Kansas High School Pioneers Online Option

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Jennifer Brady

That’s right. The headline says Kansas.

You may at first question the relevance of this item on the UMassOnline blog. After all, we’re focused on the college online experience here and this is news about a high school in Kansas offering an online high school education.

Well, for one thing, the director of this online initiative, Lisa McClure, went skydiving with a laptop to dramatize the flexibility of online learning programs. I found that to be a rather unusual length to go, but applaud her for having that kind of courage. I’m not strapping on a parachute anytime soon. Secondly, it is a very innovative program. It is free; it is open to any student; a great deal of technology is provided at no charge; and they are running a YouTube competition that challenges students to create a video illustrating how online freedoms will advance their lives. But my real interest is about what this means to UMassOnline.

In my opinion, it means that the online education option is very quickly becoming increasingly legitimized across the board. When mainstream public educational school systems become this comfortable with the online methodology and offerings, it means more students at every level can have a higher degree of confidence in this approach. It also seems to me to predict an era in the not-to-distant future when high schools and colleges may work hand in hand more closely than ever before.

If you’re like me, when you were a junior and senior in high school, on some level you couldn’t wait to get to college, right? Had there been some advanced online college or pre-college courses I could have taken, I would have jumped at the chance. You?

[Photo of Kansas: Credit and Source Here.]