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The problem is with the way schools are doing it. I don't see the point of teaching kids on live video. It's better to give recorded lectures with one doubt cle

The problem is with the way schools are doing it. I don't see the point of teaching kids on live video. It's better to give recorded lectures with one doubt clearing session/pop quiz every week. Live video is frustrating and the ridiculous attempts at interactivity don't help. That schools are still bothered about attendance tells you everything. Kids can watch recorded lectures any time their parents are able to supervise them. And the lectures don't have to be long because they are interruption free.

sjtindell 5y ago
In my unprofessional opinion the reason is to keep kids in seats. School is daycare. In addition, school is totally disconnected from reality and so kids have a lot of trouble assigning importance to it and focusing on it. If you expect all those kids to teach themselves, we had very different experiences in school. Maybe college aged and up…maybe.
watwut 5y ago
Do you have kids? Because online lessons with mine worked massively better then the "watch video" or "do homework whenever". They learned more in online lessons, the speed by which it moved was normal. And as bonus, I did not had to play teacher, the teacher played teacher.
- selfhifive 5y ago
  Not arguing for "do homework whenever" weekly pop quiz/assignments to keep them on track instead. I understand that you had a great experience with online learning but not all schools have teachers who can take effective classes online.
lordgroff 5y ago
There is the asynchronous learning option, at least in our school board. The teachers don't like it because it's separate from the "main" program, so it's not particularly well considered (print these word sheets taken from some online source and other "education" activities). And I don't blame them, it's totally unrealistic to offer two largely separate options. As to why it's done this way? Why, pretense again, of course. If it's done during "school hours" we can pretend that mom and dad who work from home (let's hope) and can get some work done vs the reality that adults are now expected to home school on top of doing their jobs.
stathibus 5y ago
This approach throws out one of the main objectives of school in America, which is to train kids to sit still and hold their shit together for 5-6 contiguous hours a day every day.
bluetwo 5y ago
I don't know jack about teaching kids, but I do know a lot about teaching adults. The crying shame I see in this whole endeavor is the emphasis on re-creating the classroom online. Half of what you teach (really in any topic) is foundational knowledge -- terms, models, history, important people and events. This is better taught offline at the learner's pace. Give then ways to monitor their understanding -- ungraded exercises, graded quizzes, papers, etc. The best use of synchronous time to cover the higher level skills involving the application of that knowledge. This means interacting with the students in ways that give them the ability show they understand what you are teaching, letting them screw up, and gently guiding them back on the right path. This is also the hardest but most rewarding part of teaching. Every parent talk to (I don't have kids) complains about the same thing and the source seems to be the fact this was all jammed online in a short amount of time, without teachers being able to divide their materials into these two parts. This leads to teachers just doing what they did in the classroom but in front of Zoom. I think online learning is great, but this has led to a lot of people forming poor opinions of it, and I feel like that is a real shame. Schools should have been heading in this direction for years. The technology is there. It seems that entrenched forces have kept it from happening.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > I don't know jack about teaching kids, but I do know a lot about teaching adults. What kind of adults? Most adult teaching is for adults of the top 30%. School teaching has to accommodate the bottom 30%. Teaching the top 30% and bottom 30% is very different.
  - bluetwo 5y ago
    Mostly corporate learning focused on specific job tasks is what I do. Building tools for online learning and using instructional design to build the training. This is very different than teaching fundamentals to kids, even beyond accommodating different skill levels. But of course it relies on people having a solid foundation. Without that you can't build anything.
- supertrope 5y ago
  Digital workflows take time to setup. The most naive implementations are to use computers as fancy Xerox machines by printing, editing on paper, and scanning in. The next step is to stop printing and keep it on the screens. Like how paperless bills are the exact same documents but they get to save paper, postage, and mailroom staff costs. They have still constrained themselves to the features of paper. Page dimensions, each copy can only be worked on by one person at a time and the resulting version conflicts, and manual review. Finally there’s terminals that make no pretensions as to ever exporting natively to print and can exploit automated processing and data transfer APIs.
rootusrootus 5y ago
There isn't one single approach that works for all kids. My son is very fond of remote learning and would like to return to that. He could finish everything in an hour or so in the morning and then go off to do other interesting things. Having him sit through real-time classroom discussions online was counterproductive. He begged us to let him stay in online school forever. My daughter is the opposite. She struggled mightily last year when it was all remote. She needs the structure to maintain focus, she needs to interact with her peers and with the teacher. Even if it is over Zoom, that is far better than nothing. She was begging to go back to in-person learning this year.
tsumnia 5y ago
My dissertation utilizes something known as the ICAP Framework developed by Mickie Chi. In essence, Chi breaks down learning activities by their levels of engagement, or Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive. For example, watching a recorded lecture without any other activities would be Passive. Higher modalities of engagement will provide higher learning gains, or I > C > A > P. To that end, Passive activities are simply not enough; they provide some learning gains, but as we're seeing, you need something more. However, some students are not ready for Interactive exercises. For my dissertation, I liken this to the common approach in Intro CS courses where the instructor introduces a new topic, like loops, then expects students to immediately be able to implement it. My philosophy is that we need those Active and Constructive exercises, things like repeating steps (or drilling) which is done in other technical skills; however, when we branch into higher cognitive areas, they're immediately shut down as "not good enough". I argue instead that we operate within templates, or we behave like we've trained, something stemming my my martial arts background. Right now I think 'virtual learning' has an issue where they're not willing to make this slight upgrade in engagement, for whatever reasons, because its not the magic silver bullet to fix all problems. Rather, in order to improve it, virtual learning needs to add those additional lower level practices into their instruction, otherwise we'll continue this vicious cycle.
- clairity 5y ago
  yup, i've always made this point as "we're all experiential learners" (the active and constructive). that some folks can get by ok with passive learning (aural, textual, etc.) is just a bonus for them.
lazyasciiart 5y ago
Schools are still bothered about attendance because that's what all the laws require. They get funding each year based on the number of kids who showed up almost every day the year before. State laws define the number of days and hours each year that schools must be instructing students. Here's the definition for WA: ""Instructional hours" means those hours students are provided the opportunity to engage in educational activity planned by and under the direction of school district staff," https://www.sbe.wa.gov/faqs/instructional_hours https://www.sbe.wa.gov/faqs/instructional_hours And here are the required numbers in other states https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab1_1-2020.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab1_1-2020.asp So yes, the way they are running is stupid. But you have to convince a lot of people before they can run it differently, and none of them are down near the level of school districts.
- supertrope 5y ago
  Taking attendance, counting credit hours, and perpetuating butts in seats incentives limits greatness in pedagogy but also guarantees a bare minimum service level. Even standardized tests can be gamed but time is the ultimate resource and is the hardest to fake.
ActualTeacher 5y ago
This does not work in practice because the majority of students will postpone watching all recordings until the last possible moment and then be overwhelmed with too much work at once. With physical or virtual attendance, the students are forced to schedule their time properly, although it is less convenient for the small minority of students who have the discipline to make their own schedule.
- selfhifive 5y ago
  Hence the weekly assessment. Tests or assignments every week will keep them on a sort of schedule. The most you can postpone is 7 days. It's not a perfect approach but I'd say it's a lot better than live virtual classes.

