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I'm a couple of hours into the audio book and I've heard him describe the online school. It got me thinking. Why would this not work?

Minuses:
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-PE obviously would be an issue but its an issue now.
-Learning nonverbal communication would probably be another thing that might be lost.
-It can be argued that people need to learn to deal with fitting in and real world bullies. I'd disagree. People learn that fast and if anything recent news has taught us is that cyber bullying is just as brutal.
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Pluses:
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-With an avatar you aren't encumbered by your appearance socially at least socially within the simulation. With school restrictions you can put limits on appearance as to try and minimize as much as possible the distraction from school work.
-Being able to mute other students. I loved this. I had several people in my classes in high school that loved the sound of their own voices.
-Financially the cost to run this school would be much cheaper. The cost of maintenance on real world property takes up a good part of a schools funding. Storage and computing power is relatively cheap. Virtual books would in theory be cheaper to.
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I don't think the things I've mentioned are too spoilery but I marked them just in case.

I know I've missed a few points and this can be as big a debate as ebooks versus dead tree edition books but I believe its an interesting topic worth discussing.

I think we're getting to that all online point eventually. I just started classes at my university and one of the classes (Design and Analysis of Algorithms) was taught entirely online in the summer, and the data from that will inform whether or not one day of three of this fall will be taught online. The professor has an online office, where we voice chat ala voice conferencing on set hours on Sunday. I had another class (I think it was Discrete Mathematics) where we had both regular class hours but the lectures were recorded and posted online like a slideshow with the voice left in. That feature alone made me learn better by going back on things I was sketchy about.

The best example on a fully-online school program I can think of is Khan Academy. It has a full curriculum of math (K-12 + Calculus) and my dad is actually using it to study for his GED. The main teaching tool is video lectures and they work pretty well. The testing tool is an online quiz program that generates a lot (maybe unlimited?) number of questions and gives a boatload of stats about what a student has done on the site and how well the student is doing.

One of the positives not mentioned is very easy addition of different learning aids. I prefer well-taught lectures (either in person or as a video) to textbooks and an open enough platform could accommodate both and more to suit different kinds of learning. As long as you have a way of figuring out that there is learning going on, it should work.

Personally, I'm formally studying programming and informally studying game design with the intent of designing games that can replace some parts of traditional education, mostly problem solving and reasoning (the obvious strong points for games), so I lean towards optimism.

I'm getting a masters degree taken exclusively online (that wasn't my intention, but I moved immediately after being accepted to the program). It's been a good experience, but if I could have done it in person, I would have.

The thing about online learning is that it tends to be asynchronous. The methods they discuss in RPO are cool, but for many people the draw to online degrees is that you can do it anywhere, at any time. Which is why the classes I've taken tend to have students from all over the world. You don't all need to be in the same timezone.

Which isn't to say there isn't a benefit to the methods discussed in RPO, it's just different, and requires everyone to be available at the exact same time (something that's pretty rare). My mother is the superintendent at a special needs school district, and some of their students attend via Skype if they can't (for a variety of reasons) physically be there.

@Jason: it's interesting that you raise the synchronous verse asynchronous nature of delivery. Obviously there are pros and cons to both. I've experienced both at a university level with recorded lectures (video/audio) and remote work (online forums/discussion/work submission/tests etc), but I've also experienced realtime lectures with online chat/video interaction or interactive work with peers. The success often seemed to be linked somewhat with peoples comfort with the tools (including the teachers). It's rather common for post-graduate degrees to be offered with some remote/correspondence stream as many are undertaking these in parallel to work (at least in my part of the world).

Whilst these are all great there is a certain something about being in a room/location in person. In the typical classroom for example a good teacher will be looking for a lot of non-verbal feedback which should be informing their lesson. It's unclear that such feedback occurs as well in a virtual setting (at least today).

Also as mentioned there is that whole dimension of soft skills that are just somewhat different online I find. If learning is just about content knowledge then these virtual approaches seem to work well, but for all those other (often ungraded) elements that one gains from education I'm unconvinced that these translate as well to the virtual space (to date).

Anyway there is some interesting research in this area; it's definitely something those within education are looking at, though personally I'm not sure I'd wish to attend school in such a manner.

I haven't gotten to this part of the book yet (I just started last night), but I am eager to weigh in on this topic. I work for a startup company that makes educational software for virtual schools. Look us up if you want: 360Ed.com.

