eSN Special Report: Blended learning on the rise

It’s a typical weekday, and Leah Rogers is greeting students as they arrive at school. She hasn’t seen any of these kids in a while, because they haven’t set foot in the building for a week … but that’s by design.
Rogers is acting head of the Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS), an innovative school that is a cross between a traditional school and a virtual one: Students work online from home four days a week and come to school for the fifth, reports eSchool News.

In a typical school environment, all students in a classroom have to learn the same thing at same time. But at CVCS, students can work on material at their own pace, and educators can tailor their instruction to each student individually to fill the gaps in that child’s knowledge.
“In a traditional setting, students are at the mercy of the teacher, who decides how fast they’re learning [and] how much time they have to spend on the subject,” Rogers said. “We give those who ‘get it’ faster the ability to move on.”
For many school reformers, blended learning is an exciting instructional model because it combines the best elements of both face-to-face and online instruction.
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Source: eSchool News