sjtindell 5y ago

In my unprofessional opinion the reason is to keep kids in seats. School is daycare. In addition, school is totally disconnected from reality and so kids have a lot of trouble assigning importance to it and focusing on it. If you expect all those kids to teach themselves, we had very different experiences in school. Maybe college aged and up…maybe.

watwut 5y ago

Do you have kids? Because online lessons with mine worked massively better then the "watch video" or "do homework whenever". They learned more in online lessons, the speed by which it moved was normal. And as bonus, I did not had to play teacher, the teacher played teacher.

selfhifive 5y ago
Not arguing for "do homework whenever" weekly pop quiz/assignments to keep them on track instead. I understand that you had a great experience with online learning but not all schools have teachers who can take effective classes online.

lordgroff 5y ago

There is the asynchronous learning option, at least in our school board. The teachers don't like it because it's separate from the "main" program, so it's not particularly well considered (print these word sheets taken from some online source and other "education" activities). And I don't blame them, it's totally unrealistic to offer two largely separate options. As to why it's done this way? Why, pretense again, of course. If it's done during "school hours" we can pretend that mom and dad who work from home (let's hope) and can get some work done vs the reality that adults are now expected to home school on top of doing their jobs.

stathibus 5y ago

This approach throws out one of the main objectives of school in America, which is to train kids to sit still and hold their shit together for 5-6 contiguous hours a day every day.

bluetwo 5y ago

I don't know jack about teaching kids, but I do know a lot about teaching adults. The crying shame I see in this whole endeavor is the emphasis on re-creating the classroom online. Half of what you teach (really in any topic) is foundational knowledge -- terms, models, history, important people and events. This is better taught offline at the learner's pace. Give then ways to monitor their understanding -- ungraded exercises, graded quizzes, papers, etc. The best use of synchronous time to cover the higher level skills involving the application of that knowledge. This means interacting with the students in ways that give them the ability show they understand what you are teaching, letting them screw up, and gently guiding them back on the right path. This is also the hardest but most rewarding part of teaching. Every parent talk to (I don't have kids) complains about the same thing and the source seems to be the fact this was all jammed online in a short amount of time, without teachers being able to divide their materials into these two parts. This leads to teachers just doing what they did in the classroom but in front of Zoom. I think online learning is great, but this has led to a lot of people forming poor opinions of it, and I feel like that is a real shame. Schools should have been heading in this direction for years. The technology is there. It seems that entrenched forces have kept it from happening.

