Via: OnlineEducation.net

Well, if you had asked me, I could have told you. There is an opinion piece in the Washington Post that asserts that traditional schools are not working and recommends that we move learning online. Here’s the first part:

Deep within America’s collective consciousness, there is a little red schoolhouse. Inside, obedient children sit in rows, eagerly absorbing lessons as a kind, wise teacher writes on the blackboard. Shiny apples are offered as tokens of respect and gratitude.

The reality of American education is often quite different. Beige classrooms are filled with note-passers and texters, who casually ignore teachers struggling to make it to the end of the 50-minute period. Smart kids are bored, and slower kids are left behind. Anxiety about standardized tests is high, and scores are consistently low. National surveys find that parents despair over the quality of education in the United States — and they’re right to, as test results confirm again and again.

That does about say it all. Ultimately, what we are doing in classrooms is not working. I’m not willing to give up on it, though. However, I think that online learning will be key in fixing what is going on in those classrooms. When people want to talk about the effect of the traditional classroom on online learning, they have it exactly backwards.

Online learning is what will fix the classroom. Interactivity is what makes or breaks instruction. As we begin to do more creative instruction online, that will spill over into the brick-and-mortar classrooms.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an opinion piece about the myths that are still around about distance/online learning. It is perplexing to those of us who work in the field that we can still be having these sorts of conversations. The first distance education courses were offered, what, 150 years ago? Granted, they were not online, but the world has a sufficiently long history of offering education where the teacher and the students are not in the same place.

Librarian and online instructor Todd Gilman offers the following:

I enjoy the work and feel confident that I have helped students become better readers, writers, future librarians, curators, and researchers. Yet every time I speak with faculty colleagues who have only taught what distance educators call “face to face” or “on ground” courses, I get the same bewildered responses: “I’ve never understood this whole online teaching thing” or “So do you teach via e-mail?” or “Is that like a correspondence course?”

Hidden beneath the surface of such seemingly innocuous comments and questions is a little jab, which, if put into words, would go something like this: “You’re not a real college teacher, are you? If you were, you’d be interacting with students in a bricks-and-mortar classroom like I do.”

I am still amazed that we are still having these sorts of discussions whether it is at the college or the K-12 level. One of the statistics that I share with administrators, teachers, and the general public is that the first online high school courses were offered in 1994.

Isn’t it time we get over the newness?