Comments on: Online Education is Coming, And Fast

By: Emelia Jacaruso

Emelia Jacaruso — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:38:56 +0000

I just found this site a while ago when a buddy recommended it to me. I’ve been an avid reader ever since.

By: RadhaJ

RadhaJ — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:23:21 +0000

Three separate comments (background:I am a univ teacher who teaches online sections of courses as a matter of course)

1) Online or physical: the key metric is class size. It is physically not possible for me to teach multi hour classes while keeping track of everyone in a non-small (eg. >12) class. As Basab says, online helps by reducing costs.

2) At school level, teachers often teach subjects that they are not specialized in (eg. Physics grad teaching History or vice versa) . This is wrong. Online helps by connecting resources to places where they are needed.

3) Nothing broken with American education: however, the idea that everyone NEEDS to get a highschool (let alone college degree) strikes me as silly. It is at best elitist (eg. do I really know more about life than my neighbor?) , selfserving (eg. teacher salaries going up in a recession) and detrimental to the creative and resourceful young mind whose talents might lie elsewhere.

By: basab_prad13041

basab_prad13041 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:54:00 +0000

Ranju – Yes. there is a qualifying test. Depending upon the age of the child the test might be different. The website is not very well organized. I had to call them to get things clarified.

By: Ranju

Ranju — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:22:51 +0000

Hi Basab,
thanks to your post, i looked at CTY as well and found the course work interesting. However, it seemed like there was a qualifying test to enroll. Am I looking at the wrong thing?
Thanks

By: Basab Pradhan

Basab Pradhan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:03:00 +0000

A teacher in one of my classes used to regularly throw chalk at students who were catching a snooze in his class or chatting with their neighbours. If he couldn't lay his hands on chalk he would throw the duster. Luckily he never beaned anyone with the duster.

By: Krishna

Krishna — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:29:07 +0000

Basab, I felt you were carping about standardization (or lack of individual attention) while saying "The monolithic school system was designed very well for mass production of education, but was resistant to change." But then you seem to endorse Christensen's hope of online education disrupting classroom. I find it a bit curious because in a classroom, many a alert teacher would spin away from the blackboard and bean a slacker with a fully loaded eraser to get him back on. When it's online, even this bit of attention would be absent unless they conjure up something like beaming a laser ray on the slouching student to rev him up

By: Amy

Amy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:46:15 +0000

Here's a great opportunity for teachers to make money online. http://www.powerlearning21.com