Jensson 5y ago
> I don't know jack about teaching kids, but I do know a lot about teaching adults. What kind of adults? Most adult teaching is for adults of the top 30%. School teaching has to accommodate the bottom 30%. Teaching the top 30% and bottom 30% is very different.
- bluetwo 5y ago
  Mostly corporate learning focused on specific job tasks is what I do. Building tools for online learning and using instructional design to build the training. This is very different than teaching fundamentals to kids, even beyond accommodating different skill levels. But of course it relies on people having a solid foundation. Without that you can't build anything.
supertrope 5y ago
Digital workflows take time to setup. The most naive implementations are to use computers as fancy Xerox machines by printing, editing on paper, and scanning in. The next step is to stop printing and keep it on the screens. Like how paperless bills are the exact same documents but they get to save paper, postage, and mailroom staff costs. They have still constrained themselves to the features of paper. Page dimensions, each copy can only be worked on by one person at a time and the resulting version conflicts, and manual review. Finally there’s terminals that make no pretensions as to ever exporting natively to print and can exploit automated processing and data transfer APIs.

rootusrootus 5y ago

There isn't one single approach that works for all kids. My son is very fond of remote learning and would like to return to that. He could finish everything in an hour or so in the morning and then go off to do other interesting things. Having him sit through real-time classroom discussions online was counterproductive. He begged us to let him stay in online school forever. My daughter is the opposite. She struggled mightily last year when it was all remote. She needs the structure to maintain focus, she needs to interact with her peers and with the teacher. Even if it is over Zoom, that is far better than nothing. She was begging to go back to in-person learning this year.

tsumnia 5y ago

My dissertation utilizes something known as the ICAP Framework developed by Mickie Chi. In essence, Chi breaks down learning activities by their levels of engagement, or Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive. For example, watching a recorded lecture without any other activities would be Passive. Higher modalities of engagement will provide higher learning gains, or I > C > A > P. To that end, Passive activities are simply not enough; they provide some learning gains, but as we're seeing, you need something more. However, some students are not ready for Interactive exercises. For my dissertation, I liken this to the common approach in Intro CS courses where the instructor introduces a new topic, like loops, then expects students to immediately be able to implement it. My philosophy is that we need those Active and Constructive exercises, things like repeating steps (or drilling) which is done in other technical skills; however, when we branch into higher cognitive areas, they're immediately shut down as "not good enough". I argue instead that we operate within templates, or we behave like we've trained, something stemming my my martial arts background. Right now I think 'virtual learning' has an issue where they're not willing to make this slight upgrade in engagement, for whatever reasons, because its not the magic silver bullet to fix all problems. Rather, in order to improve it, virtual learning needs to add those additional lower level practices into their instruction, otherwise we'll continue this vicious cycle.

clairity 5y ago
yup, i've always made this point as "we're all experiential learners" (the active and constructive). that some folks can get by ok with passive learning (aural, textual, etc.) is just a bonus for them.

lazyasciiart 5y ago

Schools are still bothered about attendance because that's what all the laws require. They get funding each year based on the number of kids who showed up almost every day the year before. State laws define the number of days and hours each year that schools must be instructing students. Here's the definition for WA: ""Instructional hours" means those hours students are provided the opportunity to engage in educational activity planned by and under the direction of school district staff," https://www.sbe.wa.gov/faqs/instructional_hours https://www.sbe.wa.gov/faqs/instructional_hours And here are the required numbers in other states https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab1_1-2020.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab1_1-2020.asp So yes, the way they are running is stupid. But you have to convince a lot of people before they can run it differently, and none of them are down near the level of school districts.

supertrope 5y ago
Taking attendance, counting credit hours, and perpetuating butts in seats incentives limits greatness in pedagogy but also guarantees a bare minimum service level. Even standardized tests can be gamed but time is the ultimate resource and is the hardest to fake.

ActualTeacher 5y ago

This does not work in practice because the majority of students will postpone watching all recordings until the last possible moment and then be overwhelmed with too much work at once. With physical or virtual attendance, the students are forced to schedule their time properly, although it is less convenient for the small minority of students who have the discipline to make their own schedule.

selfhifive 5y ago
Hence the weekly assessment. Tests or assignments every week will keep them on a sort of schedule. The most you can postpone is 7 days. It's not a perfect approach but I'd say it's a lot better than live virtual classes.