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William A. Levinson wrote:The question is therefore how to give taxpayers the low taxes and world-class educations for their children that they want, and teachers the high salaries they want. An off-the-shelf solution already exists in the form of Internet charter schools, along with the open-source software, Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). I recently finished a course on the use of Moodle in preparation for an online course I will be teaching later this year, and its capabilities are extremely impressive. Similar systems are doubtlessly available, and it is not this article’s purpose to endorse one over the other.

Moodle allows an instructor to upload lectures in both audio and text formats, which allows the student to use whatever format works best. It is of course faster to read the text than to listen to the lecture, but different people have different learning styles. It also offers discussion forums that allow parallel—as opposed to sequential—interactions between the students and instructor. There is no longer a need for people to raise their hands and take turns to ask questions or respond to what other people say. The system is also asynchronous, which means participants can log on and participate at their convenience.

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Mr. Levinson concedes that on-site attendance will still be needed for things like "classes and activities like sports and performing arts that require the simultaneous physical presence of a group of people". But there will certainly be a lesser need for on-site education, and shorter school weeks and/or shorter school days, and less money needing to be spent.

amigocabal wrote:The question is therefore how to give taxpayers the low taxes and world-class educations for their children that they want, and teachers the high salaries they want.

"The question is therefore how to give diners the low prices and four star gourmet meals they want, and the chefs the high salaries they want." Maybe you just can't have everything?

I'm skeptical of whether it's possible to give world-class educations with high teacher salaries and low taxes. The article is not from an education professional or someone with experience in anything other than business and chemical engineering. His opinion of the utility of such a system on a wide scale, therefore, is suspect.

In any other industry it's not very likely anybody would take seriously someone with no experience in the field saying that we can give a low-cost, high quality (world-class, even) product while still paying the staff providing it high professional salaries. Especially when the basic model he advocates has been tried and leaves a lot to be desired. So why should I take his suggestion seriously, then? There seems to be no good reason to think this article is well-researched, informed or presents a realistic vision.

Like usual, if a headline contains a yes or no question, the most likely answer is "No."

This is faintly amusing to me because my school district is in the middle of a push to have teachers create a virtual classroom in parallel to their real classroom- but not to replace it.

It's also amusing because during the summers I've moonlighted as a tutor to the occasional college frustrated with their lower-level classes that basically adopt this model of relying heavily on online work and the students' working it out for themselves. And that's for young adults who actually HAVE something like the level of maturity, self-discipline, and self-motivation it takes to learn things under their own power.
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Moodle, Google Classrooms, and the like might actually wind up replacing homework as we know it, and they're going to change things in both private and public education. They might even make it possible to deliver same-quality instruction to slightly larger classes, or with very slightly shorter periods, on average, all else being equal.

But we're not going to see a world where the majority of the students actually get a majority of their learning done by sitting at home on a computer. People still need stuff explained to them, they need collaborative group activities, they need the physical resources and flexibility that a brick-and-mortar school can provide.

The modern Internet is not yet up to providing what is needed for a cyber-school to work, and if it ever is, that time will be decades in the future.

Online materials are great for augmenting regular classes, especially if people can make use of it. It would be great for teachers to spend less time being a live recording of themselves* and more time spent dealing with questions and working out how things work. Of course this will necessitate the reading/viewing of course material mandatory along with something that would help processing it.

But people attending college trough correspondence course already can do that. The Internet and digital material is a big update on that, especially if there is software or other online material (video tutorials for example). I use Moodle trough college (as a student) and so far everything it does is replaceable or even outright replaced by a simple FTP server. Although the system is new here and the staff haven't figured out a lot of things. Computers are great though in reducing necessary administration.

A lot can be improved by computers but most of it can be due to the fact of how computers can replace printed books for digital ones. There is a handful of things that computers are really a good improvement, like doing math where you would immediately know whether an answer is good or wrong. But if you can't get good answers you will need a real person's help to figure out what you are doing wrong. And it is definitely not enough for things like machining or art school where there is important hands-on experience.

Those hoping that the Internet and computers can brake down everything needed between a teacher and their students like this guy is advocating is underestimating how much personal presence and availability is important. Schools will still be needed, if for nothing else than a gathering place for teachers to meet students and examine their work or how they work. And a big cost of schools is precisely that, maintaining schools. Even if you somehow did, paying enough teachers doing enough things a proper wage is not going to be cheap.

*I am referring to the old system where teachers primarily exist to give the material orally and maybe extend that on a blackboard if there was one. Students would note everything down that the teacher said and figure out how to study from that, if they are good at taking notes. If not and can't get the notes of someone who is, then you have a problem unless you have a very good textbook to work things out of.