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Education isn't ideal now, but I don't think online education is a good start or even a viable model. Training more and better teachers is the way to go, espec

by aylmao 11y ago

Education isn't ideal now, but I don't think online education is a good start or even a viable model. Training more and better teachers is the way to go, especially in "third world countries". Not only is there big issues with motivation and the whole social/interactive/distant aspect to moocs; what do you do when you don't have internet, or your device breaks? Now your education depends on a machine that costs a couple hundred bucks, instead of a notebook, pencil and early morning. Idk, I don't see online education as any more than just a sometimes-useful alternative.

dineshp2 11y ago
Online education is a great way to democratise access to the very best teachers/classes/content and I see it as a great way for learners to discover new topics/subjects quickly without needing to enroll in any physical classes. I don't think we will reach the point where we have great teachers everywhere. That is just not practical and too idealistic. That's exactly why we need to start innovating in the field of education to try and make it a more meaningful experience and one which positively impacts society. I see online education as one of the pieces of the education puzzle.
m0nty 11y ago
> I don't think online education is a good start or even a viable model Let's suppose you open-sourced education, so rather than it being controlled by an elite and passed down to the masses in varying degrees depending on how much money the recipient has, it's controlled by everyone. People can design their own courses in the same way you make a Linux distro or other open source project. Courses could be stored somewhere like Github and downloaded, forked and merged like we currently do with software. Suppose people taking those courses could contact the developers or their helpers if they don't understand something, or just want to discuss it -- email, Skype, Slack, etc. So many people want to learn, and so many others (like me :) would be happy to help them if there were the right structures and support systems to make it possible. All these things could come together to become something far more than just "online courses", just as open source software is so much more than software you don't have to pay for. Imagine we're at the Apple II stage of online education, but the iPad version (30 years down the road) will be unimaginably cool and powerful. Let's just imagine a world where you expect people to be educated to a decent level, just as we increasingly expect a base level of computer literacy. You're right that the infrastructure is not there at the moment, but let's not get hung up on that -- it will spread and increase, so what good things do we want to follow it? If online education stays where it is, you're right -- it's not good enough. But, respectfully, I hope you're wrong, and we're seeing the start of something extraordinary, the next phase in the democratisation and distribution of knowledge. I hope universities start to look more and more like museums, and education becomes a lifelong endeavour for everyone: learners, teachers, and all points in between. Personally I think this would be a tremendous thing for PG&Co to research. Hopefully, we're just getting started :)
Houshalter 11y ago
>Now your education depends on a machine that costs a couple hundred bucks How much do you think teachers cost?
- aylmao 11y ago
  To the usual family sending their kids to school, nothing.
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    You can't just assume costs away. Teachers are very expensive and the main cost of education. I don't know if technology is cheaper yet, but it's worth considering.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
It's teachers that are not remotely viable in the developing world. I read recently that the teacher failure rate in Maharashtra is about 15% - i.e., on a given day, 15% of Maharashtrian teachers just don't show up to work, and there is a famous case of an MP teacher who's been absent for 23 years. [1] Further, even if the teacher shows up, the student may not be able to. Consider the "town" in this pic: https://imgur.com/mjWcEZZ https://imgur.com/mjWcEZZ Hiring a teacher for the 5-10 kids who live there is unaffordable, so the kids there need to climb the "mountains" [2] whenever they want to attend the closest school. Of course, the kids don't actually do that every day; work and family obligations often interfere. A 5-10k s mobile phone with a (worst case) 250rs data plan works far better than 85% of the time, even in that rural town. It works on the student's schedule, so if a horde of visitors require the student to spend the day in the family restaurant, they can catch up at night. The real thing which would help a lot is better devices. E.g., something closer to a kindle in terms of battery life an readability. [1] Unfortunately I read this stat in a paper copy of the Pune mirror a couple of weeks ago, so I don't have a citation offhand. The 23 year absence is easy to google, however: http://www.hindustantimes.com/indore/action-against-teacher-absent-from-duty-for-23-years/story-um3X0aEj4HPwiLiYs45GrI.html http://www.hindustantimes.com/indore/action-against-teacher-... [2] That's the Marathi term for the hills in that region.
- aylmao 11y ago
  Education is about much more than just a transmission of knowledge, however. IMHO efforts are better spent training better teachers, than making and buying more devices. A good teacher will inspire kids, will get them to work together, will be a person to go to. I do believe in the motivation of students, but sometimes you need someone to spark that motivation in the first place. There will always be bad teachers, and outrageous stories about them making way around the internet. You hear about good teachers much less often, but their impact in a community can be much, much greater. Teachers are viable; they worked for the developed world, back when they still weren't "the developed world".
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    A good teacher will inspire kids, will get them to work together, will be a person to go to. What evidence do you have that even a fraction of teachers do this? And what evidence do you have that teachers "worked for the developed world" (i.e., had some measurable beneficial effect)? There will always be bad teachers, and outrageous stories about them making way around the internet. The stats suggest lots of them are bad. Rather than more teachers, maybe what we really need is a device to ensure that teachers actually come to work and the political will to stop paying them if they don't.
germinalphrase 11y ago
I believe education will find a natural middle-ground. In many instances the benefit of having an in-person instructor has much to do with the social interaction/interpersonal support that they can give to a struggling/minimally motivated student. That said, motivated learners don't always need that kind of personal interaction and would benefit from self-guided learning opportunities. This is obvious, but is hard to manage well. In the end, I believe students will learn along a fluid spectrum from 'one-on-one' to 'fully distributed online learning' - both of which will heavily lean on better tools. There are tens of thousands of lessons, activities, individual interventions and curriculum modifications created every day by instructors in this country - but all of that knowledge and all those artifacts are effectively lost (as almost nothing gets distributed) and the same creative labor is repeated over and over. So - we should be looking for better ways of mediating in-person instruction to both improve that kind of instruction and as an engine for the creation of universally accessible learning materials. Students who have the ability/proximity to a physical schools get the benefits of personal interaction, while students who cannot get to school (or are underserved by that school) can get the benefits of time shifted lessons/activities/etc. from anywhere in the world.
- aylmao 11y ago
  ^ That sounds viable. I want to point out though, that I hope this doesn't mean states will stop trying to get more schools closer to people, or more teachers trained. As good as one-to-one, "personalised" instruction can be, students gain a lot from learning and working together with other students in a classroom. Tech should be a tool, and not a replacement for teachers IMHO.
  - germinalphrase 11y ago
    Absolutely - and I make these suggestions as a high school teacher. I also have downriver concerns about mass, compulsory data collection on the cognitive development of our youth (though that is not a concern exclusive to education).

