I'd argue it's reasonable for core concepts to be taught online, but things like etiquette, social interaction, etc. slbe taught in person. For instance this allows kids sitting next to each other to learn different levels of math according to their ability, and then go tag with their buddies.
There's a lot to be desired in schools (In the US at least and I assume Canada) but one thing schools do do is bring people from many different backgrounds together for long periods of time.
That in and of itself is educational for the world students will eventually enter. It creates some level of shared experience and social cohesion and underlying social reality. It's not done very well admittedly with a lot of time wasting and poor education and lowest denominator and propaganda flavor of the decade, but the principal still applies.
The thing I'm afraid of with parent and neighbors doing the socializing exclusively is reality bubbles and a fracturing of shared culture.
Reality bubbles are very much here already. For example, there was a fun study showing that Ivy League students who graduated from a public high school had markedly lower opinions of the ability of an average person than did Ivy League students who graduated from a private high school.
> one thing schools do do is bring people from many different backgrounds together for long periods of time.
As our communities become less diverse, our schools follow. At least in Canada from my experience having lived all over the place. For example, a White suburb leads to white schools, and the house value of the suburb is always roughly the same so the socioeconomic status of the students is pretty close. There’s no bussing kids from different areas around to achieve diversity targets.
One teacher broadcasting to thousands does scale. The best course material being taught to all does scale. Teachers assistants working with small 5-6 person groups scales better than 1 to 30.
My teachers stood up and explained a topic. We read further, did homework and were marked on tests and projects. There may be a period after the lecture where we could try to get help. Perhaps going after class might get you extra help but most teachers seemed to be involved in coaching after class.
Where does teaching come in? The lecture or the help after?
We had much more back and forth, discussion and such. And teacher would know you personally somewhat and would communicate with you personally when ypi had trouble.
The class was giving feedback to teachers, verbal and non verbal.
The verbal feedback needed because teachers had to wing it like a standup comedian wouldn't be necessary because each lesson would have been vetted and choosen as the best material.
Having to slowdown the entire class because you need help helps you but not a percentage of the class. Going quicker for you hurts a different segment.
A teacher with a small number of students can interact with all students. A teacher with a large number of students cannot. Is teacher/student interaction valuable? I’d say yes. Student to student interaction is also valuable.
MIT OCW is the worst example of scaling great teaching. Just filming a teacher at the front of a classroom with poor audio and video and no interaction, no community, no feedback.
better to consider something like Coursera (live teachers, material access is not an issue as everything is delivered in the course) or Khan Academy / Duolingo where there is no teacher but interactive learning modules and immediate quizzing/feedback. Even Masterclass, which at least features engaging performances by the celebrity teacher.
MIT OCW videos are 100x more well made where the professors explain complex topics in a simple way and is pretty enjoyable to follow through.
Coursera on the other hand has courses which are almost always quite poor and basic in quality and mostly tailored to make students “feel” like they learnt something (when mostly they just learnt the basics in a random way) so that they don’t apply for a refund.
MIT doesn’t have any of that
And is pretty enjoyable to go through ,
Maybe the difference is because of the high quality experiences of their professors
But I’d take MIT OCW over Coursera any day.
I think Edx might be a better comparison , they tend to have better quality content than coursera.
You are assuming that irl and online are remotely (pun intended) the same. From personal experience animating a language workshop, doing it online is awful. Because of delay, sound quality, only one person speaking at the time etc. In the end only the participants already proficient in the language benefits from it, so it is widening inequality. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the same effect occurs for other subjects as well.
It seems obvious for instance that kids having access to better computer and networking as well as their own calm place to study will be able to perform better in remote learning. Not to mention adults who can answer their questions. Schools allows those differences to disappear.
My impression from covid online school was that it is strictly inferior to in person school. The more important and core the concept is, the more you want it taught in person.
I don't even care about exact practical and psychological reasons for it. I know that I would not picked online school for my kids whenever there is choice.
And beyond the cost on kids, the cost on parents, specifically on mothers who took brunt of it is considerable too. In terms of losing jobs and this pushing whole familly into problems, in terms of exhaustion and isolation too.
It depends on how it is run, and the students. My child does better in person, at least at this point in life. However, many children did better online than in person I've heard from some that it's easier to avoid distraction from classmates, and they feel more focused.
Classroom sized video conferences with elementary school kids are a big mess though. A teleconference operator could go a long way.
Having an option to do things online for students where it works better seems good to me.
In some ideal world, students could work on some of their curriculm online where it made sense for them, and other parts offline. Kind of hard to coordinate a classroom that way though.
