Education is forever evolving with the introduction of new technology. Traditionally, students go to a public/private school for their education but some schools have introduced distance learning, learning at home through online or video conferencing, as an option for students to continue to attend classes from home. Distance learning positively impacts students by allowing them to not miss school if they are ill and to get access to class options that would not have been available to them at traditional public/private school.

Distance learning allows the student to not miss instruction because of an illness. In traditional school, if you are ill you have to miss a day or even a couple of days in order to feel better. Students are advised to not go to traditional public/private school while they are sick because they could get others sick, but this would not be the case if the student was enrolled in distance learning as they would not directly be interacting with other students and teachers.

Traditional public/private schools are limited in the amount of classes that they can offer therefore, limits the student on classes they can enroll in and limits the amount of experience the student would have in the career they are interested in pursuing. Depending on which distance learning program a student is enrolled in, they may have more options as to what classes they take. This could help the student to take classes that interest them and helps them to gain experience in their potential career field.

Although distance learning limits the amount of school the student would miss from illnesses and potentially provides a wider variety of classes for a student, distance learning does not allow the student to have the social aspect that traditional school has. In traditional public/private school, a student would interact with many people from classmates to teachers. This interaction helps build social skills that will help the student later on in their careers and in life. Distance learning offers the student to have more free time throughout the day due to shorter classes and not having the immense amount of wasted time that traditional public/private schools have. The student could use this extra free time to volunteer, get a job or participate in extracurricular activities, which would eliminate the lack of social interaction.

Distance learning positively impacts students by allowing them to not miss school if they are ill and to get access to class options that would not have been available to them at traditional public/private school. Although distance learning limits the amount of social interaction a student may have, distance learning does offer a student more free time to participate in extracurricular activities, get a job or volunteer. For the reasons stated above, I believe that students would benefit from being able to attend classes at home through distance learning.