The online education news world is hopping this week. With a cyber charter school in Pennsylvania unionizing (the first of its kind to do so), Herzing University voted ‘Best School for Online Education‘ in Wisconsin, and young tennis players being given access to two top-notch online schools–newsworthy events are cropping up right and left.

Go Online to Learn–and Get Licensed–to Operate a Boat
South Carolina has just christened a new online boating education program. The course, which is approved by the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators and recognized by the U.S. Coast Guard, teaches students all sorts of great things about boats, boating, and boat safety–and all at their convenience, thanks to the wonders of online education. After completing the course, students go to BoaterExam.com and, upon passing the exam, can print out temporary certificates immediately.

This is great news for anyone looking to append Captain to the start of their name, but it raises some interesting questions about what can and cannot be taught online. I, for one, don’t think I’d feel ready to pilot a boat around my local, popular lake after taking a course online. In the same way, I wouldn’t want to be licensed to drive a car without being forced to, you know, actually get some driving in.

Online Universities Just as Susceptible to Fire as Their Brick-and-Mortar Counterparts
Fires in Santa Barbara, CA threatened to burn down a virtual university last week. Well, actually, it threatened their servers. Fielding Graduate University staff members actually pulled the plug on their network, put it in the back of a car, and raced the flames out of town. Students were only without access for 25 hours, which is pretty remarkable, considering the entire online university relocated and set up shop at another location.

I don’t mean to make dramatic comparisons, but look at how far we’ve come, thanks to technology: it’s been roughly two millenia since the burning of the Royal Library of Alexandria, and we’re now so technologically advanced that when fire threatens our stored knowledge, we can email it, upload it, unplug it and toss it in the back of a horseless carriage–whatever it takes. Students can be back and learning at their leisure in less than a day–or just go to a different site–whereas the burning of the library at Alexandria set Western civilization back hundreds of years because of everything that was loss. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.