This made me feel funny in the pantsFollow

What I'm saying is, you don't get it and you don't know you don't get it.

Get it?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Indubitably.

Edit: was going to just "lay it out as simply as I could" but that probably wouldn't have sufficed, so either absorb all that I have to say or stop before the wall o text.

There are three widely accepted domains of learning: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Now, you're dwelling on the cognitive aspects of education, and that's ok, because that it what schools primarily focus on, but even within the cognitive domain, there are 6 levels of cognition to be attained:

Knowledge- Anyone can pick this up on the internet. People do it every day, as you've pointed out. It's simply the ability to recall information. It's the most basic cognitive skill. What's 2+2? You didn't even have to think about it. Did anyone here actually stop to add 2 and 2? No, you remembered that it's 4.

Comprehension- A little more challenging, but hey, we can do that on the internet to. Can you understand the knowledge? Are you able to figure out what 17+45 is? Just provide several explanations til one of them sinks in. Hope that one explanation doesn't just make the others more confusing. The student may have to pursue it on their own, but that's not the worst thing that could happen. Furthermore, to facilitate understanding you can provide examples that appeal to the three kinds of learners: video, audio, and tactile... Oh wait, the tactile kids are probably out of luck in several instances, because they lack the facilities needed to promote their learning. That's ok though. They'll just learn to adapt, right? They probably will. Probably.

Application- Ok, here's where it gets a bit trickier. Can you actually use the knowledge in a real life setting? Do you know when and how to apply knowledge and understanding? Ok, do it. Well, there are some things the students just can't do online. As for the things they can, how are we going to assess them? It may work for some things but for many it's a long way off based on our current technology.

Analysis- Breaking concepts down and putting them back together again. This can't be easily nor accurately measured by simple multiple choice tests. Who's going to assess the students' ability to analyze data? Certainly not Mr. Teacher with 1000 students. I don't care how elite he/she is.

Then we get to the end. The ongoing relationship between Synthesis and Evaluation. Create something, evaluate it, change it, reevaluate, etc. Evaluate something already created, make suggested improvements, evaulate new product, etc. This kind of learning is hard to facilitate without close guidance from a trained professional. You can't just read about it or watch a lecture online. It's a reactive process.

Now, that exposes many difficulties with cognitive education. I won't even go into the others, because the affective domain is very difficult to explore online and the psychomotor... we are light years away from being able to do online.

Furthermore, the school does more than just teach curriculum. In the schools there is what is called the hidden curriculum. Social competency (face to face, not behind the safety veil of the internet), DISCIPLINE (probably the most important service the school offers), and let's not forget that for millions and millions of students, the school is the preferable place to be compared to their home environment. Some students don't even eat at home. That's not even considering how many people don't even have access to the internet or computers... the basic things needed to implement the system you're talking about.

And what about assessment? Who's going to take a long hard look at the work students are doing and determine their progress? Well you can get computers to take care of the first couple elements of cognitive learning, but after that you need professionals to assess learning. What about academic integrity? Who's to say that John N Ternets actually did any of the work hisself? Who's going to make sure the kids are learning anything at all, really? How long will it be before there are programs which do students' homework for them?

And I promise you I didn't think of all of the problems.

Now, why you think saving on tax dollars for public schools is going to remedy all of the aforementioned problems, I have no idea. Perhaps you are just very anti-taxes or anti-goverment, or maybe you just didn't really consider all that goes on in a school outside of the lectures. Either way, I think what you're talking about is a pipe dream. Now I've probably gone and wasted all this time explaining things to someone who probably isn't going to seriously consider it but instead will jump to defend their ideas. If you feel the need to do so then go ahead, but I have to forewarn you that this is my final post towards this direction of discussion and I won't be drawn into some winded debate about something I've already thoroughly reflected on.


Damn.

Archive that, mother@#%^ers.

Edited, Jan 10th 2007 1:55am by Kachi

Wow, I don't think I can take you seriously anymore after that effort to equate MMORPGs to education. Not trying to take a shot at you, but that was just... dissappointing.

There are just way too many holes for me to address. Honestly, if I started I just do what I said explicitly that I would not do... become involved in a winded debate.

