A new guide offers parents a roadmap in their quest to find the right online-learning program for their child. “A Parent’s Guide to Choosing the Right Online Program,” written by John Watson and Butch Gemin of the Evergreen Education Group and Marla Coffey, a distance education consultant at the University of Maryland University College, is part of the Promising Practices in Online Learning series from the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL). According to the guide, online-learning options can be public or private, full-time or supplemental, fully online or a blend of online and basic instruction and these multiple models can create an intimidating array of options from which to choose. To help parents, the guide lists 10 Defining Dimensions, or characteristics of online learning, and it describes the options that are available for those characteristics. “The guide also goes into some Getting Started questions,” said Rose Fernandez, founder of the Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School Families, which helps parents to figure out requirements, costs, and their and the programs expectations.
http://www.inacol.org/research/promisingpractices/docs/NACOL_PP-ParentsGuide-lr.pdf [1]