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School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

bostonherald.com

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Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#21

Post by SamuelAdams »

lawn wrote: post #14
irrational wrote: post #8

In my school district they still haven't figured out how to proceed. The problem is there are a lot of low income families that they know don't have internet access or a computer. They can give those kids a chromebook, but that isn't very helpful with no internet access. Legally (and morally) they can't move ahead with online school if a big chunk of the students are left out. On the other hand, I was talking yesterd…

In the Swedish community I live in they give all children a MacBook, and they've been doing this for many years. Given that this is Sweden almost everyone already has internet access, and if you don't you can still go to the public library and get it (and borrow a computer if you want).

Would public libraries still be open? States are shutting down businesses every week, and SF has a "shelter in place" policy. For some students, libraries and other sources of public wifi are not available at the present moment.

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#22

Post by quaffapint »

nethergh0st wrote: post #6

In my home state of Michigan, online learning doesn't count toward teacher curriculum or retirement. The reasoning is that not all students can get access to online learning. It effectively makes it so there is really no point in providing online learning resources/lessons, because it will all need to be repeated/made up when the students get back.

Later part is similar here in PA. They're given random work (it's up to the teacher what it is). But none of it counts/can be graded.

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#23

Post by VLM »

I obtained an online CS degree fifteen years ago; my kids are doing middle and high school online for the first time last week. Most of my online classes were before my teens were born.

Similar: Its fifteen years later, I'm not exactly the first person to get an online degree, but we still have to pretend all this stuff was invented last week.

Different: Fifteen years ago we pretended we could "Work any time we want" although to obtain online discussion points with minimal effort we felt we had to log in at 9am when new discussion topics were posted. Today they don't even pretend you can work when you want and the kids need to be butts in seats logged in, working or not working, for fixed hours, kinda like hourly workers. On the other hand the concept of "write your essay at home in the evening" is gone, kids stop at the end of the online school day.

Different: Fifteen years ago we pretended online productivity tools did not exist so the tool experience was shared and there was exactly one vertically integrated system for assignments and discussion. Some schools even tried to roll email into their vertical lockin silo. Today there are official supported tools like google docs/drive and notability and similar, but kids pretty much can use what works for them. Lots of complaining about how its unequal that some kids use the grammar / spelling checker in MS Word and other kids are stuck with google docs spelling checker and plenty of mythology over which is "better" at getting higher grades.

Different: Fifteen years ago the only non-vertical silo tools used was MS Office, which made life hard on anyone not on windows with office. MS Doc files and Excel files and Visio and so forth. Now a days its a FOSS and SAS world, I don't think my kids have ever officially used MS Office, LOL. Its all about that free google docs account.

Similar: Online discussion is still lame. In person teachers get used to asking the class questions where there's only something useful for maybe the first three kids to comment, for time limit reasons. "Because its easy to track" online class means you get the same dumb questions with three answers, although the entire 20 person class is graded on participating in discussion, so discussions become about 17/20-ths worthless. The first couple kids to participate in online discussion who use up the good topics get some social pressure to shut up next week.

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#24

Post by akadruid1 »

dpeck wrote: post #13

fwiw, our experience has been lackluster and frustrating. My child is in public elementary school, in the inclusive class (special ed and non special ed in same class). So there are 2 teachers and they split the subjects Language arts/Social studies, Math/Science, and then he has a few specials like STEM, Technology, Music once a week that each have a different teacher. The biggest problem that we had last week was t…

In the UK we are just starting our first week of national school shutdown, and the transition is very abrupt and many schools poorly prepared. I have children in primary (U.S. grade K-5) and secondary (U.S. grade 6-10) and primary is barely functional. They have some basic content on their website but no equipment and no interaction between school and students so far. But secondary is far better - all students have iPads and online classrooms, curriculum based work set every day, teachers interacting regularly with students, study groups for the students, even time-based tests. Hopefully the primary schools can trim things around, since the schools seem unlikely to restart until after the summer break - 5 more months

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#25

Post by thehoff »

bitlax wrote: post #15
thehoff wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do the kids learn to socialize? Facebook or Facetime only? Don't say the parents have to organize this (see below for my current experience). And for those of us with really young kids, this work from home may be great an all, but its really hard to work and tend to a very young one's education/attention.

Public schools are generally pretty terrible at socialization. The students interact mostly only with kids of their same exact age. Bullying and violence are ubiquitous. Sure, you learn how to conduct yourself in that particular environment, but it's unlike any other environment you'll see in your adult life outside of a prison.

If a third grader hangs around third graders all day in school then I would expect those would be his friends. Until he starts participating in activities where kids participate in where the grades get mixed (ie. school basketball team). This seems entirely appropriate to me.

And you're comparing public schools to prison? Remote learning for all of them would fix this?

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#26

Post by Digory »

irrational wrote: post #8

In my school district they still haven't figured out how to proceed. The problem is there are a lot of low income families that they know don't have internet access or a computer. They can give those kids a chromebook, but that isn't very helpful with no internet access. Legally (and morally) they can't move ahead with online school if a big chunk of the students are left out. On the other hand, I was talking yesterd…

I suspect that if we're in this boat by fall, school district dollars will be spent paying for wireless hotspots or in-home connections.

Until then, we'll see band-aids. I've seen one school district parking busses with wi-fi repeaters near apartment complexes, or near student houses.

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#27

Post by 762236 »

My 9th-grade daughter so far prefers this remote learning, as it makes efficient use of her time, and so gives her a lot more free time. At school, lots of kids don't want to focus (this is in the middle of Silicon Valley and helicopter parents), and slow down the class. Now she is away from that stress, and is a lot happier, despite her being an extrovert.

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#28

Post by Digory »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #2

Will this help us to see the massive expenditures we make to move people to a classroom when they could easily see it via computer screen? Especially if we then ask students to just look at the chromebooks they are given by the school, seems wildly inefficient to continue the butt in seat model, especially with older students.

We won't know until we see standardized testing for this cohort. Which won't be until next year.

I suspect kids of wealthy, educated parents will actually excel. Those parents will learn that they could can actually do better than schools on the pure academics.

Unfortunately, I suspect kids of poorer parents will really slow down.

But, yes, I think we're about to unbundle a lot of education.

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#29

Post by sharadov »

Won't work with elementary school kids (son in first grade), I'll have to sit with him on his zoom sessions to keep the peace, and it's not pleasant when you have 24 kids + parents simultaneously on a session. I rather have him do Khan, SD Math and Reading eggs on his own time.

Re: School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning

#30

Post by usaar333 »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #2

Will this help us to see the massive expenditures we make to move people to a classroom when they could easily see it via computer screen? Especially if we then ask students to just look at the chromebooks they are given by the school, seems wildly inefficient to continue the butt in seat model, especially with older students.

Well for kids under 12 or so, we move them to a classroom in part because it offers babysitting. It also works better. My almost 4 year old isn't learning much with remote learning and it's also just taking out parent productivity.

Additionally, I still don't see VC offering the same level of social interaction and ideas transfer that in person does - one big gap I've seen is the difficulty "forking" larger conversations into smaller ones (it just doesn't come naturally like it does in person). I would not have wanted my education to be remote for that very reason.

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