up by NACOL, I wonder how many virtual schools are audited against these standards, though some marketed themselves to by accreditated by local authorities.

As I tried to access demo/sample lessons from various schools or content providers, I find great challenges in gaining access. Over just 3 days, I signed up for numerous accounts, with different passwords (due to diff password requirement in length and format). And even after getting registered, downloading plug-in and the program is not that easy either.

Here, I find the dilemma of accessibility to infomration against protecting own's intellectual property rights. I can really appreciate the reason behind all those signing up for an account, etc., but I really find it time consuming and frustrating just to catch a glimpse of how a lesson might look like in their schools! And, it doesn't help that I do not have a US address and phone number, thus signing up for an account is a hassle!

Hmmmmm... maybe in future, if this course is to continue, we can have a generic account in various virtual schools, so that we can catch a demo lesson more easily ;) I am sure the schools' adminstrators would also appreciate the fact that they have less inactive accounts to clear. Or, maybe it is time for the virtual schools to have some consitency in showcasing their trial lessons, for example, providing generic accounts or web-stream their samples to avoid others copying their products easily?

While I get quite frustrated in trying to gain access to sample lessons, I am enlightened when I finally get to go through some online lessons. They were very much different from those that I had done back in the good old days. The interface used are all more interactive and richer. And, I am also enlightened to learn about many other digital tools that different schools use.

Finally, something operational. I had repeatedly written my response in the "good instructional design" 4 times and in the "bad..." 3 times as my internet explorer repeatedly hung on the moodle :( So, lesson learnt is, to type my response in a word processor then cut and paste. At least in this blog page, there is an "autosave" feature... so i am only writing this reflection once ;)



As stated in my wikis,