Posted on 01/18/2011 7:52:53 AM PST by markomalley
MIAMI — On the first day of her senior year at North Miami Beach Senior High School, Naomi Baptiste expected to be greeted by a teacher when she walked into her precalculus class.
“All there were were computers in the class,” said Naomi, who walked into a room of confused students. “We found out that over the summer they signed us up for these courses.”
Naomi is one of over 7,000 students in Miami-Dade County Public Schools enrolled in a program in which core subjects are taken using computers in a classroom with no teacher. A “facilitator” is in the room to make sure students progress. That person also deals with any technical problems.
These virtual classrooms, called e-learning labs, were put in place last August as a result of Florida’s Class Size Reduction Amendment, passed in 2002. The amendment limits the number of students allowed in classrooms, but not in virtual labs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Schools.
Are.
Merely.
Prison.
Preparatory.
Institutions.
Mike
That's a simplistic description, but in the age of YouTube and DVDs, there is no longer a need to put a lecturer in front of 30 kids in a room for 6 hours a day. It is not effective -- and certainly not cost effective.
To paraphrase the Buggles: "Video killed the Teachers Union".
Bet me. My daughter learned calculus at 12 without a teacher or an online class.
I remember classes in junior high in the Tampa Bay area over 50 years ago where the lecture was presented to a class of probably 300 on multiple black and white televisions.
We had to take a lot of notes, but it was very effective. I kind of liked it.
These people are shooting themselves in the foot (feet? — whatever). Parents are going to wonder why they send kids to school and pay all those taxes if they are going to sit in front of a computer all day. You can do that at home and take whatever courses you want. (It’s called homeschooling, and I hear it’s very effective.)
Some kids might like it, though, if they don’t particularly care to interact with a teacher or their classmates so I can see the benefit there, but why trudge down to the local school when you can take classes in the privacy of your own home?
Employees across the fruited plane are learning new things every day via computer while on the job....and I don't think it's stunting their personalities.
The unsaid story behind this article is the fact that the teachers' unions are going to have a cow over these new concepts. They won't like being even partially replaced by a computer. They'll strike and shut schools down over this issue sometime in the future as the lab concept develops and expands....wait and see.
Leni
>>Ain’t gonna work for math.....<<
It does for my kids.
I know nothing about math, but with a good program, they are two years ahead (my 10 year old is doing Algebra 1).
Saxon Algebra with their D.I.V.E. video and “Teacher” program have gotten them flying through. Now I’m not saying that every computer program can do this (when we were on Switched on Schoolhouse, I was begging the FReeper Math people for help every day), but Saxon has found a way to get it done.
Just the other day, my older girl said, “This is so easy!”. She is two lessons away from Geometry. If they are using Saxon, it will work.
You can get your high school math and then some online now:
Why even have a brick and mortar classroom for learning?
MichaelP,
Whatever you do, don’t take Carrie_Okie’s bet. Both his daughters are sharp as tacks, and neither was abused by teh pooblik skool system, IIRC.
PS Neither one is a genius, either, so what worked for them can will work for any student willing to learn.
PPS You can send the money you would have bet to me as a thank you for all the embarrassment I saved you.
;-)
Mike
I hereby humbly suggest that every school shut by a teacher strike be immediately sold.
I believe that would keep the union extortionists at bay.
Children go to pub(l)ic school to be beaten up or molested by a teacher.
Is Saxon good? No lib agenda? No questions like - Tommy’s dad has two extra daddies he met at a club. If one daddy leaves - how many daddies does Tommy have?
There is very little subject matter, that can't be taught using a well written program. And taught faster and more efficiently to the level of the individual child instead of the slowest kid in the class.
My kids learned almost everything through 3rd grade math prior to Kindergarten from a computer and had advanced to 6th grade math by the 2nd grade again thanks to well written computer games like the "Adventure" series.
And I learned almost all of high school algebra and geometry in the 6th grade because a teacher excused me from the regular class and sat me and a friend at a table and gave us problems to work at our own pace.
The only things that teachers are really needed for are the more touchy feelly things. Social interaction, leading group discussions, etc. Everything else should be computer driving and go at the pace of the individual student.
A good program can do things like adjust the teaching method for the way the child learns, use multiple teaching methods if the child isn't picking it up, test and reinforce the teaching where the child appears weak.
If it can be reduced to book form, it can pretty much be taught by a computer.
When I was in high school we had a couple of History classes in an auditorium with TV screens. We did have a teacher, but it was more like a large college class. In elementary school we took spanish in a class like that, too.
What is the “Adventure” series?
The academy is a bloated tapeworm in our economic organism. Lawyers, tenured...we cannot afford to support these parasites.
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