8 ms·

Problems with Remote Learning

63 points by miles 6y ago

zebnyc 6y ago
This is definitely an issue for families which don’t have access to computers & broadband internet. For the rest, I wonder if the results would have been better if there had ideas from the home-schooling community which could have been incorporated. Granted, this would require way more effort from the parent and a different mindset. However a primer on what to expect, how to overcome obstacles, keeping kids on track, etc. Traditional schools are totally unprepared for this scenario in a remote world. Storytime, a few years back one of my ex-colleagues decided to buy a ranch on the outskirts of Seattle to work remotely. What made the decision easier was that A) his pre-teen kids were already being homeschooled B) his spouse was a stay at home mom who spent a significant amount of time keeping the kids on track. He showed me pictures of the house which looked beautiful. Sat on the edge of a lake with a backdrop against the mountains and came with a stable for horses and livestock.
rootusrootus 6y ago
Agreed, the schools were not well-prepared for this style of learning and so it has not been particularly effective. We still participate with our kids' classes and teachers, but we rely on Khan Academy, augmented by Adventure Academy, among other things. Even so, we are not professional teachers, so I look forward to them returning to class next year.
- freehunter 6y ago
  I agree that the lesson learned here is that emergency remote learning did not work. No one was prepared for it, teachers did not have training or materials needed, students were not expecting it, it was a mess. But that doesn't mean it can't work, just that it didn't work in this emergency situation.
  - thehoff 6y ago
    To some extent I agree. But some districts/schools seemed to really have thought through how to deal with this quickly. Our child's district did a horrible job, from our viewpoint and from the few other parents I've talked to in the same district (public). Up the road is a private school that I hear from their parents did a fantastic job. As well as another parent in a district (public) further from us. Edit: I'm curious to see how this affects the online schools (especially high school and below).
  - poulsbohemian 6y ago
    I don't always agree with him, but our district superintendent had remarkable foresight to make a large purchase of mobile hotspots, recognizing that they would be necessary in a remote learning environment, especially as we are not a wealthy community and have many kids without technology access at home. We have fared much better than the horror stories I've heard around the country. As others have pointed out in this thread - parents who have been able to augment with existing online sources have come out of this better as even the most well-intentioned districts just haven't had the years of preparing for online learning like an education.com, a Khan Academy, etc.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.md/peiyp https://archive.md/peiyp
- momothereal 6y ago
  I haven't been able to access archive.is and archive.md in Firefox because of a Cloudflare error, "Please enable cookies.". It works on Chrome however.
  - samschooler 6y ago
    In case you haven't seen, this is probably the reason for the error: You're using 1.1.1.1 for DNS which is not supported by archive currently. https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680 https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680
    - momothereal 6y ago
      Specifically, it seems to be the new "DNS over HTTPS" feature in Firefox, with the default Cloudflare provider. I guess 1.1.1.1 will cause the same issue. Interestingly, without TLS, the error is "Please enable cookies", whereas on HTTPS it's "403 Forbidden" after passing through an invalid cert.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Try: https://archive.today/peiyb https://archive.today/peiyb https://archive.is/peiyb https://archive.is/peiyb https://archive.fo/peiyb https://archive.fo/peiyb https://archive.li/peiyb https://archive.li/peiyb https://archive.vn/peiyb https://archive.vn/peiyb https://archive.md/peiyb https://archive.md/peiyb https://archive.ph/peiyb https://archive.ph/peiyb One typically works. List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today Cloudflare is in a grudge match with archive.today: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...
op00to 6y ago
My (mixed income but weighted towards wealthy) community schools did excellent remote instruction, and at no time have I seen academic rigor reduced or compromised. I wonder if this is the educational equivalent of needing a product pivot and just totally doing the same thing, just with a different hat on.
dgrin91 6y ago
Headlines like this are probably the worst possible way to do reporting. It tells you what it wants you to think right up front. There is no room for critical thought or debate. There is no possibility for them to be wrong. It implies the full authority of the entire scientific community and if you disagree in the slightest you are a heretic. This is why I like hackernews. There is much less of this crap (though obviously as we can see in this case it still happens).
- erichocean 6y ago
  > This is why I like hackernews. HN guidelines mandate "the worst possible way to do reporting" by not allowing submitters to alter headlines that are obviously bad. Most HN readers wouldn't even click on the article, or even click on the comments page. But they see the headline.
  - tutfbhuf 6y ago
    We have the collective free will to ignore posts with such headlines.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      Collective free will demonstrably scales poorly in media.
      - ScottFree 6y ago
        citation needed.
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715
stephc_int13 6y ago
Is it an involuntary illustration of the "jumping to conclusions" fallacy?
Hydraulix989 6y ago
Is this because there is no effective way to do "remote learning" or just because of poor execution?
- mrcartmenez 6y ago
  Research from the university sector in the US and Europe — who invested heavily in remote learning in the past decade to try to increase their reach — is unfortunately that distance learning is an order of magnitude worse in terms of outcomes than for traditional teaching.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Any references you could share?
29athrowaway 6y ago
