An Education Choice for Traveling Family

Sometimes, when I explain to people that I do school online, they don’t understand why I do it. But there are so many advantages of doing school online. Even teachers text!

 1. It’s green…

…as in environmentally friendly. At public school, I used to use up at least 1,000 sheets of notebook paper per school year. This was to take notes, use as scratch paper, or turn in to a teacher. I think I’ve killed a few trees. On top of that teachers use several sheets of paper to print out tests.

I do use paper to jot down a few important notes or to do my math assignments but its not nearly as much paper compared to public school. Tests are taken online and most assignments are typed in Word documents.

2. Plan when you want to do school 

This is probably one of the top reasons that online school is the best. Especially since if you’re a student like me, that has an online business, you can plan when you do school around when you do business.

Secondly, instead of having to get up at 6 am every morning, with online school, you don’t have to. I can schedule when I want to do school. You can do school at midnight, early in the morning, late at night. Even better, online students don’t have to do it at the same time everyday, as long as you are on pace and submit enough assignments for the week.

3. Freedom

When the weather is nice, I take my laptop, a pen and a small notebook and sit outside at my deck to do school. I set up a table and turn on the fountain for our pool. I can do school wherever I want. I can be on my bed, in the kitchen or sit on the floor… and it doesn’t really matter, as long as I actually submit assignments.

What really blows my mind is I can do school in a foreign country! When I went to Malaysia last year, when Internet was available, I did school. Especially since nowadays, Wifi and Internet is readily available everywhere, students can work in their, for example, local Starbucks, or any Starbucks in the world.

Students are not allowed to text during school hours in public schools. But for online school no one can tell you that you can’t. (But once again, as long as you are submitting the required amount of assignments per week.) Even the teachers text students to remind them of whether they are on pace.

4. No waiting

Normally at public schools, when someone doesn’t understand a concept, the teacher will spend another day going over it. But what about the students that are ready to move on? They can’t. But with online school… students can. When I understand something, I move on quickly. When I don’t understand, I can take as much time as I need before moving on.

5. Encourages you to go beyond reading a textbook

Of all the courses I have taken online, I have done several assignments that required me to find someone to interview. Recently, I interviewed an 87 year old woman about the 1960s for an American History course. The coolest thing about the interview was when I learned that she met Martin Luther King Jr.! There’s a good chance that people who have written the textbooks have never met him…

Even with all these advantages of online school, it’s not for everyone. Sometimes I catch myself wasting time on Twitter. You have to be disciplined to get assignments done. But other than that, online school is the best!