Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#41

Post by motohagiography » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

Remote has created much wider opportunities for premium enrichment of kids curriculum, and what I can reasonably predict is further polarization of outcomes. Poor kids who work will still outperform most lazy rich kids, and with incredible resources to leverage (3blue1brown, betterexplained, etc come to mind), but the ones who fall below a threshold will form a permanent, itinerant underclass.

Like most things, there is too much in every discipline for any one person to know, so the people who prevail are the ones who have the tools to adapt quickly and leverage others. Oddly, this is not a function of work either, but of attitude to work, and identity.

The question is, educate kids to become, what, administrators and tourists? Even with public education, the skills among kids are Pareto distributed, and there is a great deal of controversy of what "good," means.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#42

Post by UncleMeat » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

slykar wrote: post #14

impendia wrote: post #13

I'm a professor at a US university. The honest answer (at least at the university level) -- probably we don't. From what I can tell, there's very little enthusiasm for online education, on the part of either professors or students. Pretty much everyone is eager to get back to normal, and I'm fairly confident that this is exactly what is going to happen. For a dissenting perpsective, read Joshua Kim's columns at Insid…

Coming from a different country I don't really know why remote is not the default option. Listening to a professor speaking to himself from a distance of 10 meters is an awful experience compared to a video recording that you can stop/rewind. Heck, you can even take some proper notes that you will actually understand! For labs it's not like you get any help either. You just have to follow some instructions point by p…

> Listening to a professor speaking to himself from a distance of 10 meters is an awful experience compared to a video recording that you can stop/rewind. Heck, you can even take some proper notes that you will actually understand!

My wife is a professor.

What you say is true for some students. But for some students it appears that paying attention is much harder when it is a video vs the same material presented in a live lecture. I can't fully explain it, but "I struggle to pay attention to video lectures" is a surprisingly common response from people who have been strong students in prior years.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#43

Post by abdullahkhalids » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #23

impendia wrote: post #13

I'm a professor at a US university. The honest answer (at least at the university level) -- probably we don't. From what I can tell, there's very little enthusiasm for online education, on the part of either professors or students. Pretty much everyone is eager to get back to normal, and I'm fairly confident that this is exactly what is going to happen. For a dissenting perpsective, read Joshua Kim's columns at Insid…

US university professor too. I agree with this: > Pretty much everyone is eager to get back to normal, and I'm fairly confident that this is exactly what is going to happen. There's no substitute for in-person education. For years, I heard from the online education cheerleaders that online can be better. Online can be a quality experience, but you can't build the same relationships, develop the same comfort with aski…

> Some material is better taught in an async fashion.

Based on the experience of teaching this semester by multiple colleagues, the problem, of course, is that students will not consume that material at all. If you try to do short quizzes to ensure they watched it, they will cheat, or just take the grade penalty.

The problem with online is that the the modicum of shame present in offline classes that forces them to pay some attention, is almost completely gone.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#44

Post by nvarsj » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

impendia wrote: post #13

I'm a professor at a US university. The honest answer (at least at the university level) -- probably we don't. From what I can tell, there's very little enthusiasm for online education, on the part of either professors or students. Pretty much everyone is eager to get back to normal, and I'm fairly confident that this is exactly what is going to happen. For a dissenting perpsective, read Joshua Kim's columns at Insid…

Have you heard of OMSCS? The online revolution is already happening. Many schools are moving to copy the model.

I've been in OMSCS for almost 5 years now. I can assuredly say that remote university education works incredibly well. Even better than in person in many respects. Not only that, but I truly believe it is vital to ensuring equal access to high quality education.

The current university system with 5% acceptance rates, 40k / year college fees, is untenable and just exacerbates class division. It's an antiquated system, and the move to fully remote degrees can't happen soon enough.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#45

Post by abdullahkhalids » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

slykar wrote: post #30

onion2k wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For labs it's not like you get any help either. You just have to follow some instructions point by point and if you do not understand something, tough luck, the professor has already moved to the next exercise. People shouldn't just accept this sort of thing as normal. You're paying (in the US or UK anyway) a lot of money for a degree level education. That means it needs to be fit for purpose, and if you're not learn…

Education is "free" (paid by taxes) where I come from (Poland). Private universities are not very popular. > People shouldn't just accept this sort of thing as normal It's not "normal", but it's the norm. It's not the fault of the professors, because the truth is they should not teach in the first place, but the education system requires them to. > make a complaint to the course leader that the lecturer isn't teachin…

> Education is "free" (paid by taxes) where I come from (Poland).

If the people of your country are gifting you free education, you have even a higher responsibility to ensure that their efforts are not wasted.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#46

Post by UncleMeat » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #40

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching kids at home is not remote schooling. Remote means the instructor is not in the same room as the student. Homeschooling implies the instructor is present in the room, probably in a 1:2 teacher/student ratio. Even if you are using online materials, you are actively there to guide your child through the material.