Technology is not an emphasis in teacher education. If engineers were teachers, in one week you would see them creating github repos with reusable TeX material for every possible class that exists, and then finding a way to evaluate and rank the best material. In contrast, every teacher creates their own material that rarely gets reused, evaluated or ranked in any way, resulting in suboptimal material and wasted effort.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  Computer Science professors are well educated in technology, yet I see much more sharing of material between primary school teachers than among computer science professors. Teachers know how to use photocopiers, if material isn't shared and reused the reason isn't lack of sophisticated technology.
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    I am referring to teachers in general, including elementary/middle/high school teachers, for every subject, not only computer science. You can use computers to teach almost anything.
    - reidjs 6y ago
      I'm curious to know how much classroom teaching experience you have? I agree a motivated person can learn almost anything from an internet enabled computer, but I disagree that you can teach almost anything. In my experience they're not useful for teaching children fundamental skills like math, writing, music, etc.
      - 29athrowaway 6y ago
        I am not saying we should put each kid in front of a computer, at least at the beginning. I am saying that the educational material that kids are learning from could be produced in a smarter, more reusable way so that it can be objectively compared and improved.
- 6y ago
cortesoft 6y ago
K-12 schools serve two purposes - to educate students and to provide child care during the day. Clearly remote learning isn’t going to work when it doesn’t solve the second need.
- asdf333 6y ago
  i think you hit on a point that means if kids are independent enough, then it can work. so it probably works fine for juniors and seniors in hs and is horrendously bad for kindergarteners
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  There's a third leg to the stool: Food and general welfare. Our local PTA has long put together meal / clothing care packages to send home with kids in need, but even before our distance learning program kicked in, the schools made sure to be open to provide meals for kids in need. Maybe this isn't the case everywhere, but in districts like ours with a high number of kids at the poverty level, schools are a significant provider of meals / health and welfare checks.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wdb 6y ago
There are kids who thriving by studying from home compared from studying/lessons in the traditional school environment. At least that has been reported on the radio/news in The Netherlands. Fully depends on the students what kind of learning/teaching is best for them when they are allowed to plan which tasks they do instead of following the schedule of the teacher.
DrPhish 6y ago
I can't read the article since I don't have a subscription, but I wanted to share my experiences anyways. I have 3 boys, one each in elementary, junior high and senior high. The remote learning experience has been dramatically different for each. Our school district has every student on Office 365, so we're in good shape technology-wise. The senior high student has been able to just go through his texts, work on the assignments, do the tests and continue on mostly as normal. He gets through an 8 hour school day and seems to be better for it at the end. The junior high-school student is having much more trouble. There is less material to study, and what there is is filler-heavy. He _maybe_ has 3 hours a day of actual work and is then at loose ends. I have been pulling more advanced material for him to work to keep up his education during allotted school hours, but he also doesn't have the more developed focus and discipline of his older brother. The elementary (grade 6, so almost junior high) student has the least amount of actual work. Maybe an hour a day from his teacher. He's lucky that his teacher is accommodating and allows him to e.g. document his progress to the mun through Kerbal in career mode for the space module they're doing instead of reading a few NASA pamphlets and being bored. The big takeaway I've had from this whole thing is that each student will only get as much out as they are willing (or forced) to put in. The opportunity to explore avenues of learning beyond and outside the established system is immense, and will probably grow some already latent educational gaps between kids. I have a feeling a lot of parents are throwing their kids at video games and youtube, or just ignoring them altogether, whether through lack of time and resources, or lack of interest.
- vezycash 6y ago
  What I draw from your experience is this: Without the proper foundations, self directed study and distance learning won't work. On the other hand, I feel it's too early to judge remote learning a failure because: The delivery method doesn't match the medium. A round peg in a square hole. Take my state for example where are classes being broadcast over the radio. It's horrible. * The teachers talk as if the students can see the board. * It's broadcasted live (big mistake). End up with lots of ems and uhms. * Science teachers quote formulas verbally - Formulas students would have trouble with even in person. Heck, the learning experience could be much better by just pointing students to khan academy.
EmilioMartinez 6y ago
Archived link: https://archive.vn/cm9I5 https://archive.vn/cm9I5
jseliger 6y ago
I just re-read "Why technology won't fix education" and find it germane to many conversations going on right now: https://jakeseliger.com/2020/05/26/why-technology-will-never-fix-education/ https://jakeseliger.com/2020/05/26/why-technology-will-never...
paulus_magnus2 6y ago
I think what we did during the lockdown doesn't count as a proper test of home schooling / remote working. What we did here in Belgium is to force kids to stay at home and force parents to work from home WHILE the kids are there. I have 3 and none of the teachers throughout 3 months of confinement had a single Skype session with any. We're talking about <10 years old so a single teacher is normally dedicated to the kids. In effect on top of working from home we have to do the job of 3 teachers. Actually make it 6 teachers because the normal school lessons are half-day between 9 and 12 noon and in the afternoon another teacher is taking over or they just throw the pupils into a playground. So yes, it doesn't work under these circumstances.

