To get to his public high school, Prairie du Sac teen Shaun Carroll doesn't have a long commute  — just however long it takes him to walk from his bedroom to his living-room couch.

"You get up in the morning, get on  your laptop and start doing school," Carroll said.

Carroll, 15, is enrolled at Insight School of Wisconsin, a purely on-line accredited public high school open to any Wisconsin student through a partnership between the Grantsburg School District and Insight Schools, Inc.

Insight is in its second year, and Carroll is one of about 400 students enrolled at the high school.

Around 7:30 a.m. Monday through Friday he logs onto the laptop computer provided by the school and begins his coursework.

The school looks like any cleanly designed Web site with clickable icons and links running along the left side of the screen.

Carroll attends lectures — called "elluminate" —every week for his regular classes, which include Algebra, English, Science, History and German.

Carroll listens to his teacher with his headphones and watches live PowerPoint presentations or a live Web camera-feed on his laptop.

His teachers have toll-free numbers in addition to office hours where the students can chat with them on-line.

"You wouldn't think it, but there's a lot of one-on-one with the teachers," said Billy Beesley, principal of Insight.  

Beesley said in addition to the flexible schedule an on-line school provides, one-on-one time with teachers is one of Insight's biggest draws.

"We do get a lot of home school kids because it just fits the mold so well where they can be home with their parents learning and still have the best teachers in Wisconsin teaching them," Beesley said.

Carroll, now a sophomore, was home schooled from third grade through his freshman year when he attended one semester at Sauk Prairie High School.

His mother, Cheryl Carroll, said he did well on his tests and assignments, but fell behind because he didn't turn his homework in on time.

"He has a problem following schedules," Cheryl said.

Cheryl said he has done better since enrolling at Insight and was named "Student of the Month" for October.

Shaun said adapting to Insight has had its bumps.

For instance, because he's considered part of the Grantsburg School District, he can no longer play trumpet in the Sauk Prairie High School band, which he was a member of even when he was home schooled.

But his neighborhood friends still stop by regularly, and he keeps track of local friends through the on-line social-networking site Facebook.

Beesley said that while Insight tries to organize as many face-to-face activities as it can — including a prom — it's ideally suited for how the younger generation interacts: on-line chatting, message boards, texting.

"They get to know each other really well," Beesley said. "For good or for bad, we did have kids who were dating by prom, even though they never saw each other."