The national spotlight shone on Rappahannock County High School yesterday.

The 390-student school was featured on National Public Radio in a series about innovative trends in education.

Since the 2005-2006 school year, Rappahannock high school has offered online courses through a state program called Virtual Virginia. Teachers record video lectures and post them on the Internet for students to watch. Class sessions can also be held live, with students and teachers communicating through instant message or an audio program that allows classmates to hear and speak with each other.

The courses are an outgrowth of nearly two decades of "distance learning" though the Virginia Department of Education, which in the past has aired classes on public television stations.

"With the advent of the Web and Governor Warner's education for lifetime initiative, we created an online virtual class because the technology now allows us to do so much more than we used to be able to do," said Virtual Virginia Director Cathy Cheely.

Most of the courses offered through Virtual Virginia are Advanced Placement classes. Cheely said the aim of the program is to make classes available to students who might not otherwise be able to take them. She said that in smaller schools there are sometimes not enough students interested in AP classes to offer them.

"We started off serving students in rural and underserved areas where they couldn't get these courses any other way," Cheely said.

About 10 Rappahannock students are taking online courses this year, an increase over the past couple years as interest has grown and more classes have been offered, said Chris Collins, the Virtual Virginia mentor at the high school.

About 3,000 students are taking online classes through the program, which is geared toward Virginia students but is open to those in other states and even other countries.

"It allows a lot of our kids other options that the would not be able to take advantage of unless they were at a larger school," Collins said.

And some of the students see benefits to the online format of the classes.

"We can go home and get our stuff done whenever we need to," said Zack Jackson, a senior at Rappahannock high school who is taking a class on world mythology.

Students taking the courses, which typically entail between eight and 10 hours of homework each week, spend a regular class period in the school library working on material.

Rappahannock high school junior A.J. Collins said students are given the freedom to work at their own pace and according to their own schedules. He cautioned, however, that such freedom requires self-control.

Collins said he is planning on taking three online courses next year.

The NPR piece on Virtual Virginia is available at www.NPR.org.