Virtual-schooling system

Virtual-schooling system

More and more we are seeing not only the importance of alternative schooling methods but the benefits of empowering both, students and their parents/ guardians. Many issues have plagued our schools, both public and private. Some of these include, and are unfortunately not limited to, safety, bullying,curriculum cuts, lowered performance and expectations just to name a few. Pair this with instructional pay and budget cuts and we can extrapolate that physical schools are deteriorating at an exponential rate that ensures that school will end up not only dumbed down but over attended and with overworked and underpaid teachers and staff.

The internet has showed us many success stories when it comes to online learning. There are many virtues to this approach. We need to create a method for utilizing and maximizing these technologies to their full potential as learning tools and not just as a means for replicating the current techniques in a medium that can give us so much more. We are looking for solutions, not products.

I am not talking about doing what online universities have been doing, these systems are just an online version of the same paradigm. I am referring to real innovations and properly using these technologies to not only teach our students, but motivate them and truly develop and enhance their critical thinking skills. Fabulous examples such as “Hole-in-the-wall” , “Ecole 42” and the ever famous and prestigious “MIT” are a great starting point and a standard to beat.

Historically memorization and repetition has been the technique used for teaching. Empirical evidence suggests that a system that embraces participation and discovery is much more effective for learning. As someone that has gone through the current schooling system I can attest that as soon as you take your test, most of that information is deleted from your mind. Also, the current setup has been created to only pass tests the state has set up for standardization and teacher accountability purposes. Well, what happened to our beautiful little unique snowflake children?

I do acknowledge many wonderful things brick and mortar schools have to offer and I definitely do not blame the schools for teaching the kids in this manner. Unfortunately, the current system forces us to do this in order to ensure funding for the following year. The better your school does, the more money they receive, inversely, you can imagine what happens to schools that deviate from this path. This scares schools in to indoctrinating the children into thinking in a very specific way in order to insure limited thinking and thus guaranteeing your child will only answer the test as the standardization experts expect them to answer. Any critical or innovative thinking will be punished. The repercussions of such behavior will be felt not only by the child but the school and ultimately the school system as well.

Virtual models, materials and schooling in general, do not have this issue and are a fraction of the cost. Innovation and rapid change to a virtual world is key to bringing this possibility not only to impoverished school systems and households in america, but around the globe where 70% of the world’s population does not have access to a personal computer. One very good and important example of this is the Keypod initiative (more on Keypod), where you can use antiquated computers running their operating system of a thumb drive, making this option incredibly affordable and accessible to just about anyone around the globe for cents on the dollar compared to the next most affordable “refurbished” computer. Technologically, this means we won't need to aim for the lowest common denominator, but rather bump up the level of technology of those in a more modest situation which ultimately will keep content from suffering. Add to this the fact that information will always be up to date and not limited by physical issues such as printing time, costs or quantity. Pure information is a gift that we have not truly accepted in structured life, yet we reach for it every chance we get.  I personally love the feel of a real book, however I do have to admit I have learned a lot more and a lot quicker through the internet than I ever have with most books I have read.

With all this being said, I propose we establish a parallel schooling system where we can create a loosely-structured scheme for students to discover and create while we place tasks or questions they see as challenges and arrive at answers in a more natural way. Dr. Sugata Mitra calls this method “minimally invasive education”, where through “incidental learning” children discover the answers in an entertaining yet challenging way. Motivation is easily instilled in young children through collaborative and to some degree competitive teamwork. They arrive at their own conclusions and through discovery and not repetition the knowledge is encoded better in their minds. He followed to explain in his ted talk how tests have shown that immediate knowledge is comparable to those in the current school system, however several months later when the children took the same test, the children who discovered the answers themselves remember most if not all the information since they had several levels of cognitive anchors and paths by which to remember the answer or arrive at them once again. The children in the current school system either remembered it or not and thus their scores were significantly lower than the other children.

To those who wonder about the loss of the social element, if we pair online learning with peer and community support and guidance, I believe we will arrive at a better system. Thus far the best established version of this architecture is the Self Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) which according to Wikipedia “is a place where children can work in groups, access the internet and other software, follow up on a class activity or project or take them where their interests lead them”. Dr. Sugata Mitra, once again, has been the spearhead for this type of experimentation and application.

Some current models place volunteers such as retirees, veterans and professionals to help, guide and even mentor the children based on their time limits and area of expertise.  Also, as mentioned earlier, children would be teamed up for peer interaction, support and friendly competition. These interactions can be held in many different venues such as online social networks, community centers or a mix depending on your accessibility or personal constraints. All this can and should be fine tuned in order to truly maximize the process and always evolve with time, progress and adapt it to our ever emerging lifestyles.

The virtual system has the advantage of being self feed, up to date and creates better prepared individuals with better problem solving skills, critical thinking capabilities and the ability to adapt better to any challenge they might be presented with. In a results based market we will prepare our students better to meet the challenges of real life. Leo Rafael Reif (president of MIT) also sees the value of this strategy. He spearheaded a pioneering online-education initiative designed to bring MIT content online to learners around the world for free through an interactive, open-source learning platform.

This approach makes sense, as nearly anything you need to know can now be found, for free on the Internet. Students can easily teach themselves, though most content on the internet is in English, any language they need to know can potentially be learned in just a few months as the children from a slum in Kalkaji, New Delhi showed us since they needed to learn English (with proper neutral british accents for speech to text software) in order to satisfy their curiosity and beat (and surpass) many of the challenges they were presented. This is all very well documented in places as the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology and the  Information technology for international development journal. Sir Arthur C Clarke commented upon his discovery of the “Hole in the wall” educational experiment “if a teacher can be replaced by a machine, it should be”.

I’m aware that this act of excluding (in general) both, teachers and the school system will put off educators and most professionals working in the field (much like myself), however, we need to let go of the fact that this implies the demise of most of these professions. Instead we need to focus on the evolution of education and more than anything, what is best for the students.

This model is not just a cure for our current American system, but a way to reach the entire globe where either technology or teachers are not able (or willing) to go. If we create this system we will not only have a better learning experience but, for people who feel this is not the best fit for their kids, an invaluable supplemental resource at your fingertips.