Blog #12 Reading Response

Proper MLA Citation:
This source is classified as an Article. The proper citation is:
Mupinga, Davison M. “Distance Education in High School.” The Clearing House (2005): 105-8.

Summary:
This article discussed what distance education means and the different formats of high school distance education. These include cable television, correspondence courses, interactive television, online courses, and the hybrid model. The benefits from these types of distance education included the flexibility of time and space for the teachers and students, the availability of education for the disabled and those unable to go to a regular high school because of family obligations, and that in some cases students learn more from this type of high school education. The online Advanced Placement courses have recently been proven to test higher than those who take these courses elsewhere. It also said that a big challenge of this is that since there is no face to face interaction, teaching is difficult, but the process of selecting the teachers is very selective and they go through many conferences to help them with their teaching skills.

Importance:
This work is important because it talks about all the benefits and challenges of distance education in high schools, but also gives solutions and ways to fix those problems. Some significant ideas that I gathered from this work were that test scores have shown to be higher for students who take online courses and that the teachers are highly trained beyond just receiving their degree from a university. The teachers are trained so they know exactly how to deal with the new technology and their “virtual” students. The online education world is always expanding and finding new ways of reaching out and teaching to their students.

Connections:
This article is similar to my actual life because I had to do math homework online my first semester of college. I had to learn the technology side of the program, and that by pressing the wrong button, even though your answer was correct, the computer may only recognize it in only one format. Other than this, there was no real connection to my life because I have not yet taken a complete course online in college, and that article discussed distance education specifically in secondary education.

Supporting Source:
This article could be used as support for my own argument because it evaluates distance learning in high schools in a variety of ways. It listed the benefits and the downfalls, which are what a good evaluation should list. It also lists many solutions for the challenges of online education, which are all very applicable and feasible answers to the problems. I can also discuss the different formats of virtual high schools and talk about what each one entails and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Argumentative Source:
If I had to take this author and their argument to task, I would only critique a few aspects of this article. They listed many benefits and solutions, but never listed a lot of high schools that have implemented these ideas. They also should have interviewed people who attended successful virtual high schools to see what their reaction was to their courses they took. I think if the author corrected these few things in their article, it would be a much better evaluation of distance education in high schools.