Russian doesn't show up on the list of courses available at Bountiful High School.
But that's not stopping sophomore Amanda Christensen from taking the foreign language. Every other day, she and two other students gather in a classroom at the high school, turn on a camera and TV monitor and tune into a Russian class taught at Davis High School."It's totally normal," Christensen said of her virtual classroom experience. She admits though, she'd never heard of EDNET, the technology system that links students and teachers all over the state.
"I just wanted to take Russian."
Welcome to Wired High, the virtual high school of the future, where location is beside the point in getting the kind of education you want.
While Gov. Mike Leavitt champions the idea of the Virtual University, efforts to build what he referred to in 1993 as "Centennial High School" are moving fast.
Already the state offers 57 of 60 core classes and 138 elective courses electronically - through broadcast TV, over live interactive systems, on videotape and via the Internet.
"We'd take them in holograms if they were available," said Richard Siddoway, director of the electronic high school project for the Office of Education.
More than 5,000 high school students statewide have taken electronically delivered courses, delivered primarily by EDNET and UtahLink. EDNET will be available in more than 59 schools by spring.
This past session the Utah Legislature set aside $110,000 to hire a principal and staff to formally organize the offerings within an electronic high school.
The electronic high school is part of Leavitt's agenda to make education less dependent on a particular time and place, cutting brick-and-mortar needs by 20 percent in the process. His goal was to have the school working by the end of 1996.
Eventually the state plans to offer classes specifically developed for electronic delivery. Right now the high school courses come from a variety of sources - state colleges and universities, the Davis County School District and from the North Dakota Division of Independent Study.
Utah also wants to fully network high schools so they can incorporate the electronic offerings and, using the technology, create community learning centers.
The virtual high school will be aimed at students who want to finish high school faster or who want classes their school doesn't offer. It's also for students who need to make up coursework and adults who want to get a high school degree, said Vicky Dahn, director of the state's education technology initiative.
And it's for students who want a jump-start on college coursework.
"My goal is to deliver into the high schools the equivalent of a community college," Leavitt said.
Technology won't replace the traditional classroom though, Leavitt said.
"It adds another tool," the governor said.
Modern gadgets have drawbacks - or incredible advantages, depending on your point of view. Tuning out a teacher was never so easy.
"It's kind of cool because we can turn the microphone off and she can't even hear us," Christensen said - adding she and her classmates only do it occasionally, when they really need to talk.
Most of the time "we have to be attentive. This is Russian."
But the temptation to turn off the teacher might be even bigger in a class with lots of students or a less demanding subject, she said.