Hello all! For this week's assignment, we're looking at three online schools in Ohio and selecting which one we would send our (in my case hypothetical) children to. The schools we're looking at are Connections Academy, Ohio Virtual Academy, and OHDELA, which stands for Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy. Before I begin, full disclosure: my younger brothers attended Connections for the second semester of their freshman year, after our home school made a series of decisions that negatively impacted their academic success. Neither my brothers nor my parents had a positive experience at Connections, and this will necessarily color my opinions.
All that said, I thought Connections had an incredibly well laid-out website, although some of the navigation tools were a bit clunky. It's worth noting that they are the "one school in Ohio to offer the Connections Academy program, which is the only program of its kind to be certified nationally by AdvancED." The thing about Connections that impressed me the most, though, is that they were the only school in which I could actually find and experience the same online classroom that my hypothetical children would experience. (Perhaps OHVA and OHDELA offered this too, but I spent some time on each website and had no luck in finding it - if it's not easily found, it might as well not be there at all.) If I did not have a bad personal experience with Connections, this alone would probably be enough to convince me they were the best.
Overall, I was incredibly unimpressed by the Ohio Virtual Academy. I found their website difficult to naviagte, could not locate any sort of FAQ, and was put off by the way they clustered the grades K-8 together when that covers such a wide range of development. As aforementioned, I also could not interact with the classroom environment in any way. Unlike OHDELA, however, which at least allowed me to look at videos showcasing the learning environment, I could not find any images or screenshots of the classroom. This put me off as both a future educator and a hypothetical parent. Even if, as I said last paragraph, these images and experiences are lurking somewhere on the website, the learning environment should be the first thing potential parents and students see. That is, in my opinion, the most important part of any classroom, not just a digital one.
Although there were some spots where the OHDELA website could have benefited from better proofreading, I thought it was the best laid-out of the three. It also made a point of talking about how they cater to children's different learning styles and developmental needs; as an early childhood educator and a proponent of individualizing education, this stood out to me as valuable. (There is, of course, no way of knowing from the website alone if they actually follow through on this philosophy. If I were actually seriously considering the school as a destination for my child, I would interview other parents and see what they thought.) What I could see of the classroom environment looked intuitive and pleasant. I especially like that students can see their teacher's face during live classes.
When all is said and done, I would probably pick OHDELA for my hypothetical child, with Connections at a fairly close second and OHVA at a distant third. I would want to do a great deal of further research, and I'm sure my choice would be influenced greatly by my actual child and what he/she/they wanted. That, though, is a nice segue into my larger issue with digital schooling in general: it is very suited to a particular learning style, and designed for students whose brains are wired a certain way. There is not much room for individualization, and (I would argue) even less for accommodations for students with mental illnesses. My educational philosophy is rooted in these concepts, and I'm not sure I would ever feel comfortable sending a child of mine to an online school.
I know online schools work really well for some children and some families, and provide an incredible array of options to students who would not otherwise receive them. I also know I am speaking from a position of privilege; when my home school failed me, I had the resources to seek out charter and private schools, as did my brothers. All that said, though, I know I would have been miserable in an online school, and I would be reluctant to subject any child of mine to something that would make me miserable. I support online schools and all of the incredible things they do, but even in a hypothetical situation they make me vaguely uncomfortable.
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