I will explain the hidden curriculum though. You might say that its everything that students are taught in school that isn't in the official curriculum. It involves discipline (which can in no way be compared to the discipline in playing an MMO... some kids are never disciplined at home and if you think you can discipline them from over the internets... just, no). It involves role-modelling which cannot be adequately portrayed through people on monitors who are viewed as artificial to young people. It is the experience of spending real time with real people and learning from their behavior. With this internet-education; we're looking at many students almost never leaving their home and almost never seeing real live people besides their own immediate family, who I have to say are in most cases NOT equipped to handle these children even from a disciplinary standpoint.

You may think that the internet is fine for fostering social skills. It can enhance them, but it will never be a substitute for face to face, elbow to elbow contact with students and teachers.

As for cost, you are not including many costs of home-internet education in your equation. The kind of technology required to provide a sufficient education would be closer to 1000 dollars. You have to consider the costs of accumulating and recording this information and lectures, etc. The costs of having work PROFESSIONALLY assessed. The costs of improving education practices. In short, you're severely underestimating the expenses of what you are proposing. As a nation we are far from being able to do this.

And eating at school is an aspect of education, btw.

Academic integrity is far more jeopardized on the internet than it is in the school as well.

I agree that technology and the internet can do amazing things for education, but they need to be done inside the school, not the home. The home is not a good place for administering education to a society of people.

You can disagree, but you may as well accept the fact that because of the hidden curriculum, the school will probably always have a place in our society, and that's a good thing imo.

Bah, I've said too much.

If you want discipline, compulsory military training is better at fostering discipline than compulsory school attendance. I understand that gym class is probably a good 7.5% of the K-12 curriculum. But athletics too, can be enforced by required membership in private sporting clubs such as soccer teams, swimming teams, chess teams, etc. You could have a kiddie draft to the local football club. Military drill instructors can serve as coaches, in afternoon or evening practices. And they'll do a better job at making sure Junior actually does his daily dose of sit ups and push ups. Just take a look at these fat *** obese kids in today's schools. Remember, you're the one that wants State spankings extending into private homes to DISCIPLINE children. How about electric schocks delivered for wrong answers, like tic tac toe playing chickens used to get at local county fairs when they lost a game?

Mmorpgs are already an aspect of education. Just take a look at the number of students who come home from school and log on to play. It's no different than playing games in a school classroom to learn concepts. You remember playing "Simon Says" in Kindergarten, don't you? Couple that with orderly single file lines to the lunchroom cafeteria and you've got the beginning basis for obedient soldiers. What happened to parents being role models? But I do agree with you that face to face elbow to elbow contact is a necessary aspect of increasing social skills. But that's an entirely different matter than learning content in a classroom. Students don't socially take their SAT tests; they take those tests individually. They are graded individually, not graded as a class, those few communistic group projects aside. :P

Costs. You have to remember, video recording the best teachers, the yearly Apple winners or whatever, while firing the other also rans a la Donald Trump Apprentice style is real SAVINGS. That's the point. Some teachers suck. Some teachers are brilliantly talented. There's no reason to repeat the same lesson in a hundred thousand classrooms with a hundred thousand different teachers when the best teacher's lesson can be viewed equally by all. Say teachers are paid an average of 50k a year. Video recording one, and firing 99,999 teachers for every 100,000 is big savings. HUUUUGE! Plus throw in the administrative, brick and mortar housing, janitorial, etc. costs and it's even bigger savings.

Well if academic integrity is jeapordized on the internet, I guess you'd better steer far clear of hospitals, since more and more of those doctors have taken their MCATs on-line before they entered medical school.

Bah, you said a lot, but you were totally vague. You didn't give even one specific concrete example of something that is learned in a classroom that can't be similarly learned on-line when it comes to the actual meat and potatos of education, of knowledge, of skills, that are ostensibly taught in classrooms. Not a single one.

Vataro wrote:



Mmmmm, said Homer Simpson, personal touch. Tell me, Vataro, just how would you like your daughter to be personally touched today?

