Right now, in regards to education technologies, I feel as though we are in a transitional period of development that will continue on for decades to come. The issue at hand with remote, digital instruction is the various pros and cons that go with this emerging trend in teaching. While this method continues to become more common, benefits will become more apparent and issues will arise that will either cause or decline or be resolved and improved upon. While benefits include a greater range of potential students regardless of location, issues arise in maintaining behavior, focus or motivation when instruction comes at a distance.
One must also ask if the students can gain as entirely from instruction through a computer screen as they would being in the same room as their teacher, picking up on visual cues, body language and an ease of conversation and immediate response. I myself have experienced this first hand, and while remote instruction can be convenient in saving oneself a lengthy commute (or even the ability to be in another place all together), the experience of being taught by a flesh and blood person is lacking. People who know me will not, by any means, be surprised when I say that I prefer a more interactive, call-and-respond form of instruction, as I am constantly one of the more vocal people in any given class. Having to type a response, or worse yet communicate through threaded discussion or email, often is discouraging, annoying and labored. The time saved from one’s commute is wasted in waiting for a response to a simple question. Imagine now a classroom of fifth or sixth graders being taught remotely. How can one hope to captivate their very fleeting attention, motivate their task oriented work, or instill a a self reflective pride in one’s effort from a hundred or a thousand miles away?
One dynamic of remote digital teaching and learning I do see both having a lot of instructional value and providing a much needed change in the current instructional dynamic is the Kahn Academy. This is a non-profit organization funded heavily by Bill Gates that specializes in engaging, well constructed digital lessons on virtually everything. It started out as a tutoring session between Salman Khan and his cousin sent through Youtube that became a sensation because of strangers who happened to stumble across it found Khan’s method of teaching useful. He began creating more and more lessons using the internet application Google Sketchpad and the organization was born. This site exists as a totally free and openly accessible means for supplementary or even primary instruction on a wide array of varied academic topics. I think this could be the future of remote instruction and I’ll explain why.
The practical application of something like the Khan academy is a better allotment of instructional time and therefore, more effective management of teacher-to-student instruction and conceptual reinforcement. Essentially, the breakdown would be this: Students are assigned a homework task of watching the instructional video that introduces/reinforces/reapplies the instructional data on their own time. This is far more likely to happen because the video is more engaging and entertaining that the typical homework or even classwork assignment. The student comes to school with a relative understanding of the material and class time is devoted to reinforcement and task work with explicit teacher instruction. This works so much better (in theory) in many ways. Because time is not wasted in class with the teacher presenting a one-sided, partially stimulating lesson, more of a portion of the face-to-face experience can be devoted to having the students work out what they have learned while getting direct support from their instructor. Also, because the work is not done at home, the ever present problem of a lack of a parent’s knowledge in supporting the completion of their child’s work is not an issue, but rather both student and parent are able to view the lesson material together. This allows for increased parent support and better use of the parent’s time not having to recall and refresh say, math concepts they themselves had learned many years prior.
By essentially reversing the mode in which information is delivered and work is completed, students and teachers more effectively use their time together and apart from one another. That, I believe, is hands down the greatest current benefit of remote instruction techniques.
