[In Florida, virtual school could make classrooms history —
OrlandoSentinel.com][]

> 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! *)

[In Florida, virtual school could make classrooms history —
OrlandoSentinel.com]: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-virtual1008nov10,0,978666.story
[In the spring of 2003, 1,096,000 students were being home schooled in
the United States]: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/estimated.asp