So like post-Covid offices students should be free to work from home some days or go to school for in person social engagement on other days, and unlike Ontario today the decision should not be made once for the entire school year. It should change day be day based on the student. If we accept this concept for offices we should accept it for schools.
As it's described in the article, neither side is presenting a compelling case. The government isn't saying what problem it's trying to solve, the teacher's union isn't saying why it's bad (1).
I went through the Ontario school system, and I hated it. Unless it has changed drastically, high school seemed particularly ineffective, being both too broad and aimed at post-secondary university-level education. Of note was the lack of education for skilled workers, which, predictably, there's a shortage of now. I went through the 5 year program, which was particularly awful (decades ago they aligned it with (all?) other provinces and made it 4 years).
Personalized education through technology, at least as a supplement to on-site education, is already here. Ensuring that all children have access to it, by making it government funded, seems like an awful thing to be up and arms about.
(1) They do claim that this will be a problem because of the digital divide, but the gap between poor and rich students (putting it simply) is well known, and growing, so how exactly would this make it worse?
The problem they are trying to solve is offering more stable online learning options. Methinks it may have been spurred on by this whole "global pandemic" situation.
The article explains that teachers are primarily unhappy because one of the options would involve moving online education to a for-profit corporation, which would not only ostensibly divert funds from public education, but also operate without the oversight of the pub ed system.
You're right that that's what the president of one union said.
But according to the article, the option is for it to move to TVO/TFO - a crown corporation that answers to the ministry of education and is non-profit.
Whether he's made an honest mistake or is trying to deceive, like I said, he isn't very compelling.
I've been occasionally tutoring my nephew for the past few years. Based on that I'm pretty skeptical of online learning for kids.
A lot of exercises and tasks are never done, because it's much easier to pretend that you're studying online than it is in person. It leads to less experience with the exercises. This isn't all that bad in subjects like History or Literature, because if you miss out on ancient Rome then you simply don't know about ancient Rome. However if you miss out on mathematics or chemistry, then it's going to affect you down the line. What you learn a year from now is most likely built upon what you're learning today. It makes learning future topics harder.
Online learning for kids might work, but I think it needs to come with a change of teaching materials. Printed out workbooks and exercises from textbooks written into your notebooks don't work well with online learning. Teachers don't really have a good way of getting kids to consistently do the exercises they need to do. Teachers only have so much time.
I'm not in Canada though. Perhaps the situation is better over there.
The union is afraid of losing jobs. For the 30% doing better removing the choice will reduce their chance of success. Many kids did better without the distractions of the hallway rat race.
It could cost some teacher jobs in time if the best teacher and course becomes standard and broadcast to all.
What we are not talking about is the online model. The one used during covid where the teacher acted like a babysister and made sure she could see all eyes on all cameras for 6 hours a day needs to be examined. The lessons learned for many successful homeschooling families is structure and schedule should be flexible. We tried to import the best 1900 offered on how to structure a classroom to a group of 2100 century kids and wondered why they weren't engaged staring at their teacher through zoom. It is not like we weren't asking why kids are not as engaged in the classroom before covid. We had a huge rise in add.
The answer for many kids is going to be online education with the missing experiencial component where learning involves exploring, knowledge driven education. We need different types of teachers who will challenge students outside of the classroom. We need flexible local groups of students who can socialize and learn and explore together.
I was one of those square peg-round hole kids as far as the education system went, while I might have benefitted from the online, independent learning approach.
I know that I was in a distinct minority, and frankly - while I might have prospered more educationally, I would have left school with many many more rough edges socially.
School is more than just nuts and bolts knowledge, half of it is supposed to be society with training wheels where the normal rules of adulthood don't yet apply, so you can make mistakes without life altering consequences.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 71.4 ms ] threadThat in and of itself is educational for the world students will eventually enter. It creates some level of shared experience and social cohesion and underlying social reality. It's not done very well admittedly with a lot of time wasting and poor education and lowest denominator and propaganda flavor of the decade, but the principal still applies.
The thing I'm afraid of with parent and neighbors doing the socializing exclusively is reality bubbles and a fracturing of shared culture.
As our communities become less diverse, our schools follow. At least in Canada from my experience having lived all over the place. For example, a White suburb leads to white schools, and the house value of the suburb is always roughly the same so the socioeconomic status of the students is pretty close. There’s no bussing kids from different areas around to achieve diversity targets.
Where does teaching come in? The lecture or the help after?
The class was giving feedback to teachers, verbal and non verbal.