One of our partners is the Florida Virtual School (FLVS). We worked with them to build two classes that are in the form of adventure games. As you play the game, you encounter the content that would normally be delivered through a traditional textbook or a learning management system (LMS) like Blackboard. Periodically, you receive assignments in the game that map to real-world projects and tests. When you submit these assignments, they are graded by a teacher. The teacher is also available to provide guidance and answer questions. High school students in Florida can choose to play our games for full credit instead of taking a traditional American History or Reading course.

We are currently partnering with McGraw-Hill Education to build a web-based learning platform that replaces a textbook with a social network full of educational games, avatars, and achievements. It's sort of like Xbox Live meets Facebook meets Blackboard.

One of the things I like about working for this company is that it feels like we are trying to invent a science fictional future, so I can't wait to read about some similar ideas in science fiction.

I was in a graduate program that was a hybrid of online courses and once-a-week in person. The online courses were taught by two professors who taught from their motorhome, from the road wherever they happened to be that week. (Not joking, they were awesome!)

It was great because I lived 1.5 hours from school, and was juggling multiple jobs at the time. It gave me a lot of freedom. I appreciated not having my time wasted on lectures, and getting to do interactive and self-paced learning. I found the online courses to have more work than the in-person, but that kind of seemed like a transition thing.

The one difficulty came when one of the classes was on Flash. It was much harder to get help! It would be easier now with screen-sharing apps and Jing, etc., but in 2004 I didn't have those kinds of options.

However. I think there is an extreme difference between online courses and online courses in a virtual world. I know when SecondLife and other similar worlds came out, the education world was initially very excited. But in the end, I think the learning curve was too high, and more time was being spent helping people learn how to use the program than on the other kinds of learning. In the world of Ready Player One, this doesn't matter because everyone already lives in the Oasis.

So the modern equivalent of that would be to offer courses in an environment where we already live - 2.0, blogs, wikis, etc. Most of the courses where I work all use at least some part of that, and having a class without the internet is a rarity. Some faculty experiment with Twitter for study groups, podcasts for projects, and I even use a wiki for my student projects (my class is entirely paperless).

Jenny wrote: "I think the learning curve was too high, and more time was being spent helping people learn how to use the program than on the other kinds of learning."

That is definitely one of the drawbacks to using new technology to try to teach. Good designers of technological products are hard to come by because programmers tend to focus on making a program work and be as bug-free as possible and can disregard usability.

Valve, the makers of Portal, have a process of rapidly implementing design ideas and testing them thoroughly for effectiveness. Many ideas are thrown out or iterate upon if a player isn't understanding what's going on and a similar process would have to be in place for educational tools for them to be effective.

xenphi wrote: "Valve, the makers of Portal, have a process of rapidly implementing design ideas and testing them thoroughly for effectiveness."

Sounds like a version of the Extreme Programming philosophy which uses rapid prototyping and a lot of interaction with user. Being a programmer coming from a business environment I can tell you the degree of user involvement in that type of programming is not always practical due to how busy users may be. It would require their bosses saying that the program is worth the time to get right that they don't mind some lost productivity required to have the users evaluate each iteration of the prototype. There are other issues with user prejudice to certain features when they see them unpolished. Software development done right can be very difficult to pull off.

I think the key to RPO on line classes is that the learner is engaged at a deeper level due to the interactive interface that requires your total mind attention. I don't think we are quite there yet but are getting close.

@Nathan: I'm curious how your company goes about evaluating the quality of teaching/learning that is occuring through the various approaches they are taking. I spent some time talking to an individual who designed virtual worlds for university level courses but I was rather unsatisfied by his empirical evidence for why this was a better approach than the alternate means of delivery.

This gamification of things seems to be a real trend and is definitely very big in education. Whilst it makes sense to me on a subjectively (as one who enjoys games) level - make learning fun, tap into that same achievement/reward drive as in games etc.. it seemed to me that it's application was often a little lacking on the validation side to things.

Kris wrote: "I think the key to RPO on line classes is that the learner is engaged at a deeper level due to the interactive interface that requires your total mind attention."

A deeper level than real life with it's arguably greater interactivity?

Andrew wrote: "@Nathan: I'm curious how your company goes about evaluating the quality of teaching/learning that is occuring through the various approaches they are taking. I spend some time talking to an individ..."

Good question. We work with our partners so that we can provide the technology and gaming know-how and they provide the educational content and teachers. For our web app, Spark, we are presenting the same content that a student would get in a McGraw-Hill textbook, plus some multimedia content, packaged for web delivery. Similarly, for our game-based courses, we are using materials written by a team of Florida Virtual School subject matter experts, and Florida Virtual School vets and hires the teachers.