63 points by miles 6y ago

This is definitely an issue for families which don’t have access to computers & broadband internet. For the rest, I wonder if the results would have been better if there had ideas from the home-schooling community which could have been incorporated. Granted, this would require way more effort from the parent and a different mindset. However a primer on what to expect, how to overcome obstacles, keeping kids on track, etc. Traditional schools are totally unprepared for this scenario in a remote world. Storytime, a few years back one of my ex-colleagues decided to buy a ranch on the outskirts of Seattle to work remotely. What made the decision easier was that A) his pre-teen kids were already being homeschooled B) his spouse was a stay at home mom who spent a significant amount of time keeping the kids on track. He showed me pictures of the house which looked beautiful. Sat on the edge of a lake with a backdrop against the mountains and came with a stable for horses and livestock.

rootusrootus 6y ago

Agreed, the schools were not well-prepared for this style of learning and so it has not been particularly effective. We still participate with our kids' classes and teachers, but we rely on Khan Academy, augmented by Adventure Academy, among other things. Even so, we are not professional teachers, so I look forward to them returning to class next year.

freehunter 6y ago
I agree that the lesson learned here is that emergency remote learning did not work. No one was prepared for it, teachers did not have training or materials needed, students were not expecting it, it was a mess. But that doesn't mean it can't work, just that it didn't work in this emergency situation.
- thehoff 6y ago
  To some extent I agree. But some districts/schools seemed to really have thought through how to deal with this quickly. Our child's district did a horrible job, from our viewpoint and from the few other parents I've talked to in the same district (public). Up the road is a private school that I hear from their parents did a fantastic job. As well as another parent in a district (public) further from us. Edit: I'm curious to see how this affects the online schools (especially high school and below).
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  I don't always agree with him, but our district superintendent had remarkable foresight to make a large purchase of mobile hotspots, recognizing that they would be necessary in a remote learning environment, especially as we are not a wealthy community and have many kids without technology access at home. We have fared much better than the horror stories I've heard around the country. As others have pointed out in this thread - parents who have been able to augment with existing online sources have come out of this better as even the most well-intentioned districts just haven't had the years of preparing for online learning like an education.com, a Khan Academy, etc.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.md/peiyp https://archive.md/peiyp

