 NCSSM Online is an absolutely amazing program. It is an experience in itself that you cannot obtain anywhere else. It's probably the best course you'll ever take during your high school career. It's actually a lot of hands-on approach, even though it is an online program. This isn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. This is a lot more. NCSSM Online is a unique, tuition-free program of online learning blended with real-time relationships and on-site residential activities. This exceptional two-year hybrid learning experience gives students a unique blend of connections. Using state-of-the-art technology and a dynamic online learning environment, this program is greatly enhanced by featuring a residential summer experience, as well as on-campus weekends throughout the school year. These residential weekends provide time for collaborative classroom work, labs, field trips, and the kind of bonding that creates a real sense of community. Our residential weekends here at NCSSM are comprised of several different aspects. The first one is that the students socialize with each other. They get to know each other better. They have time together so that they get more of that residential experience. The second thing is that we teachers can work with hands-on types of activities with them. I come from a very small school, a very small town, so we don't have a lot of fancy equipment and you limit it on the type of experiments that you can do, so coming down here is definitely really cool. The residential weekends are by far the funnest part of the program. You get to come here and meet these people who normally would just be like a name on a buddy list, but then you actually get to put a face to the name. Sometimes you can even call people, I text people regularly that I know from my online classes. We're just more comfortable with each other and it kind of eliminates the awkwardness because we're more used to each other and we kind of got a sense of each other's personalities. You learn just more about them than just sitting there and reading what they type. Designed to expand the NCSSM academic experience beyond the boundaries of the Durham campus, this innovative online program offers a host of rigorous honors or college level courses. These specialized courses are taught by experienced NCSSM faculty and feature the same challenging curriculum offered in the NCSSM residential program. The courses we're taking are exceptional. They're difficult, they're stimulating. There's courses that you don't really have much of an opportunity to take many other places. There are so many different components of chemistry and biology and so here you get to learn like focus on one component of biology and learn about that and understand it more deeply. Through NCSSM online, I really have the best of two different worlds. I can have these amazing courses and I can still have my music, marching band, research, friends. Well, it's really exciting because we're able to reach so many students that we could never reach before just through our residential program. For a student to be admitted to the NCSSM online program, they are screened very competitively. One of the essential parts of our screening process is to try to assess whether a student will do well in an online program. My students are doing very well in AP Chemistry online. I would say because I also teach a residential class, they're doing at least equally as well as students in a residential class and with some of them actually better. They really are being asked to be very responsible. I know especially it's come down to sometimes do I go see and move with my friends on this night? Do I stay at home and get some of my homework done, get my readings done? And I feel that it really gives you a valuable experience knowing how to decide what to do with your time, how to manage it well. These skills are definitely something you're going to be using for many, many years to come. An online course will help you prepare for college because it's not like a teacher saying do this now, do this now, get this done by now. It's actually you determining whether or not you want to put an effort to it. The innovative use of technology and communication tools creates a seamless learning environment. All course materials including videos, animations, graphics and text are contained within a learning management system. It's just easy and you can access all of it from one place instead of having to look something up and then go to a different site and email that and do this. Teachers keep up by seeing in real time when students are logged on to the system and what assignments are being worked on. Web-based video conferencing software is used at least once a week to ensure vital synchronous connectivity between teacher and student. It's really cool actually, I like using it a lot because there are three different forms of communication which makes it even more effective. Your teacher can talk to you, you can talk to your teacher and the whole class is there. There's an interactive whiteboard so like the teacher can work out a problem there in front of you and you can work out the problem also. You have an ability to raise your hand online and there's a modicon so you can say I'm smiling or I'm frowning or I'm totally confused. This is the way a lot of education will be taking place in the near future and so I feel like a pioneer and I know the students feel that same way as well. For me the NCSSM online experience was a way for me to rise to the occasion and you actually apply yourself to things outside of what you're required to do. The NCSSM online experience pushes you to reach your full potential. It's definitely not something that I had to do but it was something that I wanted to do. It's accepting the greater challenge.