Personally, I don't think online/virtual education is yet at the level where it is equal to a high quality real-world teaching experience, but many real-world teaching experiences (perhaps especially in Florida public schools) are also not that high-quality. Our courses may not measure up to the top quality face-to-face education experiences, but they are way beyond many of the other online offerings available, and virtual education can only get better as the technology improves. One of our hopes is that technology will allow us to have those higher quality teachers be able to reach a much broader range of students.

I noticed you use the term gamification. I am pretty wary of using that term myself, because I think it can be very dangerous when it is taken to an extreme. Our designers are familiar with the psychological research on motivation, particularly the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and how deleterious it can be replace the former with the latter. For that reason, we try to motivate students to be present and engaged with the system, but we never directly reward them for academic success or failure. In other words, we are not trying to carrot-and-stick the students into performing better academically, but we are trying to make their school software a rewarding place to spend their time, even when they are not studying. Our hope is that if they enjoy spending time in the software that will translate to better academic performance. We are embarking on some year-long pilots now, so by the end of this school year we should have a better idea of whether that idea works the way hope.

xenphi wrote: "Good designers of technological products are hard to come by because programmers tend to focus on making a program work and be as bug-free as possible and can disregard usability. "

Bug-free?? Hmmmmm. I think it's obvious that you have never tried to use the official Second Life V2 client :) But your spot on with the second point, it was contracted out to programmers who were obviously clueless about how the virtual world worked, hence it's just plain terrible from a usability standpoint. Luckily the open source community took the code and rewrote it into something that works.

They will have to pry Phoenix from my dead hands.

Nathan wrote: "In other words, we are not trying to carrot-and-stick the students into performing better academically, but we are trying to make their school software a rewarding place to spend their time, even when they are not studying."

That sounds like a good approach. Many of the things that make traditional education ineffective isn't the actual teaching, but the other overheads. For example, professors have to comply with fire codes, which limits their class size to the physical dimensions of a room. If software can lessen the impacts of these kinds of irrelevant external factors while providing similar or better educational performance, I'd call that progress.

I'd say that the most exciting part of new additions to the education system is their inherent experimentation. Even if most of these attempts fail, learning what works and what doesn't creates continual improvement over time to the education system.

I'm a teacher. After I read Wade's description of his virtual classroom, I was prompted to spend a lot of time questioning our current educational methods. Existing technology could bring us pretty close to this vision TODAY. Yet, most teaching still centers around pencils, paper, and outdated textbooks.

"Cutting edge" in most districts is digital whiteboards and "online" textbooks. The technology that we do have access to is often poorly designed.

If you're a teacher who can do animated PowerPoint you're considered "high tech." If you can embed video into a blog, you're some kind of sorcerer.

I'm one of the most tech-oriented teachers in my county and the best I've been able to do so far is to get students to build web pages and collaborate with Google Docs. Even then, I have to navigate my students around a firewall that prevents them from accessing YouTube or Twitter, and an institutional culture that shuns Wikipedia and Facebook.

Ok, enough ranting.

What products do we have today that could create a real virtual classroom, rather than the discussion forums of current "online" classes? I looked into using Second Life for this years ago, but the conversation there was text-based (plus lots of silly stuff that isn't school appropriate). Is there an existing platform that will allow a group of people to interact in a VR space and interact using audio? Perhaps some game-based platform like WOW?

It's time to leave the textbooks behind. I'd love to hear some ideas.

Rick wrote: "I'm a teacher. After I read Wade's description of his virtual classroom, I was prompted to spend a lot of time questioning our current educational methods. Existing technology could bring us pretty..."

It was interesting to hear your perspective as a currently practising teacher. I personally have a fondness for technology (my background is in it) though funnily enough I'm moving towards the Education segment (so this post is rather interesting for me). However even I can see that it is unfortunately somewhat complex. I don't know for you specifically, but in my country there are certain duty of care laws and expectations that are often what leads to the issues of say internet filtering for students. For better or worst (depending how you view these things) teachers (and the institutions) are sometimes stuck with shouldering all the responsibility for what they let in. This unfortunately can lead to some crude approaches that perhaps lack some nuance (as you give some example towards). That said at least locally I know attempts are being made with technologies that facilitate similar outcomes but are perhaps a little more focused for education - Edmodo, Moodle etc.

The other thing I'm always mindful of is that there is often some lacking evidence that employing some of these technologies is more successful in meeting the learning outcomes for the students. It's unfortunate but I hear many stories of teachers employing certain technologies that sometimes sound somewhat for the sake of it and can even add an obstacle to the learning creating unnecessary overhead without validated benefit.

