More pupils are learning online, fueling debate on quality
By Trip Gabriel/New York Times
Jack London was the subject in Daterrius Hamilton’s online English 3 course. In a high school classroom packed with computers, he read a brief biography of London with single-paragraph excerpts from the author’s works. But the curriculum did not require him, as it had generations of English students, to wade through a tattered copy of “Call of the Wild” or “To Build a Fire.” Mr. Hamilton, who had failed English 3 in a conventional classroom and was hoping to earn credit online to graduate, was asked a question about the meaning of social Darwinism. He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and e-mailed it to his teacher. Mr. Hamilton, 18, is among the expanding ranks of students in kindergarten through grade 12 — more than one million in the United States, by one estimate — taking online courses. (more...)
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