You know "many people", many people "who simply cannot grasp a particular concept after having worked a very long time on it." Those poor poor souls. How can they grasp it in a classroom and yet be simultaneously incapable of grasping it from watching the teacher explain it to another student on video. Humiliation at the chalk board works or something? Yes, I suppose if **** Grasso can be paid $195M to say turn those NYSE machines back on after 9/11 Ms. Applebottom Mrs. Peartree can be paid $50k for "pointing to a particular spot on a board".

It's no coincidence all the examples so far for pro-classroom learning are completely vague. Whatever goes on in a physical classroom can be seen equally by everyone on-line (including parents), saved and archived (for Bill O'Reilly's ready download to get some teacher canned for praising Karl Marx), replaced or addended with other good examples from other new teachers, analyzed in yellow highlighter Madden football replay measurement, etc. Man, you finally give the left that equal quality curriculum access to the best teachers without raping the taxpayers and they don't want it. Why? Because it's always been about holding kids hostage, indoctrinating them, while milking their socialist pay cut for their teacher and adminstrative union brotherhood, and not about giving students the best education, or their caffeteria milk for that matter.

Yeah the Discovery Channel is awesome (sorry, can't stand Mythbusters though). So is the History Channel (except for that UFO crap). It's much better than dry in classroom reading of history books. I'll even praise PBS Nature Documentaries. All good quality examples of education available outside of the traditional classroom, equally accessible to all. Why pay teachers on the days they show videos of those shows? Why order 100,000 copies of the same $29.95 History Channel episode for each school district?



I think some people would be fascinated at parrallels to the Hitler Youth.

Edited, Jan 11th 2007 7:16am by MonxDoT

Exactly.

Take me seriously? Your example of the benefit of in physical classroom learning was a teacher pointing to a spot on a blackboard. You seriously think that can't be replicated on-line, along with pause and slow motion functions?

I do care that everyone learns the material. That's why I'm still posting to this thread. That's why I'm proposing the educational system be upgraded as such. The value of classroom education exists whether I care or not. It's explainable, if such value exists, whether I care or not. I've listed numerous concrete specific examples of bettering the educational process on-line. You can't list one single simple specific example whereby the quality of physical in classroom education is specifically better? Seems awfully suspicious that said alleged benefits might not exist if I can't get even a single example. 90%+ on this board would love to shoot me down. Don't cowardly back out now. So what if posts are served with hot sauce on this board. I shall quench your thirst for knowledge. But surely you can make a meaty point simultaneously, if you can.

Stuff in books? Lol. I've listed:

*Archived lectures and presentations of the very best teachers viewable by all
*Content from the likes of the Discovery Channel and the History Channel
*Real time measurement of learning
*Real time oversite of the curriculum
*Tapping of talented suggestions and addendums from all available sources
*Yeah, stuff in books too, no need for school budgets to pay for new textbooks every 20 years. The newest shit is always there on-line, for free.
*Interactive virtual classrooms
*Interactive innovative virtual learning games like the Oregon Trail, the entire library of PC educational software sold from the likes of Best Buy
*Every single foreign language, not some popular few 4-5 foreign languages
*All of that for 99% less cost

All you have to do is give me a single example of something that is learned in a classroom that can't be similarly learned on-line. I'm covering absolutely everything from kindergarten to PhD. Is that too much to ask? You can't find a better example than a teacher pointing to a specific spot on a chalkboard? That example has been debunked, we can see the same /point on-line from many different angles, again and again, tailored to each students individual speed. That's a personal Sokr8s for every student. What do you got? Nothing. Zip zero.

I'm making this political? It isn't already political? Funding, curriculum, compulsion, diciplinary policies aren't political? Puhleasse. You're going to have to do better.

Gee, what a surprise Beave. You really could go on and on, but you didn't. I guess your best wasn't good enough. I've been listing the realistic positive consequences. List a single negative consequence, if you can, of something that can't be done on-line that is done in a physical classroom building regarding education. Trying to level your poser skills or something?

