The Virtual Revolution – Unit 8

Greenway, R. & Vanourek, G. (2006). The virtual revolution. Education Next. vol. 6, no. 2.

Greenway & Vanourek’s article defines and discusses the phenomenon of virtual schools. Since the mid 90’s, more and more distance-education programs are going virtual. Some of these programs consist of single classes offered over the internet, while others are entire schools that exist solely in cyber space. The latter is the focus of this article.

It is obvious that the authors come from a stand point that is pro-virtual schools (Greenway is the head of school of the Arkansas Virtual School and Vanourek is a former executive of K12 Inc., an online curriculum company). They discuss several studies which suggest that virtual schools can be just as effective as traditional brick & mortar schools. Although this may be true for test scores, it seems unlikely that they offer the same social experience as traditional schools. This includes not only student-teacher interactions, but also student-student interactions as well.

Despite this concern, the authors offered several examples where it is undoubtedly advantageous to have this online option to offer students. One such example is when a student is very ill and cannot attend a traditional school. Another example is the student who needs to supplement their education such as a child who is home schooled or a child who lives in an area that doesn’t offer a wide variety of courses. It seems that virtual schools certainly do have their place in the world of education.