Online classes click with students

The Florida Virtual School is growing, with more course offerings and more students.

	Gibbs High students Chase Dafnis, left, and Ryan Herndon each have taken courses online.

Taking college courses at home is nothing new. But high school courses have not always been available.

That changed in 1997 when the Florida Legislature established the Florida Virtual School as a pilot program. Back then, 77 students signed up for the five classes offered.

Florida Virtual School offers 75 courses including honors courses and 11 advanced placement courses, said school spokeswoman Jodie Pozo-Olano, and about 14,000 students will be served during the 2003-04 school year.

The classes, which are open to students in seventh to 12th grades, include everything from advanced placement courses to personal fitness.

Personal fitness?

"Basically, you learned proper techniques for stretching, weightlifting and cardio activities" in the personal fitness class, said Chase Dafnis, a senior in Gibbs High School's Business, Economic, Technology Academy magnet program in St. Petersburg. Dafnis has taken five classes in the online school. "Then you are to practice the learned skills, document it along with your parent's signatures and then submit via e-mail or fax to your assigned teacher for a completion grade."

Ryan Herndon, also a senior in the Gibbs BETA program, has taken life management skills, personal fitness, SAT prep, Algebra II Honors and a semester of AP English III.

The school also offers foreign language courses such as Spanish, and has classes for adults who are seeking GED alternatives.

The reasons students take online courses vary. The school's motto, "Any time, any place, any path, any pace," probably appeals to students who want the opportunity to do the work on their own schedules.

"(Because) I am in a magnet program, I did not have enough room in my schedule to take those required courses for graduation," said Herndon, 18.

Students can select the pace of the online class. It can follow a traditional classroom schedule of five months or students can accelerate the work. Once the pace is selected, though, the student must stick to it. If students do not do the work by assigned deadlines, they can fail the class.

There is a two-week trial in which students can drop the class without penalty. But after that, the grade counts.

As in regular classes, students are graded when they submit work to the teacher. The grades can be securely viewed online and students have an opportunity to improve their grade by taking the course again. Credits for the courses count as if they were taken in a traditional class.

Students must pass the course and final before receiving their grade, Pozo-Olano said.

The grading scale is the same online as in a classroom. "I earned an A in three classes I completed during my two summers," said Dafnis, 18.

But there were some challenges. "I had a few complications in scheduling time to read the materials and getting assignments in on time," Herndon said.

"Sometimes I found when I went to turn in an assignment, the Web site would be down," Dafnis said. "It has improved since then."

And the face-to-face contact with a teacher was missing, as well. "(I) found it hard sometimes getting my question across to teachers because you cannot walk up to the teacher and show them exactly what you're having a problem with," Dafnis said.

Another challenge the two teens say they faced was disciplining themselves to dedicate the time to their online classes.

But both students agree the online courses offer one big advantage. "You are not bound to go to a classroom every weekday," Dafnis said.

- Slobodan Juric, 19, is in 12th grade at Gibbs High in St. Petersburg and is also an alumnus of the Florida Virtual School.

Here's the rest of today's Xpress