‘Virtual’ Internships Prepare Student Teachers For New World Of Online Schooling

This came through my Facebook feed on Friday.

First of all, let me say congratulations to Dr. Kennedy!

Second, the article that Dr. Kennedy mentions in her Facebook status update is available at:

http://news.education.ufl.edu/node/477

It begins…

‘Virtual’ internships prepare student teachers for new world of online schooling

Posted April 15, 2010

UF student-teacher John Giddo’s seventh graders don’t need to raise their hands to answer a question or pose their own. They can post it on the class’s online discussion board instead.

Giddo, in his final year of UF’s five-year teacher preparation program, is one of a new breed of “virtual” teaching interns, spending part of his last spring semester in an apprenticeship with the Orlando-based Florida Virtual School (FLVS), the nation’s largest K-12 virtual school.

All aspects of teaching—and learning—are done online. Giddo’s supervising teacher from FLVS and her middle-school virtual students all work from their home computers, while Giddo can work either from his own laptop or from a UF College of Education computer lab.

Discussion forums are one of Giddo’s favorite things about virtual learning.

“If we have discussions in the normal classroom, some students usually have more to say than others,” he says. “Online classes gives students who are more shy a chance to say what they want in the comfort of their own home. They can contribute what they’re too scared to contribute in class.”

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