Having to slowdown the entire class because you need help helps you but not a percentage of the class. Going quicker for you hurts a different segment.
The answer is personalized education.
better to consider something like Coursera (live teachers, material access is not an issue as everything is delivered in the course) or Khan Academy / Duolingo where there is no teacher but interactive learning modules and immediate quizzing/feedback. Even Masterclass, which at least features engaging performances by the celebrity teacher.
MIT OCW videos are 100x more well made where the professors explain complex topics in a simple way and is pretty enjoyable to follow through.
Coursera on the other hand has courses which are almost always quite poor and basic in quality and mostly tailored to make students “feel” like they learnt something (when mostly they just learnt the basics in a random way) so that they don’t apply for a refund.
MIT doesn’t have any of that And is pretty enjoyable to go through , Maybe the difference is because of the high quality experiences of their professors
But I’d take MIT OCW over Coursera any day.
I think Edx might be a better comparison , they tend to have better quality content than coursera.
It seems obvious for instance that kids having access to better computer and networking as well as their own calm place to study will be able to perform better in remote learning. Not to mention adults who can answer their questions. Schools allows those differences to disappear.
I don't even care about exact practical and psychological reasons for it. I know that I would not picked online school for my kids whenever there is choice.
And beyond the cost on kids, the cost on parents, specifically on mothers who took brunt of it is considerable too. In terms of losing jobs and this pushing whole familly into problems, in terms of exhaustion and isolation too.
Classroom sized video conferences with elementary school kids are a big mess though. A teleconference operator could go a long way.
Having an option to do things online for students where it works better seems good to me.
In some ideal world, students could work on some of their curriculm online where it made sense for them, and other parts offline. Kind of hard to coordinate a classroom that way though.
I went through the Ontario school system, and I hated it. Unless it has changed drastically, high school seemed particularly ineffective, being both too broad and aimed at post-secondary university-level education. Of note was the lack of education for skilled workers, which, predictably, there's a shortage of now. I went through the 5 year program, which was particularly awful (decades ago they aligned it with (all?) other provinces and made it 4 years).
Personalized education through technology, at least as a supplement to on-site education, is already here. Ensuring that all children have access to it, by making it government funded, seems like an awful thing to be up and arms about.
(1) They do claim that this will be a problem because of the digital divide, but the gap between poor and rich students (putting it simply) is well known, and growing, so how exactly would this make it worse?
The article explains that teachers are primarily unhappy because one of the options would involve moving online education to a for-profit corporation, which would not only ostensibly divert funds from public education, but also operate without the oversight of the pub ed system.
But according to the article, the option is for it to move to TVO/TFO - a crown corporation that answers to the ministry of education and is non-profit.
Whether he's made an honest mistake or is trying to deceive, like I said, he isn't very compelling.
A lot of exercises and tasks are never done, because it's much easier to pretend that you're studying online than it is in person. It leads to less experience with the exercises. This isn't all that bad in subjects like History or Literature, because if you miss out on ancient Rome then you simply don't know about ancient Rome. However if you miss out on mathematics or chemistry, then it's going to affect you down the line. What you learn a year from now is most likely built upon what you're learning today. It makes learning future topics harder.
Online learning for kids might work, but I think it needs to come with a change of teaching materials. Printed out workbooks and exercises from textbooks written into your notebooks don't work well with online learning. Teachers don't really have a good way of getting kids to consistently do the exercises they need to do. Teachers only have so much time.
I'm not in Canada though. Perhaps the situation is better over there.
It could cost some teacher jobs in time if the best teacher and course becomes standard and broadcast to all.
What we are not talking about is the online model. The one used during covid where the teacher acted like a babysister and made sure she could see all eyes on all cameras for 6 hours a day needs to be examined. The lessons learned for many successful homeschooling families is structure and schedule should be flexible. We tried to import the best 1900 offered on how to structure a classroom to a group of 2100 century kids and wondered why they weren't engaged staring at their teacher through zoom. It is not like we weren't asking why kids are not as engaged in the classroom before covid. We had a huge rise in add.
The answer for many kids is going to be online education with the missing experiencial component where learning involves exploring, knowledge driven education. We need different types of teachers who will challenge students outside of the classroom. We need flexible local groups of students who can socialize and learn and explore together.
One size can't fit all anymore.
I know that I was in a distinct minority, and frankly - while I might have prospered more educationally, I would have left school with many many more rough edges socially.
School is more than just nuts and bolts knowledge, half of it is supposed to be society with training wheels where the normal rules of adulthood don't yet apply, so you can make mistakes without life altering consequences.