Florida Virtual Homeschool Academy Review

Because we have not actually witnessed a student using Florida Virtual, we cannot make a good recommendation one way or the other. But we can tell you the following.

Sevenstar uses the same platform except for the added Christian elements, and it is well done.

Samples that we have seen of Florida Virtual shows it as being a highly contemporary learning platform. It is styled after current trends in education that are scientifically calculated to match brain patterning in today’s youth. What that means is that science has found that the brains of youth today are wired differently than they were a few decades ago, and students are no longer able to have long attention spans. Science has calculated the average attention span for students today, and curriculum developers that follow this science, make learning materials to match the scientific suggestions.

Curriculums that follow this type of learning have a mix of short easy to read passages, videos, games, and assignments. Generally, each is set at a specific time limit to match scientifically calculated average attention spans.

For example. Have you ever listened to a speech or sermon that you really wanted to hear, but after a while your brain just started wandering, and you found yourself missing part of the message because you couldn’t focus on the speaker as attentively as you did at first? It isn’t because you are a “bad” person or because you’re “weak”. It is because the brain is wired to only focus on a speaker for a certain period of time. Today, that time period is shorter than it used to be. And let’s face it. If your mind is wandering, you really aren’t learning as much as you should be. Speakers, and school platforms, that utilize technology designed around this principle only talk for the specified amount of time. Then, they switch to something different, because that switch resets the brain to be able to listen again. That’s how this type of learning platform works. For school it could look like something similar to 15 minutes of reading, a video, a few more minutes of reading, an assignment, a game, etc.

Studies have shown that students actually retain more of the information in a short, interesting burst from a 5-minute video than they do from a boring hour-long video.

I personally can attest to this truth. I attended a community college with the typical style of learning where students read hundreds of pages from a textbook each week and listened to an hour and a half of an instructor speak. My mind wandered so badly that I only really remembered a small part of the material. Then, I went to a university that utilized the type of platform that I talked about above. I learned more in 8 weeks than I did in two years at the community college.

Florida Virtual is not the only academy to use this type of platform. Of course, Sevenstar uses it, and so does Liberty University Academy. Excelsior Classes could be considered as using a similar style simply because the fully live classes tend to accomplish the same feature, but I am not sure if they intentionally use this scientific method or not.

Obviously, we cannot recommend Florida Virtual for families wanting a Christian education. But if the ultimate goal for a family is a public-school education, Florida Virtual is a good fit. We are assuming that since they are public school, they are common core.

We have seen some negative reviews for Florida Virtual from Consumer Affairs, however, in looking at them many of them pertain to students who were in trouble for not doing the work as specified. We did see some regarding teachers not responding in a timely manner. One negative review stated that test questions were not contained in the content. However, there was only one such comment. Overall, there were only a handful of negative reviews, and it should also be acknowledged that most people who write reviews for Consumer Affairs go to the site because they want to report a problem with a business.