If You Build It, They Will Come

It was late 1997. A group of six teachers and four support personnel had spent five months learning about teaching online from any source we could find.

We were building courses in Lotus Learning Space, and preparing to register kids for this new thing called Florida High School. There had been tears, there had been elation, and there had been a lot of supposition about what teaching online meant.

We nervously sat around a small round conference table waiting for the phone to ring after we opened registration for the first time ever.

We kept saying to each other, “If we build it, they will come,” but would students really want to try this? The “Web School” pilot in Orange County in the 1996-97 school year drew some students, so we had hope.