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

Remote education needs to be a supplement to in-person education. The lack of interaction with other students, especially for kids in elementary or secondary school is becoming very harmful for their overall development.

For adults, online education should be thought of as a supplement to either their work-learning or their life-learning. The former to help advance their pursuit of skills, the second to help advance their pursuit of enjoyment of life.

The needs for online education for all these realms are very different and there is no one size fits all.

I'm working on this!

Mentorship for mastery is where the largest gains come from, so that's where I focus my working energy.

I have an individual practice where I do one-on-one tech mentoring from students to CEOs and beyond, and my clients see huge improvements in their capacity. It's very rewarding, and I intend to keep growing after lockdown ends. Writing marketing copy is harder than mentoring for me, so my website is lacklustre, but it works well enough at hosting my calendly link: https://imagineer.school

Mentorship doesn't replace the entire school experience, though. For that, I'm using the Sudbury Valley School model, and once everyone is vaccinated we'll open a K-12 physical school in Toronto 2025.

Is anyone else here working on democratic education models?

I'm personally appalled that instead of leaning hard into a "flipped classroom model" by having kids watch (or read!) lectures on material on their own, and then working in small groups with their teacher, the US public school system has instead doubled-down on just retrofitting the classroom environment into remote hell.

As a developer it's difficult enough trying to remain engaged on any remote meeting with more than 5 participants, I can't fathom how kids behave.

I imagine a huge component is the school-system-as-babysitting dynamic. If kids were left to their own devices to learn without any adult supervision it's possible (likely even) that they'd end up distracted at best, or at rick of causing or experiencing damage to themselves or their environment at worst.

So... I guess I'm not sure what the model ought to be. I'm sure there's some contrast to be found to cultures where there's more live-in family (grandparents, aunts uncles etc.) than you find in American/Western households.

The open university in the UK was founded in 1969 and has been offering full distance learning degrees ever since in large numbers of subjects. It uses a mix of professionally produced video content (so usually not just a video of a lecturer standing in front of a blackboard), textbooks, in person or remote small group seminars (you used to phone in, now online video chat), forums, chat groups, personal support by email or post (in case you're in prison or living really remotely) and online libraries / inter library loans and occasional residential weekends / weeks.

Mastery is tested in the usual ways, essays, projects and tests, but also "in class" contributions during seminars, which is a good way of motivating people to actually attend and ask questions.

It works really well but it's taken fifty years of practice, experimentation and investment to get there and it involves a lot of contact between tutors and students and as a student you need to be more motivated than attending a bricks and mortar university (I've done both).

The fact of the matter is that most online learning created over the last year is pretty terrible because it's been created on the hoof by teachers with no experience of delivering learning in this way so they've mostly tried to reproduce the classroom but online, which doesn't work.

Most existing online material out there is intended to be supplemental to traditional bricks and mortar learning or used in a "flipped" classroom like Khan Academy where there is still pupil teacher contact, rather than replace it, or is aimed at professional / personal development rather than teaching academic subjects or the core curriculum.

Honestly if you want to improve your kids learning and can afford one get them a tutor who will work with them one to one or in small groups and can identify what the gaps in their knowledge are and ensure they are keeping pace of where they should be curriculum wise so when they do go back to school they won't be behind their peers. Don't expect a magic tech bullet.

Thinking on this more: There's a high level of self-direction required of students in a flipped classroom model, and by my experience in the US public school system, the kids who're already doing well will do just fine in a flipped (or otherwise self-directed) model, but the at-risk kids are the ones who would need more attention--just like in the classroom.