5 ms·

Online learning resources are amazing. Compared to pre-internet, the depth, quality and accessibility is amazing. It really does open an opportunity route for a

Online learning resources are amazing. Compared to pre-internet, the depth, quality and accessibility is amazing. It really does open an opportunity route for a lot of people. However... Institutional learning, whether it's K-12, colleges, techs or whatnot have barely changed. The same fundamental dynamics exist, whether it's tertiary sorting and prestige or primary teaching methods. Education still serves and fails the same groups of people as it did before, in much the same way. Education is an enormous "industry." It's in the same realm as defense, energy or transport. Possibly even more important. I really hope to see online resources develop in such a way that schools can be built around them. A formula that a middle school principal anywhere, no matter how rural and remote, can implement. Why can't we have the best of both worlds? The classroom model didn't work well for me as a student. I don't think remote-only would have worked either.

vosper 4y ago
> I really hope to see online resources develop in such a way that schools can be built around them. You might be interested to know that Salman Khan has built a physical school https://www.khanlabschool.org/about/about-kls https://www.khanlabschool.org/about/about-kls
- dalbasal 4y ago
  This is interesting, but I was somewhat disappointed by the website. They call it a "lab school." I was hoping that meant developing a model which other schools can follow. No shade to Sal, obviously. He does plenty, and does it well.
  - unixhero 4y ago
    Better than no website!
    - dalbasal 4y ago
      I meant disappointed by the content of the website.
MrBlueIncognito 4y ago
Agreed. What we might need is a mix of online resources for teaching with offline schools for other aspects of child psychological development.
gsatic 4y ago
Online resources are not very different than having access to good libraries. Great libraries have existed for thousands of years but you won't find examples, anywhere in the world, where kids are just left at the library to learn. One of the fundamental aspects of learning is practice. Teachers/coaches/guides and mentors play a big role in keeping kids on track. It's not just about the best quality content. Or getting them interested. It's about keeping ppl on track when the repetition and practice gets boring. This is easy to do with small groups. But very hard as group size increases which is why I don't have too much faith in the online model.
- visarga 4y ago
  > It's about keeping ppl on track when the repetition and practice gets boring. That's the missing ingredient for online learning. I think being part of a class, having friends there, and not wanting to be left behind plays a huge role.
  - WinstonSmith84 4y ago
    Maybe. But I feel like I wasted so much time when I was at school, playing around with others, not motivated to learn (but I did), sometimes feeling behind on some topics while feeling bored/ahead on others. We were all envious of having rather A than F, or stressed when we underperformed, but being "cool" was not about having the best grade. And being cool was part of the "culture" - totally pointless in retrospective. I don't know if online schooling might have been better but clearly when thinking about it, on site schooling has been filled with a lot of inefficiencies that maybe online schooling is doing better. I guess at least that parents have to be behind in order to "coach".
  - Bedon292 4y ago
    But the inverse can also be true. When you don't have friends there, and are already ahead of most of the class you have no motivation or incentive to keep going.
- dalbasal 4y ago
  They're not fundamentally different, but I don't think fundamentals matter here. The mobile internet of 2022 is not very different, in principle, to the 2000 internet. But it is much more available and accessible to many more people. That means it has very different consequences. So yes, as good Will Hunting said, you could get an ivy league education at a library. Some kids (and adults) did. Online resources make that pool of people much bigger. I agree though that access to an online school is not a substitute for school. Most kids still need structure, coaching, support and peers. That said, it's still really important to have libraries, and that's what Khan is doing here. This is commendable.
panick21_ 4y ago
I always liked the Khan model where you do the theory at home and in school you do the work on online platform. The teacher can focus on helping the people who need help, or ask a more advanced student to help out the struggling student. The also allows that in school you could do more interesting stuff then just the teacher giving the same boring lectures over and over. For me, I would have blown down the math part of the whole thing like 3 years early and would have had so much more time on French. Not that I would have enjoyed that but still.
codingdave 4y ago
> It's in the same realm as defense, energy or transport. There is one important difference - almost all the school district leadership I have talked to supports change. They are held back not because they want to stick to the status quo, but because the funding model is driven by test scores, so the curriculum needs to follow the testing. That is what holds back innovation. This effort by Khan and ASU bypasses that problem by not being free. Tuition is $9900 per year for students outside of Arizona. You have much more flexibility to innovate when you have non-federal funding.
- dalbasal 4y ago
  >> They are held ... because the funding model is driven by test scores, so the curriculum needs to follow the testing There are many, many educational metastructures large and small around the world. Public, private, religious, regional, national, etc. By an large, the status quo persists much more widely than some specific incentive or funding structure. That doesn't mean test scores are good. It does mean that replacing the test score system will not, in itself, change much.
aaron695 4y ago
nebula8804 4y ago
I am not too sure about accessibility of all subjects. More esoteric information is still locked away deep in forums, youtube videos, or maybe paid online classes. For example a few years back I quit my job and spent two years slogging through trying to learn ruby and ruby on rails. There are countless tutorials and videos detailing how to get simple stuff going but more advanced stuff seemed to only be available if you end up in a Rails shop and learn hands on with experienced developers. All the interviews would catch me off guard asking about more intermediate ways of writing code in the "Ruby way". As someone who wrote Java, if the logic seems right to me, how would I know if I am doing it the "ruby way"? Same goes for Rails(things like active support are not covered by many learning locations). This also bit me yesterday in a completely different fashion. I was attempting to replace the battery of an iPod Nano 3rd generation. This device is notorious for being very fragile to disassemble and repair. I managed to solder in the battery connectors only to start seeing the board heat up immensely. In removing the wires I burned one of the vias. Now I spent hours looking for a schematic or some info explaining what each via was for. I had to resort to looking up various youtube videos and asking on discord...no dice. There is something special of having a structured curriculum that is trialed and tested so that you can go from a to b. I don't know if Khan Academy is that but local school curricula may be still relevant because of this.

