Hardly a day goes by when I don’t hear the words “Yea but, you can’t teach my course online.”  If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard these words, Bill Gates would be borrowing money from me.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to have a conversation with a wonderful young lady who attends a local High School.  At 16, Kelly has already participated in several online courses offered through her school district.  When asked which courses she’s completed online she listed “American History I, American History II, Biology, Health, and PE.”  “Stop,” I shouted, “Did you say you took Gym Class Online?”  “Sure,” she replied, “It was pretty cool.  A lot of the kids in my grade are taking PE Online.”  Now she had my full, undivided interest.

Kelly went on to explain that after signing up for the course, she was given a heart monitor unit and a piece of software.  Several weekly assignments were involved in the course.  Each week she was required to participate in the exercise of her course at least three times for a minimum of 45 minutes each time.  When exercising, she wore the heart monitor.

At the end of the week, she would plug her heart monitor into her computer and upload the data it contained to her schools Learning Management System.  After reviewing the data from the heart monitor she would hear from her instructor with recommendations for ways to increase her heart rate or new ideas for different exercises.

Kelly enjoys taking courses online but understands herself well enough to know which courses to take online and which courses she can gain the most from in a face-to-face setting.  She mentioned that when she feels she can gain more from discussions with her fellow students and instructors, she will take the course face-to-face.  When having to take a course that she finds personally interesting, Biology for example, she prefers to take the course online because she can “get so much more out of the course when I don’t have to wait for other students to catch up.”

“So what do you do when you find  particular topic that you want to learn more about?” I asked.  “I Google it and see how much more information I can find,” she replied “then I copy the information I find into my FaceBook.”

Kelly indicated that when she goes off to college she has no intention of taking online courses because shes looking forward to the “social aspects” of college life.  She’s looking forward to the new friends and new experiences that simply cannot be duplicated online.

Maybe all the predictions about the coming generations are correct…