momothereal 6y ago
I haven't been able to access archive.is and archive.md in Firefox because of a Cloudflare error, "Please enable cookies.". It works on Chrome however.
- samschooler 6y ago
  In case you haven't seen, this is probably the reason for the error: You're using 1.1.1.1 for DNS which is not supported by archive currently. https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680 https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680
  - momothereal 6y ago
    Specifically, it seems to be the new "DNS over HTTPS" feature in Firefox, with the default Cloudflare provider. I guess 1.1.1.1 will cause the same issue. Interestingly, without TLS, the error is "Please enable cookies", whereas on HTTPS it's "403 Forbidden" after passing through an invalid cert.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Try: https://archive.today/peiyb https://archive.today/peiyb https://archive.is/peiyb https://archive.is/peiyb https://archive.fo/peiyb https://archive.fo/peiyb https://archive.li/peiyb https://archive.li/peiyb https://archive.vn/peiyb https://archive.vn/peiyb https://archive.md/peiyb https://archive.md/peiyb https://archive.ph/peiyb https://archive.ph/peiyb One typically works. List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today Cloudflare is in a grudge match with archive.today: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...

op00to 6y ago

My (mixed income but weighted towards wealthy) community schools did excellent remote instruction, and at no time have I seen academic rigor reduced or compromised. I wonder if this is the educational equivalent of needing a product pivot and just totally doing the same thing, just with a different hat on.

dgrin91 6y ago

Headlines like this are probably the worst possible way to do reporting. It tells you what it wants you to think right up front. There is no room for critical thought or debate. There is no possibility for them to be wrong. It implies the full authority of the entire scientific community and if you disagree in the slightest you are a heretic. This is why I like hackernews. There is much less of this crap (though obviously as we can see in this case it still happens).

erichocean 6y ago
> This is why I like hackernews. HN guidelines mandate "the worst possible way to do reporting" by not allowing submitters to alter headlines that are obviously bad. Most HN readers wouldn't even click on the article, or even click on the comments page. But they see the headline.
- tutfbhuf 6y ago
  We have the collective free will to ignore posts with such headlines.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Collective free will demonstrably scales poorly in media.
    - ScottFree 6y ago
      citation needed.
      - dredmorbius 6y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715

stephc_int13 6y ago

Is it an involuntary illustration of the "jumping to conclusions" fallacy?

Hydraulix989 6y ago

Is this because there is no effective way to do "remote learning" or just because of poor execution?

mrcartmenez 6y ago
Research from the university sector in the US and Europe — who invested heavily in remote learning in the past decade to try to increase their reach — is unfortunately that distance learning is an order of magnitude worse in terms of outcomes than for traditional teaching.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Any references you could share?

29athrowaway 6y ago

Technology is not an emphasis in teacher education. If engineers were teachers, in one week you would see them creating github repos with reusable TeX material for every possible class that exists, and then finding a way to evaluate and rank the best material. In contrast, every teacher creates their own material that rarely gets reused, evaluated or ranked in any way, resulting in suboptimal material and wasted effort.

wongarsu 6y ago
Computer Science professors are well educated in technology, yet I see much more sharing of material between primary school teachers than among computer science professors. Teachers know how to use photocopiers, if material isn't shared and reused the reason isn't lack of sophisticated technology.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  I am referring to teachers in general, including elementary/middle/high school teachers, for every subject, not only computer science. You can use computers to teach almost anything.
  - reidjs 6y ago
    I'm curious to know how much classroom teaching experience you have? I agree a motivated person can learn almost anything from an internet enabled computer, but I disagree that you can teach almost anything. In my experience they're not useful for teaching children fundamental skills like math, writing, music, etc.
    - 29athrowaway 6y ago
      I am not saying we should put each kid in front of a computer, at least at the beginning. I am saying that the educational material that kids are learning from could be produced in a smarter, more reusable way so that it can be objectively compared and improved.
6y ago

cortesoft 6y ago

K-12 schools serve two purposes - to educate students and to provide child care during the day. Clearly remote learning isn’t going to work when it doesn’t solve the second need.