Single, specific, concrete, example, or bag it, to go. Why don't you /tell something instead of pretending like you have something to /tell. Look at these people. I'm defending the entire range of content from kindergarten to PhD, and they can't come up with a single simple /poke example. LMAO you said "efforts", efforts that wholely and completely FAIL to list a single example of something learned in physical classroom that is impossible to be learned on-line. But they post anyway. /boggle Guess it's just like Barbie + Math, "hard".

/flex

Classy reply Barkkingturtle. Go from education to "university experience". Ahh the vagary of vagueness. Not to mention, it's impossible to network on-line. There's no such things as email addresses, chat rooms, forums. It's all just imaginary friends? There hasn't been any crude /reply interaction on this thread. It's impossible to exchange phone numbers on-line. You can't meet students pUrsuing (oh, don't look know, real time spelling lesson in effect) law careers in law forums. You can't read actual Laws at .gov sites. Try again.

Take a look at how they come at me, and run into a glass wall. It's hilarious. I thought you guys were at least a little smart. Make me look like the Matrix in comparison.

Here's another lesson for you Barkingturtle. Ideas are non-physical non-material non-circumscribable things. They aren't exchanged like physical property. Ideas can be inhabitated simultaneously by innumerable minds by the act of thinking. LOL. Ideas can't be exchanged on line? You lose. F grade in big fat red ink for you.

So now you don't wan't nobody to discuss with me because you failed? How benevolent of you. I'm an outcast! An outcast!

Edit: And how could I overlook "xenophobic". The internet is open to all races, nationalities, creeds, etc. Quite the opposite, fool.



Edited, Jan 11th 2007 11:31pm by MonxDoT

How can you say grade school students learn "best" when you don't provide any concrete specific examples of what grade school students learn. First, keep in mind we are all lifelong students and lifelong teachers. Tapping the abilities of those that can provide better explanations will only improve education, whether those teachers are State certified or every day Joes and Janes or the professional elite in various fields.

I already agree that physical interaction in groups is important. But that's taken care of in membership to private sporting clubs. It's no more egregious to impose compulsory physical fitness than compulsory school attendance. Not to mention kids play with other kids on their own, at recess, at home, at structured sporting events.

You are overestimating direct attention. Does a kid need direct attention to finish a new PS2 game he got for X-Mas? No.

But let's take a look at what you think is specific concrete evidence.



Does it matter if you count with rocks instead of pebbles? Does it matter if you count with blades of grass instead of pebbles? Does it matter if you count with cocoa pebbles instead of pebbles? Of course not. Counting is counting. This can easily, and already is easily available, on a multitude of pc software. Let's go shopping for Joph, shall we.

Here's an interesting item at Best Buy:



What else can I find quickly. Here's your shapes.

http://www.kidsdomain.com/down/pc/animshapesp1.html?trnstl=1



Tell me you had it that good back in Kindergarten. No fucking way.

From the same site:



There's your evidence, beeyatch. No physical in classroom teacher can come close to touching this. It'd be like you trying to beat IBM supercomputers in a game of chess to put it mildly.



You've known two sucky instructors. Well whoop dee fricking dooo. :P It was a far inferior experience because he sucked, plain and simple, he was one dude, plain and simple. Same goes for the chick. Let's go to the scorecard, and analyze exactly which answers were incorrect. Then we can go back to da 'Net to make sure they actually do learn the concepts they were supposed to learn. We can do similarly for the business/accounting courses as we did with the kiddie animal shapes math programs. It will, without a doubt, be much better. Plus, the scores are constantly real time feedback in my program. Half the time, typical physical classroom instructors don't even know what the hell they are measuring.

But thanks for playing MonxSchool v. 1.0, at least you scored higher than your previous Asylum peers. But you can do better still. ^^

So you found some educational toys? Yay. Seriously, I'm really impressed.

But I'm still waiting for the study showing that those toys alone can educate just as effectively than those toys used in conjunction with an instructor. It's okay, I can wait.

See, without proving that computer programs and toys and movies and all that are equally effective as all those things with an instructor present to teach and reinforce and help the child along, you've got nothing. And, right now, that's what they are doing in the schools -- computers and toys and all that plus instructors. So I'm waiting for your "trend" to develop. But I think I'll be waiting a good long while.