In a message to Tom Cotton you wrote:
-> Here in Oklahoma, there is a great deal of interest by many schools
-> in distance learning. That is where the teaching is done via
-> satellite with computer assisted instruction to a great extent. I
-> know of one school district that has united with 9 other districts to
-> use this means of instruction. Of course the immediate impact is very
-> little, but over time there will definitely be need for fewer
-> teachers and a single entity will control what is being taught.
While a few years back I had heard these types of predictions, the ones
I have heard more recently do not call for less staff. Possibly less
persons trained to the level of "teacher". But it seems to me that you
would still need a human person, at least a teachers aide, in the
classroom with the student, to look at the kid's work for common errors
and such and help the kid get back on track if s/he temporarily
encounters some difficulty with the course material.
For elementary schools, the entire idea of instruction  via
long-distance computer lines seems far too impersonal and dehumanizing.
Kind of like the scenario that in larger schools students are treated
like a number, rather than a person, and the kids don't respond well to
this. Many of them can easily slip through the cracks in that type of
set up. Even as a high school teacher, I see many kids who NEED that
personal interaction that they get with a live, human teacher in the
classroom. Sit them in front of some video screen and expect them to
learn from that, and I think we would lose many students. I think it
takes a very mature and self-motivated student to deal with the
distance-learning set up that you are espousing.
-> Right now it comes from a nearby college, but I see no reason the
-> instruction could no be coming from anywhere in the world. It will be
-> interesting to see which forms of technology come out on top and how
-> it changes education.
The advantage here is that some students, such as gifted students who
progress so rapidly that they have outgrown the traditional curriculum,
could receive appropriate instruction in advanced topics through such a
set up. I know of a local school where a high school senior, who is too
advanced for calculus, is taking a course in differential equations from
a university back east through a distance learning situation like this.
She is paying some sort of enrollment fee.
Sheila
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