This year we have had more questions than ever about what online learning is. Some terms and phrases have thrust their way into the national mainstream vernacular over the past 6 months to attempt to define forms of online learning. Terms such as:
The list goes on into the wild frontier of education…
Appleton eSchool has been around since the 2001-2002 school year. We have built a strong reputation within our community locally, statewide and nationally for high quality online learning experiences for our students. We are part of and collaborate regularly with our Wisconsin eSchool Network partners since officially forming our statewide network consortium about a decade ago. Appleton eSchool was one of the two founding members (Kiel eSchool) of the Wisconsin eSchool Network nearly 15 years ago.
Here is what Appleton eSchool believes:
Our mission is to utilize new and emerging technologies to provide students a pathway to achieve success within a 21st century learning environment. We will provide high-quality standards-driven curriculum that is able to accommodate students’ varying physical locations while providing flexible time frames and course pacing.
eSchool Core Beliefs:
- Student Agency – Empowered students activate their learning.
- Enable an element of control for students over their learning.
- Connect with and utilize coaches and mentors.
- Choose from an expansive catalog of standards aligned courses.
- Flexibility – Student learning and individual responsibility working together.
- Embraces anytime and anywhere ongoing courses.
- Provides access to dynamic high quality standards aligned content
- Allows for content and systems to update continuously to stay on innovative edge.
- Supports today’s need of both in person and online learning.
- Skills & Experiences – Success today generates post high school readiness tomorrow.
- Experience at least one online course in high school and earn an online course ready badge.
- Advocate by asking questions.
- Communicate effectively with email, messaging and video.
- Understand and utilize resources to learn.
- Collaborate with students across Wisconsin.
Our entire eSchool staff believes strongly in our mission and core beliefs. The agency, flexibility and skills & experiences students take part in whether full-time online or part-time online is aligned to key readiness factors for current and future successes as a learner.
One belief that we would like to make special light of at this time is Flexibility: Student learning and individual responsibility working together.
We embrace anytime and anywhere learning within our eSchool courses. What this means is that students can start courses with us September – February. Our ongoing course offering model matches how we all learn on the go in our lives. This model was put into place back in the early 2000s. Here is an example… When is the last time that your child has watched a “live” television broadcast? When is the last time that your child has watched a recorded Youtube video? When is the last time that your child has watched a show on Netflix? As people reflect on questions like these, it is likely realized that there is a combination of live and recorded content all of us consume.
eSchool has put tremendous time and resources over the past almost 2 decades to offer courses with our teachers that can accommodate anytime, anywhere learning, as well as connect with their teachers in real time.
An awesome side effect of this learning model is that nobody is starting a course “behind”. Each student has their own individual start date and their own target due dates in each course. The course pacing and work flow is designed around the time frame that the student is enrolled in their select course.
People often wonder if students have interaction with their online eSchool teachers?
Yes, they do. eSchool teachers have been connecting with students remotely for years. Whether it is a phone call, Zoom, Google Meet, personalized feedback with their assignments, discussion boards and of course email.
We hope this information helps answer some questions that are floating around out there in the world right now. Let us know if you have any additional questions. Our contact information is found on our contact us page of our website: https://appletoneschool.org/contact-us/
Wishing everyone success this school year!
