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I stumbled across this while doing my daily general online browse of "the news." This study was cited in various articles warning about the dangers of virtual online schools. The authors of the article are especially concerned about the nefarious objective of making...profits! Quelle horreur!! What I actually found amusing were these little tidbits in the main text: "Partial or "blended" approaches to virtual education have existed for some time and have been studied extensively...research has shown the virtual courses to produce test scores comparable to those from conventional face-to-face courses" Reading and math scores have not improved (and have remained flat, in fact) during these last forty years despite the gazillion dollars we have spent on public education. Should I be glad to see that it, at least, won't get worse than conventional face-to-face instruction? The authors referred to a meta analysis conducted by the US Dept of Ed on the subject of online instruction. This refers back to the studies done on virtual education: "Only five studies included in the meta analysis were conducted at the K-12 level...In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the k-12 population." Well there you have it. Meanwhile back at the ranch we're off to the newest new thing in education. Whoohoo!

Interesting article about how some teachers and professors are relying too heavily on their technology in teaching their classes.

I would argue that it's not the use of technology that is the problem. It is HOW technology is used. Powerpoints have their place - but they are not a true implementation of student-centered learning. Online, self-paced, math tutorials may be effective in some cases, but are definitely not the only way to test student knowledge. We've got to start thinking about teaching and learning differently and not simply transfer what we do in the face-to-face classroom to the online environment. Just my two cents.

Thanks for sharing this information!