That said the application of technology when done thoughtfully can result in some real interesting opportunities. As long as there is a focus on the learning outcomes first, and technology is viewed in the light of the tool it is there is much a classroom teacher could be doing. To get there though a lot of teachers lack the required skills, and whilst this will change a little as younger teachers having grown up on a diet of the internet, mobile phones, etc. enter the profession, there is a real need for some training in this area (and for teachers to embrace).

For me personally the example in Ready Player One is rather uninspiring as a model of future teaching. Really it is just a VR replica of what we do today, and personally I'm more of the mind that the whole structure needs a rethink. I rather like this Ken Robinson video (animated/based of a TED Talk I believe) which embodies some of my own thoughts on the matter;



As to you questions around VR, Second Life is still probably the go to. I'm unsure if they have VoIP or group chat happening yet, but I have heard of educators in the past using it in conjunction with something like Skype. Obviously there are also other alternatives like Opensim () etc. I've even heard of mainstream games like WoW being used successfully, and there was an interesting application of Minecraft by a NY teacher ().

However as I said, do be careful not to be sucked in to tech for tech sake. There are some really great ideas out there that don't require electricity, just some creativity and willingness to try a new approach. John Hunter's The World Peace Game is a great example of a novel approach for teaching a range of topics;




There are some educators doing great things out there, and the internet has become an invaluable resource for the sharing of said knowledge. I'm sure there are some teachers even with the same constraints as you who are taking some novel approaches that might work for you.

Nathan wrote: "Andrew wrote: "@Nathan: I'm curious how your company goes about evaluating the quality of teaching/learning that is occuring through the various approaches they are taking. I spend some time talkin..."

Thanks for the reply Nathan. I had read it earlier but thought I should respond. The problem as I sometimes see it is that even using subject experts such that the content is of good quality doesn't necessarily equate to the delivery and/or transmission of said knowledge being well handled. Having been on the receiving end of some such solutions myself I sometimes wonder at the validation that went into this aspect of said products. I'm sure the process with Florida schools will lead to some interesting lessons learned for your company/team.

As to gamification, it was interesting to hear your thoughts. It's become a rather popular term within education much in the same way everything on the web now needs to have social elements. Your view echoes mine in that ultimately an intrinsic motivation is what we should be aiming for, that said there is obviously some value in the approach and really to some degree school and life at large is a big game. I reflect back on class rankings, merit awards, star charts, sporting ribbons, early marks and all the other notions that have been a part of the school fabric for years. I think this just illuminates this in a rather explicit way that maybe makes some people uncomfortable about how things have always been to some degree.

I'm curious if anyone else is "attending" the Introduction to AI class that Stanford is doing. I'm doing the rigorous section of the class so that I can get credit for it at my university and thought that it's a pretty cool experiment. Hopefully they share the results of the class.

The class link is here:

xenphi wrote: "I'm curious if anyone else is "attending" the Introduction to AI class that Stanford is doing. I'm doing the rigorous section of the class so that I can get credit for it at my university and thoug..."

Not me personally, but it is an interesting approach (thanks for linking to it). The publishing of some of these courses online by major universities etc. as video series (ala iTunes U etc), some with all the associated material is fantastic (and good marketing if you look at it a certain way). This obviously takes it to the next level with participation by the lecturers and some form of (I assume online) testing. Be curious how you find the experience.

With regards to virtual schools allowing kids to disguise otherwise-ostracizing aspects of themselves, I find the idea a bit uncomfortable. The same issue came up with H's reveal at the end. Obviously, I'd be for anonymity and choice, but pressuring everyone to appear as white males in order to fit in seems counter productive to achieving actual equality, even if it seems easier on all parties. I can understand the desire to hide these qualities, but the more people are "normalized" the harder it will be for the majority to accept the presence of any minorities.

xenphi wrote: "I'm curious if anyone else is "attending" the Introduction to AI class that Stanford is doing. I'm doing the rigorous section of the class so that I can get credit for it at my university and thoug..."

I'm doing the basic version as I have a full time job, and I don't think I'll have the time to do all the assignments and tests in time. Also, my college math (Calculus/Linear Algebra) is getting kinda rusty at this point from not having to use it at all after college, so I'll see if I'll even be able to understand that stuff now.

BTW, just noticed that they now have links to 2 more Stanford classes that you can take for free online:
Introduction to Databases:
Machine Learning:

Sodon wrote: "With regards to virtual schools allowing kids to disguise otherwise-ostracizing aspects of themselves, I find the idea a bit uncomfortable. The same issue came up with H's reveal at the end. Obviou..."

