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My children are 16, 15, 14. They are all currently homeschooling in UK lockdown number 3. All of their lessons are delivered via video (Google Classrooms). The

My children are 16, 15, 14. They are all currently homeschooling in UK lockdown number 3. All of their lessons are delivered via video (Google Classrooms). The quality of learning seems low, they seem unengaged and only respond to teacher when absolutely forced to. As a parent all I really do is IT support and discourage distraction (put your phone down etc). In UK lockdown 1 in March there was no video learning. Tasks were emailed the day before. As a family we sat together round the kitchen table worked together. Questions they didn't understand were explained (my wife is a teacher) or googled. They put in about 4hrs each day and the learning experience seemed so much better, even though it took more effort from us as parents. I don't really have any answers other than online learning for teenagers doesn't replace good teacher lead distraction free instruction in the classroom.

linuxftw 6y ago
> They put in about 4hrs each day and the learning experience seemed so much better, even though it took more effort from us as parents. This describes typical homeschooling in the US before the lockdown. Except in the case of actual homeschooling, you get to pick the curriculum that's appropriate for your children. Most public schooling is mindless busy work. Often it's poorly designed and confusing. It doesn't need to be this way. Once a child is able to read and write, they should be able to comprehend most instructions with little supervision.
itronitron 6y ago
I've only been at this for six months now, but what seems to be working for two of my children is to combine parent-student-paired activity (reading/watching course material) and practice exercises (usually solo but sometimes with parent if it is a new subject). I feel like the paired activity is basically following the apprenticeship model, as I focus on showing them how to get through the material quickly and how to look up supplemental information or follow interesting tangents to keep it interesting. The practice exercises then are more relaxing for them as they can just tune out to a certain extent and work through problems on their own. One thing that is funny is that I am absolutely learning as well as we do this. About half of the material we have covered before I don't remember ever learning in high school, and the rest is a good refresher.
throwaway2245 6y ago
> The quality of learning seems low, they seem unengaged and only respond to teacher when absolutely forced to. It seems like they have now managed to accurately replicate the average UK classroom, I'm sorry to say.

linuxftw 6y ago

> They put in about 4hrs each day and the learning experience seemed so much better, even though it took more effort from us as parents. This describes typical homeschooling in the US before the lockdown. Except in the case of actual homeschooling, you get to pick the curriculum that's appropriate for your children. Most public schooling is mindless busy work. Often it's poorly designed and confusing. It doesn't need to be this way. Once a child is able to read and write, they should be able to comprehend most instructions with little supervision.

itronitron 6y ago

I've only been at this for six months now, but what seems to be working for two of my children is to combine parent-student-paired activity (reading/watching course material) and practice exercises (usually solo but sometimes with parent if it is a new subject). I feel like the paired activity is basically following the apprenticeship model, as I focus on showing them how to get through the material quickly and how to look up supplemental information or follow interesting tangents to keep it interesting. The practice exercises then are more relaxing for them as they can just tune out to a certain extent and work through problems on their own. One thing that is funny is that I am absolutely learning as well as we do this. About half of the material we have covered before I don't remember ever learning in high school, and the rest is a good refresher.

throwaway2245 6y ago

> The quality of learning seems low, they seem unengaged and only respond to teacher when absolutely forced to. It seems like they have now managed to accurately replicate the average UK classroom, I'm sorry to say.