Teachers in 28 high schools and 11 states are currently teaching netcourses in the Virtual High School project. Louine Teague has designed a netcourse in Geometry which she teaches from her high school in Lumberton, North Carolina. I spoke with her at the beginning of the school year about how she got involved in VHS and how it was going.

Louine Teague, VHS Teacher

Concord Consortium: How did you get involved with the Virtual High School project?

Louine Teague: My principal told everybody at the school that we were going to be part of the Virtual School project and asked if there was anybody who wanted to apply. My first reaction was I'd love to do this but I don't know the technology and I just don't think they're going to teach an old dog new tricks. So I was real hesitant.

I went to a North Carolina Forum meeting where there were representatives from the Concord Consortium back in November of last year. I went to the meeting and I still sort of came away thinking the same thing-I had this little idea of what I wanted to do but I just didn't know about this technology stuff. I'd been out of school a long time.

And so what happened after you applied to teach your course?

Sometime in the end of February I emailed Carla [VHS Program Coordinator] and I said "Haven't heard anything. Who's been accepted?" And she sent me back this letter that said "You have!" I almost panicked. I had a slow computer at home. The school rallied around and worked real hard and got me a computer and got me a telephone line run to my room and did all sorts of things so that I could start taking the TLC [Teachers Learning Conference] course.

What kind of experience did you have with the Internet before?

The only thing I had ever done was email my daughter in college. That was it. The Virtual High School has pretty much taught me everything I know about the Internet.

And what did you learn?

When I started I had a vision of what I wanted to teach, but I really didn't have a vision of how it could be done. I think that's what I have appreciated the most. Even though it took us some time to get the LearningSpace working, I really think that software is wonderful. One of my favorite lessons was using the 'Net as your virtual library. That let me really for the first time explore the Internet. Other than that I think I had looked up a couple of colleges or two in order to get information for students, and I have looked up Coca Cola because I'm a Coca Cola collector. And other than that I had never even tried to do a search.

You've come so far.

I've put in a lot of time.

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