Point taken and is a valid concern.

On a semi-serious / kidding side note you could go the other extreme and randomly assign features to everyone's avatar. True equality through random diversity. Genetics be damned!!

Andrew wrote: "As to you questions around VR, Second Life is still probably the go to. I'm unsure if they have VoIP or group chat happening yet, but I have heard of educators in the past using it in conjunction with something like Skype...."

Yes Second Life has had VOIP for about 2 years now, however it's not universally accepted or used. For education purposes it works great though. The problem I have seen is that SL is by definition very 'geeky', so most of the classes you find seem to be tech related.

Nick wrote: On a semi-serious / kidding side note you could go the other extreme and randomly assign features to everyone's avatar. True equality through random diversity. Genetics be damned!!

You could also do what many cartoons and kids' books do to eliminate race and class distinctions: make them all animals. If all the avatars are alien creatures or anthropomorphized mammals, real appearance won't matter.

@Sodon: Good point. Not really progress to still have it upon the individual to execute the change (and essentially lie) in order to achieve acceptance.

@Andrew: Thanks for the update re: VoIP. I did think it now featured it, but I personally hadn't used it. I don't know that your comments re: most of the classes being tech related is entirely fair. I've seen a broad spread of ideas from virtual plays (dramas) with actors from all over the world to this virtual quarry (). VR is pretty nifty for simulating things that would be too dangerous or costly to do in RL.

btw. here is a link for one example of WoW in schools ()

Rick wrote: "Nick wrote: On a semi-serious / kidding side note you could go the other extreme and randomly assign features to everyone's avatar. True equality through random diversity. Genetics be damned!!

Yo..."

.. and you think the Lion avatars wont make fun of the Platypus avatar kids? :)

It looks like I'll need to take another look at Second Life. It's also good to know that someone actually has experimented with teaching in WOW.

The kids are craving meaningful technology in school. Today I dressed as Steve Jobs (I normally wear coat and tie). The kids understood my tribute right away. Very few teachers got it, though.

Hi guys, I just wanted to jump in after hearing this covered on the podcast and just throw some info out there.

Basically, watch this video:


The Khan Academy was mentioned but what was not mentioned is the pilot programs going on across the US where the lessons are to, in your own time, watch the Khan videos and take the tests. In school, the teacher helps individual students on the bits they're struggling with.

What they're finding is it's actually more effective than the way people currently teach and is actually more effective than having a one-on-one tutor (reasons stated in the video).

To me, it seems that what the future of education is going to be is online courses supplemented with tutors and peer discussion.

One thing that isn't covered in the video which I think might be a fringe benefit is that it sets up the idea of continued learning in your own time as a norm. This way instead of just getting out or school and thinking your education is done people will go on to continue their own education in a more self-guided fashion.

Basically, I see this methodology becoming the norm.

@Doug: Interesting. I hadn't seen this more recent TED video. I think looking at new approaches to the model of teaching is always fascinating.

That said I would caution that I personally wouldn't want to see this model necessarily become the norm, as I think part of the issue with education is taking any one approach and blanket applying it as the best approach. In doing so you lose focus of students different learning styles, and often end up forcing structures that may not make sense - for example I see some limitation with say this approach in certain subject areas.

The other thing I would also point out is that some elements like one-on-one tutoring not being as good was more anecdotal than empirical.

What I did like was that this did have a more thoughtful approach to progression based on mastery which I agree with Khan is an issue. I could even see a point where a model like this would perhaps better allow for mixed age classes based on mastery rather than the cruder age group approach we currently use. I also agree with him with regards to the labelling that goes on being based on a time/event slice. There are some interesting studies out there that show the effect such can have on outcomes for students (both positive and negative).

Anyway thanks for the link.

It's hard to do truly empirical experimentation when you're talking about education. The trick is finding something that appears to work better than what was being done before. This appears to do that.

If nothing else, it is rather interesting. But I agree, an blanket system isn't going to work with everyone. However, I would argue that a better blanket system leaves fewer behind which makes it easier to give those remaining few a more bespoke solution.

Doug wrote: "It's hard to do truly empirical experimentation when you're talking about education."

Hard but not impossible, and enough separate studies normally reveal things collectively. Actually meta-analysis style papers are pretty common in social sciences like Education.

I can see some obvious evolutions for such a model where Khan Academy becomes more of a Learning Management System - such as allowing teachers to upload their own lectures, questions etc. At the moment the quality of teaching is rather strongly coupled to Khan's quality of video/teaching (which to be fair is pretty decent).