by aylmao 11y ago

dineshp2 11y ago

Online education is a great way to democratise access to the very best teachers/classes/content and I see it as a great way for learners to discover new topics/subjects quickly without needing to enroll in any physical classes. I don't think we will reach the point where we have great teachers everywhere. That is just not practical and too idealistic. That's exactly why we need to start innovating in the field of education to try and make it a more meaningful experience and one which positively impacts society. I see online education as one of the pieces of the education puzzle.

m0nty 11y ago

> I don't think online education is a good start or even a viable model Let's suppose you open-sourced education, so rather than it being controlled by an elite and passed down to the masses in varying degrees depending on how much money the recipient has, it's controlled by everyone. People can design their own courses in the same way you make a Linux distro or other open source project. Courses could be stored somewhere like Github and downloaded, forked and merged like we currently do with software. Suppose people taking those courses could contact the developers or their helpers if they don't understand something, or just want to discuss it -- email, Skype, Slack, etc. So many people want to learn, and so many others (like me :) would be happy to help them if there were the right structures and support systems to make it possible. All these things could come together to become something far more than just "online courses", just as open source software is so much more than software you don't have to pay for. Imagine we're at the Apple II stage of online education, but the iPad version (30 years down the road) will be unimaginably cool and powerful. Let's just imagine a world where you expect people to be educated to a decent level, just as we increasingly expect a base level of computer literacy. You're right that the infrastructure is not there at the moment, but let's not get hung up on that -- it will spread and increase, so what good things do we want to follow it? If online education stays where it is, you're right -- it's not good enough. But, respectfully, I hope you're wrong, and we're seeing the start of something extraordinary, the next phase in the democratisation and distribution of knowledge. I hope universities start to look more and more like museums, and education becomes a lifelong endeavour for everyone: learners, teachers, and all points in between. Personally I think this would be a tremendous thing for PG&Co to research. Hopefully, we're just getting started :)

