Mitch Weisburgh raises the usual concerns - the need for training, equity, change, catching up - but he also raises a key underlying concern in the shift to online learning: "There is a widespread fear from teachers and parents that corporate interests will profiteer at the children's expense. The fear is that some large companies, through lobbying and high pressure sales tactics will convince districts to purchase solutions that make it look like the district is addressing a problem, but that really don't solve anything." It's a reasonable fear. Consider how Durham University had to backtrack on plans to offer an online degree in light of assertions that the commercial provider, Cambridge Education Digital, "displayed no realistic sense of the realities the staffing and technological support required to develop and deliver it."
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