I'd be curious of the socio-economic status of the school they are piloting this with - saw a lot of Macbooks in that video. Some students struggle with learning in their home environments because they may not conducive for such, nor do they necessarily have the resources (maybe a PC they have to share with the family etc). Also pushing out all the direct teaching (lectures) to the home time would be interesting when done across all subjects in terms of load. As it exists I not convinced that workload is often co-ordinated well at schools.

Like anything there are pros and cons. I’m still happy people are trying new things, and Khan Academy is a fantastic resources even as it exists today.

I agree, the biggest hurdle to using this form of education on a truly massive scale will be the adoption of a nation-wide broadband network. The last few administrations have talked about it but it never goes anywhere.

Personally, I like Finnland's idea of making it a recognized human right as per their constitution.

Doug wrote: "I agree, the biggest hurdle to using this form of education on a truly massive scale will be the adoption of a nation-wide broadband network. The last few administrations have talked about it but i..."

Some of the stats for various areas of the US (with regards to Internet) are pretty disappointing. It seems the legacy in how your various governments� instituted access to things like wireless spectrum, and cable provider rights has created some interesting distortions. To top it off, those towns that seem to be taking matters into their own hands in providing municipal fibre seem to be getting hamstringed by the state governments, or area cable providers. It really seems a bit of a mess looking in from the outside, and I do think it will have an effect on your economy in the long run as other countries continue to move ahead. The various local economies sure saw the value as seen by the effort some towns went to, to be chosen for Google Fibre (which I haven’t really heard much about for a while?)

My country (Australia) has a initiative in the works but like all these things should the other major political party get into power its future (and/or scope) will be in doubt. Unfortunately I just don't see private enterprise achieving a suitable outcome. We have a similar (if not worst) large landmass, few people issue that makes it unattractive to private enterprise for those non-metro areas. I really do hope this project (NBN) gets pulled off, because a large proportion of our current internet for the average home user is still leveraging the old copper network (ADSL) that was also a government monopoly/infrastructure back in the day (which those pro let the market work it out seem to forget at times).

It's interesting you mention Finland; by various metrics (OCED etc.) they have the top ranking school system in the world. Definitely some lessons to be learned by our own countries (though mine keeps looking at some of the US systems for some stupid reason - no offence meant :) ).

I teach in the lower grades. Honestly being able to give "my kids" a hug, is as important as teaching them blends in phonics. The littles need to have interaction with other people in real life.

I see to many kids that come to school with a lack of interaction with real people. They are 5 years old and can't have a conversation.

For the older students. The Flipped classroom is becoming popular. The basic idea is that the "Sage on Stage" portion of the class happens outside of classtime. Students watch lectures on-line, and do their reading outside of class. Then in class students have project based learning format. They use the information, to create something rather than just recite it back on a test.

I know in my classes. I spend maybe 10 minutes out of 90 in math or reading in front of the class. The rest of the time the kids are working on projects, or are meeting with me in small groups. For social studies and Science I have 45 minutes. At my level Social Studies is largely under my direction. Science is as hands on as I can make it. My students will be doing experiments with light today.

Little kids are special cases in a lot of ways. I think that this would be more middle-school and up. However, no matter what they do there needs to be a foundation in human-interaction simply from a sociological standpoint. Humans are social animals and require interaction with others of our species.

If you look at a number of metrics, Finnland is arguably the best country in the world to live. When they're not the top they're pretty high up the scale and when averaged out they do rank number 1. (Something I like to remind my fellow Americans of from time to time.)

One thing they also have is this lovely system by which, after you graduate high school, you can go to college for free. However, there's a catch. You can either do one year of military service, two years of volunteer service, or three years of jail. My cousin went the military route as the last time Finnland went to war was during the last really big one.

Anyway, that's getting away from the topic of online learning and more towards something else.

Personally, I really like the idea of the flipped classroom as it sets the proper order, in my mind. Normally, you'd have students being taught at school and then sent home to do it on their own. However, if they don't understand it there's no one for them to talk to. Then, when they get back to school, their admonished for not doing it right.

With this new method you learn at home and are given a chance to understand it on your own. If you don't you will soon find yourself back in school where you can ask questions and get the help you need.

Looking at it in that light it's very logical and easy to see the benefits once the students reach an age where self-guided learning is possible. The reason online learning would add and advantage is the amount of raw data you can collect about any given student, as well as students as a group.

