Virtual School Meanderings: 10 Online Ed Trends Coming to a High School Near You

So I get these messages about three or four times a week from the writers for websites/blogs such as bestonlinecolleges.com or collegesonline.com or whatever.  Nine times out of ten they have nothing to do with the K-12 environment or about online learning.  But there is the one out of ten times that there is something thematically relevant.  Today was one of those times…

Hi Michael,

We just posted an article, “10 Online Ed Trends Coming to a High School Near You”. I thought I’d drop a quick line and let you know in case you thought it was something your audience would be interested in reading.

(http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2011/10/11/10-online-ed-trends-coming-to-a-high-school-near-you/).

Thanks!
Tim Handorf
timhandorf7@gmail.com

I think what I find most interesting about the ones that are thematically relevant are the complete lack of understanding of where K-12 online learning currently is that is reflected in each piece. For example, of the 10 trends that are “coming to a high school near you,” I count four or five that have been in a good number of high schools for a decade now. Almost all of them are not new (and certainly not a “coming soon” feature).

What it seems to me is that these writers find an article or a report online, write a blog post that summarizes this report and in that blog post try to play up what they are summarizing like it is something new that they just came up with.  But that’s just my opinion, would love to hear your’s…