Houshalter 11y ago

>Now your education depends on a machine that costs a couple hundred bucks How much do you think teachers cost?

aylmao 11y ago
To the usual family sending their kids to school, nothing.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  You can't just assume costs away. Teachers are very expensive and the main cost of education. I don't know if technology is cheaper yet, but it's worth considering.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

It's teachers that are not remotely viable in the developing world. I read recently that the teacher failure rate in Maharashtra is about 15% - i.e., on a given day, 15% of Maharashtrian teachers just don't show up to work, and there is a famous case of an MP teacher who's been absent for 23 years. [1] Further, even if the teacher shows up, the student may not be able to. Consider the "town" in this pic: https://imgur.com/mjWcEZZ https://imgur.com/mjWcEZZ Hiring a teacher for the 5-10 kids who live there is unaffordable, so the kids there need to climb the "mountains" [2] whenever they want to attend the closest school. Of course, the kids don't actually do that every day; work and family obligations often interfere. A 5-10k s mobile phone with a (worst case) 250rs data plan works far better than 85% of the time, even in that rural town. It works on the student's schedule, so if a horde of visitors require the student to spend the day in the family restaurant, they can catch up at night. The real thing which would help a lot is better devices. E.g., something closer to a kindle in terms of battery life an readability. [1] Unfortunately I read this stat in a paper copy of the Pune mirror a couple of weeks ago, so I don't have a citation offhand. The 23 year absence is easy to google, however: http://www.hindustantimes.com/indore/action-against-teacher-absent-from-duty-for-23-years/story-um3X0aEj4HPwiLiYs45GrI.html http://www.hindustantimes.com/indore/action-against-teacher-... [2] That's the Marathi term for the hills in that region.

aylmao 11y ago
Education is about much more than just a transmission of knowledge, however. IMHO efforts are better spent training better teachers, than making and buying more devices. A good teacher will inspire kids, will get them to work together, will be a person to go to. I do believe in the motivation of students, but sometimes you need someone to spark that motivation in the first place. There will always be bad teachers, and outrageous stories about them making way around the internet. You hear about good teachers much less often, but their impact in a community can be much, much greater. Teachers are viable; they worked for the developed world, back when they still weren't "the developed world".
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  A good teacher will inspire kids, will get them to work together, will be a person to go to. What evidence do you have that even a fraction of teachers do this? And what evidence do you have that teachers "worked for the developed world" (i.e., had some measurable beneficial effect)? There will always be bad teachers, and outrageous stories about them making way around the internet. The stats suggest lots of them are bad. Rather than more teachers, maybe what we really need is a device to ensure that teachers actually come to work and the political will to stop paying them if they don't.

germinalphrase 11y ago

I believe education will find a natural middle-ground. In many instances the benefit of having an in-person instructor has much to do with the social interaction/interpersonal support that they can give to a struggling/minimally motivated student. That said, motivated learners don't always need that kind of personal interaction and would benefit from self-guided learning opportunities. This is obvious, but is hard to manage well. In the end, I believe students will learn along a fluid spectrum from 'one-on-one' to 'fully distributed online learning' - both of which will heavily lean on better tools. There are tens of thousands of lessons, activities, individual interventions and curriculum modifications created every day by instructors in this country - but all of that knowledge and all those artifacts are effectively lost (as almost nothing gets distributed) and the same creative labor is repeated over and over. So - we should be looking for better ways of mediating in-person instruction to both improve that kind of instruction and as an engine for the creation of universally accessible learning materials. Students who have the ability/proximity to a physical schools get the benefits of personal interaction, while students who cannot get to school (or are underserved by that school) can get the benefits of time shifted lessons/activities/etc. from anywhere in the world.

aylmao 11y ago
^ That sounds viable. I want to point out though, that I hope this doesn't mean states will stop trying to get more schools closer to people, or more teachers trained. As good as one-to-one, "personalised" instruction can be, students gain a lot from learning and working together with other students in a classroom. Tech should be a tool, and not a replacement for teachers IMHO.
- germinalphrase 11y ago
  Absolutely - and I make these suggestions as a high school teacher. I also have downriver concerns about mass, compulsory data collection on the cognitive development of our youth (though that is not a concern exclusive to education).