Yeah, I know. I've taken remote college classes. I'm familiar with the concept. Have you actually homeschooled? A lot of homeschooling parents don't actively guide their kids through anything. I used to have a page of education quotes, which included ideas like "The ability to learn is older and more common than the ability to teach" and "Education should be the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a pale." I surve…

> My kids are twice exceptional. This is probably the hardest educational profile to try to effectively educate.

This is probably true if you want to educate them to their maximum potential. But the wiggle room for ineffectiveness is enormous. If you have kids that are incredibly smart then you get a natural buffer. The challenge is that we sure would like everybody to be able to read and write at a high school level so being inefficient in teaching the kids who are already going to struggle with this ends up being less acceptable.

There is no question that homeschooling can be enormously valuable for kids that are smart and interested and have parents with means to participate in their education. Scaling to the rest of the population is the hard part.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#47

Post by agentultra » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

Without computers.

Our school board is using MS Teams, SharePoint, and a custom web application. It’s terrible. Even adults struggle with SharePoint. Let alone an 8 year old kid. Let alone kids with different abilities and challenges.

Remote learning is terrible and I doubt it will ever be good enough to replace a classroom for you kids.

What could alleviate it is a device like a reMarkable. I gave mine to my daughter. With cloud sync and some scripts I wrote she has her work sheet handouts from her teacher on the device. It’s e-ink and she can write with a pen. It’s a thousand times easier than navigating SharePoint and trying to use MS Word.

But it’s still not enough. The video calls are terrible. Being at home around her parents all day is not great for her.

Best thing has been spending time together to be honest. Playing board games. Running around outside, hikes, etc.

But without the support of a community of educators trained to help kids develop, especially kids with special needs, it is very hard.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#48

Post by germinalphrase » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #40

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching kids at home is not remote schooling. Remote means the instructor is not in the same room as the student. Homeschooling implies the instructor is present in the room, probably in a 1:2 teacher/student ratio. Even if you are using online materials, you are actively there to guide your child through the material.

Yeah, I know. I've taken remote college classes. I'm familiar with the concept. Have you actually homeschooled? A lot of homeschooling parents don't actively guide their kids through anything. I used to have a page of education quotes, which included ideas like "The ability to learn is older and more common than the ability to teach" and "Education should be the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a pale." I surve…

I appreciate that you have shared your experience as I acknowledge a personal bias against homeschooling. I have two adult friends that were home schooled and both resent their parents for it. One was home schooled because their devoutly religious parents didn’t want them socializing with non-religious students. The other because their parents didn’t believe the available school could serve their needs related to autism.

Both vocally believe they were significantly stunted academically, socially, and professionally.

Anecdotes are anecdotes, but it’s always nice to hear the other side.

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#49

Post by dangoor » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

Khan Academy (where I work) is definitely trying to help people achieve mastery[1][2], and we have people who create studies to test our efficacy and help inform future course development. We care about proving the efficacy of our approaches and constantly improving.

We've been putting in a lot of effort over the past few years specifically to help teachers help their students achieve mastery in their subjects. One piece of that has been standards alignment for our content. I don't know about the UK, but I do know that our content has been aligned with the US Common Core[3].

Since Khan is a non-profit, we're often best known for offering all of our content for free so that anyone can learn (and our mission _is_ a "free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere"), but we know that a lot of learning happens alongside teachers in classrooms and are providing tools to help with that.

[1]: https://support.khanacademy.org/hc/en-us/articles/3600307534...

[2]: https://www.khanacademy.org/khan-for-educators/k4e-us-demo/x...

[3]: https://www.khanacademy.org/commoncore

Re: Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

#50

Post by DoreenMichele » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #46

DoreenMichele wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I know. I've taken remote college classes. I'm familiar with the concept. Have you actually homeschooled? A lot of homeschooling parents don't actively guide their kids through anything. I used to have a page of education quotes, which included ideas like "The ability to learn is older and more common than the ability to teach" and "Education should be the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a pale." I surve…

> My kids are twice exceptional. This is probably the hardest educational profile to try to effectively educate. This is probably true if you want to educate them to their maximum potential. But the wiggle room for ineffectiveness is enormous. If you have kids that are incredibly smart then you get a natural buffer. The challenge is that we sure would like everybody to be able to read and write at a high school level…

It's really a lot more complicated than that. If you have someone strong in science but weak in math, their math disability can actively block their ability to learn their favorite subject.

But I really shouldn't ever bother to discuss this on HN. The only person who knew me before I joined HN knew me through homeschooling and gifted circles and never once said anything nice about me, just politely nitpicked my comments to death for eight years. No one ever said "Dude. Wow. Leave her alone." Because misogyny and double standards are alive and well.

So y'all feel free to feel like you know more than I do about the topic. My sons are grown. No one here will ever either respect me or pay me for my expertise, so your current pain points on this topic really aren't my problem.