The analytics is the big part, for me. As it stands now, the people who build the curriculum must rely on the teachers to gauge what bits are effective and what bits aren't. They have to do countless studies and interviews in order to figure out if something is effective. When you move things into a digital space you now have exact data about where people struggled as a group. Given that it's digital you can push out changes instantly. But more than that, you can do something called A/B testing where half the students get one lesson and the other half gets a different lesson. Compare the results and you can usually tell which was more effective.

By the way, most major websites have been doing this for years and have discovered exactly how powerful it can be. Imagine that level of flexibility was included in the education process.

More than that, imagine if the education process could be updated and changed so easily. Right now, I know a number of young designers who want to get into the web. They've asked me (and a number of other people on another forum I frequent) what courses to take. At this point, the majority of the advice is don't bother because they'll be teaching you old techniques and will do more damage. My advice goes on to say learn basic theory but not practical skills, learn those on your own. But what if courses could be updated quickly and easily? Maybe it could keep up.

I think our objections to virtual schools (and lots of other stuff) are predicated by human nature. We tend to think that the future will be like the past, just more so. We tend to think what we lived is the normal and good thing. Young people will learn in different ways and I would venture that classroom teaching is on its way out. Serves little purpose and is very ineffective. I don't know what will replace it, but virtual schools of some kind will appear and slowly become the preferred option. And then the future will look at us and think: "They use to spend ours sitting in a classroom listening to ONE guy as if that ONE guy could know it all about the subject..."

Some pretty strong and unqualified statements there Alfredo (purpose/value and effectiveness). I also found it interesting that you presented teachers as male.

The English language is male-dominant. Maybe not as much as some of the latin-based languages, such as Spanish, but people have traditionally used a male-bias. I think it's more interesting that they didn't use "person", but that's just me.

However, the bits about human nature are at least accurate. Human psychology is highly focused on set patterns and tradition. The reason being is such things are easier to predict and are, at least in belief, safer. Not changing has an evolutionary imperative.

The effectiveness issues of the traditional school is also something that is documented. It's not that it's generally ineffective but that for certain groups and certain styles of learning it's less effective than it is for others. it also relies heavily on one individual's ability to impart knowledge to others. A more digital solution could, at least, be more finely tuned.

People underestimate how much exact phrasing and presentation matter. By going digital you can tweak and engineer the best possible solution and then test it over a large market. It's why the Khan academy is so powerful. You can tell exactly which pieces need work and then quickly roll out tests.

Individual teachers can't do that and they can't measure the results so precisely.

Now, we may try this and the data may show that it doesn't work but I think the important bit is to at least try it because there does seem to be a general opinion that the current method simply doesn't work.

Andrew wrote: "Some pretty strong and unqualified statements there Alfredo (purpose/value and effectiveness). I also found it interesting that you presented teachers as male."

It's just synecdoche, still a valid writing resource.

Alfredo wrote: "Andrew wrote: "Some pretty strong and unqualified statements there Alfredo (purpose/value and effectiveness). I also found it interesting that you presented teachers as male."

It's just synecdoch..."

Whilst I don't disagree with the sentiment that tomorrow will be different than today, and that people generally don't like change, I personally feel you're over simplifying something that is a lot more complex than this. From statements of classroom teaching serving little purpose to projecting direct instruction as the universal norm of classroom pedagogy just doesn't strike me as a rounded consideration of the realities... but then maybe it is where you live, or perhaps you are drawing from you own educational upbringing.

@Doug: Data is interesting to a point. The issue sometimes becomes a question of what ruler you are using. Effectiveness also has some of the same issues. The reality is that education often offers a lot more than simplistic notions of subject knowledge, but also encapsulates many elements that don't appear in standard testing. I think Kimberly illuminated some of these in her post above.

Most certainly it matters to what you measure. One thing I remember reading years ago was a certain level of controversy with IQ testing. The implication was that it only tested certain kinds of intelligence and not cognitive ability.

Then, how do you tell how well educated someone is? How do you truly know what information will be pertinent? I know a great deal that is in no way useful to my daily life and yet I feel better for knowing it.

There's a talk by Sam Harris about the science of morality. Now, the talk has an entirely different point than the one I'm going to use it to make, but one thing that was discussed was how you can objectively measure whether or not something is good or bad based on happiness. I wonder if there wouldn't be a similar metric that could be used for education?

And, with that question, we've truly gone off the deep end.

Doug wrote: "And, with that question, we've truly gone off the deep end. "

Somewhat, though notions of data is interesting if not for the simple reason that it is something that computers handle so well, and by extension one of the strengths of any digital solution to education as you highlighted above. Also the modern education system in countries such as the US and UK has based a lot around notions of standardised testing.

