Aditi Patil

Staff Writer

Virtual High School is a program that is currently in obscurity, but one of the school’s goals for next year is to have more students involved in it.

In VHS, students log onto their accounts and experience online sessions of a class. They still are assigned homework and projects and have to take tests and quizzes. They can also communicate with their teacher, but only through email.

VHS can be found on the school website under the Program of Studies. It is an alternate method for students to attain credits or to try a class that they can’t in a live classroom in WA. VHS has a wide range of courses, of which at least fifteen aren’t offered at WA. For example you can learn Russian, American Popular Music, Application of Logic, among others.

VHS began from a government grant. It was the one of the first programs of its kind. At it beginning it was highly popular. The software the enable it to work was sophisticated and difficult to use for that time period.

There are two situations in which WA students choose to take a VHS class. Either the specific course they wish to take isn’t offered at WA or because the course that they wanted didn’t fit into their schedule.

“If VHS offers the course then the students can take it,” said coordinator of VHS Larry Guidetti.

Students can take a DLT and go up to the library and take their online sessions right in school. Or, as some students opt to do, they can take the classes independently at home.

There aren’t a lot of students who are taking VHS courses. The problem is that most students don’t know about them and that WA has a large enough selection of courses as it is.

“I don’t know what that is,” said freshman Braley Degenhardt, when asked about VHS.

Though it doesn’t cost the students any money to take these courses, it does cost the town.  The town pays for 10 spots each semester.

“For the past few years it has been under-inscribed,” said Guidetti.

Last semester, there were originally five students signed up for VHS. But three of them dropped out. Right now during the second semester there are six people taking one.

“Students drop out for two reasons. Either it isn’t what they thought it would be, or it’s too much work,” said Guidetti.

Due to the lack of participants in VHS, the school board is skeptical of whether or not it will continue to have VHS next year. This detail will be finalized at an upcoming board meeting. It will depend on the budget the superintendent chooses.

“As of now, we will be having VHS next year,” said Guidetti.

So far counselors have been privately recommending these courses to students. In the future the school plans on getting the message out to everyone via the morning announcements or mentioning it when an entire class is together in the PAC. The plan is to talk to the incoming freshmen next fall when it’s time to sign up for courses.

“I think its unfortunate that the schools hasn’t been advertising this as much. If kids new this was out there they would be interested,” said curriculum head of the English Department, Anita Goldberg.

“It just hasn’t caught on the way the school expected it to,” said Guidetti.

Also, like any other thing there are drawbacks to VHS. Being limited to an online course, the students aren’t actually interacting with their teachers or their classmates. If students have a question they have to email their teacher.

Secondly, according to Guidetti, in a world in which face-to-face communication and standard social interactions are becoming obsolete, offering online courses to teenagers is encouraging this technological isolation.

“You can get a degree online for college, and now you can take courses for high school online, too,” said Guidetti.

Despite this, the VHS program at WA is a rare opportunity since not many other schools offer it.

Goldberg used to be a teacher at VHS. She taught a class about 20th Century women writers when she first started.

“I started at the inception of the program. It was really exciting because these were the first online programs we had anywhere. The software as ground breaking at the time,” said Goldberg.

Goldberg has a differing view about VHS. She is skeptical of that the disadvantages of VHS really exist. And Goldberg’s opinion  comes from personal experience.

“I knew my VHS students just as well, if not better than my other students,” said Goldberg.

Goldberg also countered that these online courses don’t isolate you from the world, but broaden your view of it.

“You meet people from all over the country and, literally, all over the world,” said Goldberg.

Goldberg explains that she had students from Africa and even China. In fact, she is still in touch with some of her VHS students. Se also described an instance of some students that she had that lived in California, and in the same class student that lived across the country. This group got  to know each other so well that they arranged to meet each other in person and went on a trip together.

There is more information about this program at the VHS website, http://www.govhs.org/.