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Gaby Wojtowicz took online speech while traveling in Greece. “Doing online summer school is definitely an advantage because you can do it from anywhere in the world,” she says.

Virtual school, for many of us, still seems like science fiction. In last year’s popular book Ready Player One, the author describes a near future that is poor and grim. Yet even the most unfortunate kid – including the neglected hero who lives in a trailer park of old RVs stacked on top of each other – can go to the best school. Not in person, but online by using a digital avatar at a virtual-reality campus.

While we can hope that the novel’s apocalyptic landscape isn’t our future, we are moving steadily toward its vision of online education, though not in fully realized immersive 3D – at least not yet.

Already, however, students worldwide learn by watching free educational videos at popular sites like Khan Academy’s website (khanacademy.org) and new iPad app. Others learn at youtube.com/education, a compilation that includes TED-Ed’s new channel. In Bellaire, a parent makes her middle school student watch Khan Academy videos since he said was bored at school – he said he likes that one 10-minute video can cover a semester’s worth of highlights.

But the options go beyond videos. Increasingly, as The Wall Street Journal wrote recently, professors at exclusive colleges are offering courses online. Students of all ages study interactively at sites like Piazza (piazza.com), Moodle (moodle.org) and Quizlet (quizlet.com). So how is this online-education trend playing out in our local schools, particularly in high school?

While many students don’t know it, it turns out they can take a lot of their classes online – for credit. The courses vary and may include video lectures, interactive worksheets, videoconferencing, conversation forums and physical textbooks. Most require graded homework and tests and sometimes essays. Some are free, and some cost a few hundred dollars per course. They are taken, with credit transferred as necessary, via school districts, private companies and colleges.

Gaby Wojtowicz, a senior at Memorial High School, took an online speech class while traveling in Greece so she could fit in film-production electives during the year. She liked working on her own time and having long conversations with the teacher via an online audio stream.

“I had to stand front of the camera and give a speech for three minutes. If you’re shy, it’s great to do it online,” she said. “Doing online summer school is definitely an advantage because you can do it from anywhere in the world.” High school students who choose virtual schooling span the spectrum. Some overachievers take online summer courses so they can boost their GPA by taking extra 5.0 grade point classes during the regular school year, or so they can have a study lab for grueling coursework. Some take classes online because they heard the regular course was a killer.

“Our International Baccalaureate (IB) students often take physics during the summer to free up room during their senior year for their IB projects,” says Joel Smith of Spring Branch ISD’s Virtual High School. “Many juniors take government and economics to allow them to focus on their AP senior classes. A private-school parent had her daughter retake a math course that she barely passed to strengthen her skills. The student pulled straight As in math the following semester at a rigorous high school.”

At Bellaire High School, some students take health and speech online the summer before their freshman year. If their middle-school counselors give approval, they can take certain courses for credit instead of a grade and not have 4.0 classes potentially pull down their GPA.

Once students start high school, earning grades vs. credit-only depends on the district and campus. Smith says most schools count online summer courses as credit-only. But HISD says it factors in the grades of every course taken between ninth and 12th grade. Students also must get counselor approval beforehand.

Online classes can be a good option for students needing to retake failing classes or incompletes, as well as those at home or hospitalized with a long-term illness. Others use the courses to supplement homeschooling or to allow time for competitive gymnastics or other intensive sports or art projects. At The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, students take online physical education – yes, P.E. – so they have more time for their art-specialty classes. Other online students have included a teen who took Spanish 3 while on a mission trip to Honduras, where he practiced his schoolwork, as well as a teen mother who worked through assignments while her toddler was taking naps. Some campuses and districts offer laptop check-out programs.

Sami Moon takes online classes because of her packed schedule. “The reason I was able to be in FFA is because of virtual high school,” she says, “and the reason I want to do FFA is because I want to be a vet.

Sami Moon, a junior at Memorial who wants to be a veterinarian, took AP History online so she could fit in a study hall, band and FFA activities. “To be honest, I learned more about myself than just history. I learned I can set goals and keep them.” She also learned her best work hours came late at night. “I was sending assignments in at midnight. I was ready to go, and I was working.” Her only concern is that she is scheduled to take the AP History exam in May, and because she took the course so long ago, last summer, the information is not fresh in her mind. Fortunately, SBISD offers AP reviews in late April for online students. She plans on taking government and economics online over the summer.

Derrick Anderson runs Bellaire High School’s Graduation Lab, where students can take online courses both in a classroom on campus and from home. He estimates that 25 percent of BHS students take some form of virtual course. He says a typical online semester course includes “an average of 750 pages, 1,000 images, 250 multimedia tutorials, 250 interactive exercises and dozens of vetted web links.”

“When it comes to intense, heavy-content subjects, I recommend that they [students] take them with a teacher and not in the online environment,” he said. “Taking courses virtually puts much of the responsibility on the student, and they must stay on top of the coursework in order to be successful.”

Yet Joel Smith of Spring Branch ISD’s Virtual High School thinks online classes can be even more personal: “The technology does most of the ‘first teaching’ and grading; this frees the online instructor to provide personalized interaction with students. Online courses make frequent use of student-to-student academic discussion forums … that offer a more persistent and thoughtful discussion thread. Students who might hesitate to speak up in a crowded classroom are more comfortable posting their thoughts in the Facebook-like environment of an online course.” For students and parents, there are almost too many options for online classes, especially since you can take classes just about anywhere and transfer the credits.

Spring Branch’s Virtual High School (vhs.springbranchisd.com/) is good place to start. It is well-regarded in this field and provides Texas Education Agency-approved online classes, for $200 or 350 apiece, to students nationwide, even though a lot of counselors at Houston-area campuses don’t realize that. SBISD’s Smith says he takes calls from students nationwide, helping them to “do some matchmaking” with the right course. “We try to simplify it,” he says.

The options include customizing a course to fit around athletics training or family trips. For some summer courses, students come to the Virtual High School office for in-person mentoring a few hours each week. HISD’s Virtual School Department (vschool.houstonisd.org) offers free courses through its Graduation Labs and, for $200-250/course, through other sources, including the Texas Virtual School Network (txvsn.org). Many courses come from apexlearning.com and texasconnectionsacademy.com.

Texas Tech University’s online K-12 school (www.depts.ttu.edu/uc/k-12/), at roughly $200 per course, is also a popular choice for local students, and school districts route students there for certain electives.

Registration is taking place at all these sites now for summer. And even online classes fill up. Editor’s note: A shorter version of this story appeared in the April print issue of the magazine.