vosper 4y ago

> I really hope to see online resources develop in such a way that schools can be built around them. You might be interested to know that Salman Khan has built a physical school https://www.khanlabschool.org/about/about-kls https://www.khanlabschool.org/about/about-kls

dalbasal 4y ago
This is interesting, but I was somewhat disappointed by the website. They call it a "lab school." I was hoping that meant developing a model which other schools can follow. No shade to Sal, obviously. He does plenty, and does it well.
- unixhero 4y ago
  Better than no website!
  - dalbasal 4y ago
    I meant disappointed by the content of the website.

MrBlueIncognito 4y ago

Agreed. What we might need is a mix of online resources for teaching with offline schools for other aspects of child psychological development.

gsatic 4y ago

Online resources are not very different than having access to good libraries. Great libraries have existed for thousands of years but you won't find examples, anywhere in the world, where kids are just left at the library to learn. One of the fundamental aspects of learning is practice. Teachers/coaches/guides and mentors play a big role in keeping kids on track. It's not just about the best quality content. Or getting them interested. It's about keeping ppl on track when the repetition and practice gets boring. This is easy to do with small groups. But very hard as group size increases which is why I don't have too much faith in the online model.

visarga 4y ago
> It's about keeping ppl on track when the repetition and practice gets boring. That's the missing ingredient for online learning. I think being part of a class, having friends there, and not wanting to be left behind plays a huge role.
- WinstonSmith84 4y ago
  Maybe. But I feel like I wasted so much time when I was at school, playing around with others, not motivated to learn (but I did), sometimes feeling behind on some topics while feeling bored/ahead on others. We were all envious of having rather A than F, or stressed when we underperformed, but being "cool" was not about having the best grade. And being cool was part of the "culture" - totally pointless in retrospective. I don't know if online schooling might have been better but clearly when thinking about it, on site schooling has been filled with a lot of inefficiencies that maybe online schooling is doing better. I guess at least that parents have to be behind in order to "coach".
- Bedon292 4y ago
  But the inverse can also be true. When you don't have friends there, and are already ahead of most of the class you have no motivation or incentive to keep going.
dalbasal 4y ago
They're not fundamentally different, but I don't think fundamentals matter here. The mobile internet of 2022 is not very different, in principle, to the 2000 internet. But it is much more available and accessible to many more people. That means it has very different consequences. So yes, as good Will Hunting said, you could get an ivy league education at a library. Some kids (and adults) did. Online resources make that pool of people much bigger. I agree though that access to an online school is not a substitute for school. Most kids still need structure, coaching, support and peers. That said, it's still really important to have libraries, and that's what Khan is doing here. This is commendable.

panick21_ 4y ago

I always liked the Khan model where you do the theory at home and in school you do the work on online platform. The teacher can focus on helping the people who need help, or ask a more advanced student to help out the struggling student. The also allows that in school you could do more interesting stuff then just the teacher giving the same boring lectures over and over. For me, I would have blown down the math part of the whole thing like 3 years early and would have had so much more time on French. Not that I would have enjoyed that but still.

codingdave 4y ago

> It's in the same realm as defense, energy or transport. There is one important difference - almost all the school district leadership I have talked to supports change. They are held back not because they want to stick to the status quo, but because the funding model is driven by test scores, so the curriculum needs to follow the testing. That is what holds back innovation. This effort by Khan and ASU bypasses that problem by not being free. Tuition is $9900 per year for students outside of Arizona. You have much more flexibility to innovate when you have non-federal funding.

dalbasal 4y ago
>> They are held ... because the funding model is driven by test scores, so the curriculum needs to follow the testing There are many, many educational metastructures large and small around the world. Public, private, religious, regional, national, etc. By an large, the status quo persists much more widely than some specific incentive or funding structure. That doesn't mean test scores are good. It does mean that replacing the test score system will not, in itself, change much.

aaron695 4y ago

nebula8804 4y ago

I am not too sure about accessibility of all subjects. More esoteric information is still locked away deep in forums, youtube videos, or maybe paid online classes. For example a few years back I quit my job and spent two years slogging through trying to learn ruby and ruby on rails. There are countless tutorials and videos detailing how to get simple stuff going but more advanced stuff seemed to only be available if you end up in a Rails shop and learn hands on with experienced developers. All the interviews would catch me off guard asking about more intermediate ways of writing code in the "Ruby way". As someone who wrote Java, if the logic seems right to me, how would I know if I am doing it the "ruby way"? Same goes for Rails(things like active support are not covered by many learning locations). This also bit me yesterday in a completely different fashion. I was attempting to replace the battery of an iPod Nano 3rd generation. This device is notorious for being very fragile to disassemble and repair. I managed to solder in the battery connectors only to start seeing the board heat up immensely. In removing the wires I burned one of the vias. Now I spent hours looking for a schematic or some info explaining what each via was for. I had to resort to looking up various youtube videos and asking on discord...no dice. There is something special of having a structured curriculum that is trialed and tested so that you can go from a to b. I don't know if Khan Academy is that but local school curricula may be still relevant because of this.