We decided to enroll our oldest 2 boys in cyber school for 2020-21 school year. The two main reasons were that traditional school with social distancing and mask wearing seemed less than ideal, and we believed traditional schools would be forced to go cyber at times throughout the year so we might as well go to a school that has experience in cyber.
I must say I’m not impressed so far. The software is the main problem. It seems to me like the schools don’t do any user testing of the software. On a virtual lesson this morning my son had to jump from viewing a streaming lesson to a web based application and back numerous times. This isn’t easy for a 9 year old. It seems the success of the student depends entirely on their ability to navigate poor user interface. The teacher was acting like all the students did what she asked, but my son couldn’t even get to the right window to do the work.
Going forward we will only let my son work on a desk that has an extra monitor, which should alleviate some of the frustration, but not every child has that advantage.
It seems there is a huge opportunity to improve cyber school, but it won’t come from the schools. It will need to come from a software company.