A new law that takes effect next fall requires every district in the state to set up an online school for kindergarten through eighth-grade students.

This is fascinating to me, and I’m surprised that this didn’t get more news coverage when the legislation was being passed in Florida. Each district still gets the $6,000 per student, and most are going to buy the services of a couple of companies that provide online education instead of create their own online curriculum. Even the computer and Internet connection are provided to the students.

I could see this being a watershed moment in the aspect of educational technology. Can education be provided digitally and will students learn just as well as they do in a classroom of 20 students? The pitfalls are enormous, mostly centering around socialization skills, although this should be a solved problem with the years of home schooling that have taken place. In the spring of 2003, 1,096,000 students were being home schooled in the United States.

(* Thanks to Kevin Jarrett and his tweet! *)