asdf333 6y ago
i think you hit on a point that means if kids are independent enough, then it can work. so it probably works fine for juniors and seniors in hs and is horrendously bad for kindergarteners
poulsbohemian 6y ago
There's a third leg to the stool: Food and general welfare. Our local PTA has long put together meal / clothing care packages to send home with kids in need, but even before our distance learning program kicked in, the schools made sure to be open to provide meals for kids in need. Maybe this isn't the case everywhere, but in districts like ours with a high number of kids at the poverty level, schools are a significant provider of meals / health and welfare checks.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wdb 6y ago

There are kids who thriving by studying from home compared from studying/lessons in the traditional school environment. At least that has been reported on the radio/news in The Netherlands. Fully depends on the students what kind of learning/teaching is best for them when they are allowed to plan which tasks they do instead of following the schedule of the teacher.

DrPhish 6y ago

I can't read the article since I don't have a subscription, but I wanted to share my experiences anyways. I have 3 boys, one each in elementary, junior high and senior high. The remote learning experience has been dramatically different for each. Our school district has every student on Office 365, so we're in good shape technology-wise. The senior high student has been able to just go through his texts, work on the assignments, do the tests and continue on mostly as normal. He gets through an 8 hour school day and seems to be better for it at the end. The junior high-school student is having much more trouble. There is less material to study, and what there is is filler-heavy. He _maybe_ has 3 hours a day of actual work and is then at loose ends. I have been pulling more advanced material for him to work to keep up his education during allotted school hours, but he also doesn't have the more developed focus and discipline of his older brother. The elementary (grade 6, so almost junior high) student has the least amount of actual work. Maybe an hour a day from his teacher. He's lucky that his teacher is accommodating and allows him to e.g. document his progress to the mun through Kerbal in career mode for the space module they're doing instead of reading a few NASA pamphlets and being bored. The big takeaway I've had from this whole thing is that each student will only get as much out as they are willing (or forced) to put in. The opportunity to explore avenues of learning beyond and outside the established system is immense, and will probably grow some already latent educational gaps between kids. I have a feeling a lot of parents are throwing their kids at video games and youtube, or just ignoring them altogether, whether through lack of time and resources, or lack of interest.

vezycash 6y ago
What I draw from your experience is this: Without the proper foundations, self directed study and distance learning won't work. On the other hand, I feel it's too early to judge remote learning a failure because: The delivery method doesn't match the medium. A round peg in a square hole. Take my state for example where are classes being broadcast over the radio. It's horrible. * The teachers talk as if the students can see the board. * It's broadcasted live (big mistake). End up with lots of ems and uhms. * Science teachers quote formulas verbally - Formulas students would have trouble with even in person. Heck, the learning experience could be much better by just pointing students to khan academy.

EmilioMartinez 6y ago

Archived link: https://archive.vn/cm9I5 https://archive.vn/cm9I5

jseliger 6y ago

I just re-read "Why technology won't fix education" and find it germane to many conversations going on right now: https://jakeseliger.com/2020/05/26/why-technology-will-never-fix-education/ https://jakeseliger.com/2020/05/26/why-technology-will-never...

paulus_magnus2 6y ago

I think what we did during the lockdown doesn't count as a proper test of home schooling / remote working. What we did here in Belgium is to force kids to stay at home and force parents to work from home WHILE the kids are there. I have 3 and none of the teachers throughout 3 months of confinement had a single Skype session with any. We're talking about <10 years old so a single teacher is normally dedicated to the kids. In effect on top of working from home we have to do the job of 3 teachers. Actually make it 6 teachers because the normal school lessons are half-day between 9 and 12 noon and in the afternoon another teacher is taking over or they just throw the pupils into a playground. So yes, it doesn't work under these circumstances.