As to your train of thought, I'm brought in mind of things like GDP alternatives such as national happiness measures.

I love the idea of an NHI. Is it a idealist concept? Yeppers. Does it have absolutely not tangible value? You betcha. But I like it all the same.

The problem with the current system is it's all about standardizing and then... Stopping there. If you went digital and created a strong "catches 99%" foundation, you could spend the rest of the time tailoring more custom solutions to the 1%. But, bonus points, you could figure out how best to give that content to that 1% so that they learn the same things as their classmates, just in a different way.

Andrew wrote: "From statements of classroom teaching serving little purpose to projecting direct instruction as the universal norm of classroom pedagogy just doesn't strike me as a rounded consideration of the realities... but then maybe it is where you live, or perhaps you are drawing from you own educational upbringing."

Of course I am drawing from my experience! (which is fairly extensive)... I wonder where you are drawing from... Yes, I believe High School is just a way to delay the entrance of young people to the labor market in order to benefit old farts and that the model of the University is outdated and outside of current reality.

When I was growing up Universities where great, High Schools still sucked, it was a place where knowledge gathered. Of course, at that time if I wanted to learn something I had but two choices, find a book on the subject or an expert on the subject, finding a video wasn't possible except through serendipity. Now, learning is much easier, at least in the connected world. Teaching is still something very few people know how to do.

The reality is that many successful people have benefitted from skipping higher learning, and except from academic/research subject, where it is an artificial requirement, a college diploma does little to a career.

@Alfredo: *shrug* I think any kind of true reply would devolve into differences of value judgement. Let’s just say that I tend to have a more glass half-full view of things, even while I do acknowledge the challenges.

As to your question, as mentioned earlier in the thread I am making a study into the area of education so whilst my own experience is reasonable, it is ultimately singular and predominately grounded in one country’s educational system(s). As such I draw on what I hope is an informed view from the literature at large.

Andrew wrote: "@Alfredo: *shrug* I think any kind of true reply would devolve into differences of value judgement. Let’s just say that I tend to have a more glass half-full view of things, even while I do acknowl..."

Good answer, my view is that not only the glass is half empty but it is also full of poison! :-) That corresponds to how I generally view things.

Education is a specially dire topic for me, because I was a researcher and university professor for many years, my experience was not good, even though I was consider a good teacher by, at least, some of my students. Having move to other fields (mostly technology and finance) I see that the people around me are not trained to think, and I blame education for that.

@Alfredo: I think it is hard to separate some of the educational outcomes from the forces of societies at large, particularly what we value and reward. At a university level I think you see this somewhat in the patterns of degree enrolment and subject selection. Also more people are going through formal education than ever before which creates certain dynamics which may in part contribute to your comparative view of university now and then.

I don't necessarily think some of the digital solutions are going to excite you very much as they stand, being more so about knowledge acquisition and validation rather than a propensity to think for oneself, let alone more elusive notions of leadership, creativity, communication, collaboration, team work, and other elements that are profitable to progress. The reach and affordances of something like the internet for sharing knowledge is truly amazing and changes the shape of things (being great for a self-motivated learner), but not to my mind at the expense of direct human to human teaching and the many other non-academic dimensions of such contact - particularly at the lower levels of educational systems. I also find it interesting that discussion of education often tends to be from the frame of the current system with a bias (if not arrogance) of ignoring all the other (less academic) systems, such as apprenticeships that already provide alternate schemes for learning.

Ironically, we're talking about the web and using it in academia but if you ask web designers and web developers what they think about going to university to learn their trade you'll see a lot of shuffling of feet and hear a great deal of murmuring.

In my mind it's a symptom of a fundamental flaw in academia: Things never want to move forward and no one wants to take a risk.

A digital solution is a monumental step forward and a colossal risk.

There are many colleges that offer online classes and degrees right now, and I even tried one for a semester. But for elementary through High School I think it is important that social interaction is paramount to keeping the child engaged in the learning experience and forming lasting friendships with other students. That is why I think that if there was a version of the virtual school system described in "Ready Player One" today it would be very popular and probably better then the public school systems that we have in place today.

As long as the students are interacting in real time (despite whether they are in the same physical space or not) it will be a compelling and engrossing experience that can invoke real emotions and real interest with their classmates and teachers. The problem with virtual classes today, is that people take them to shift school around their work. I think that if you still had to attend school at a certain time, for a certain amount of time, each day along with hundreds or thousands of other students it would be the same emotional experience as attending in person; especially if there were extra curricular activities such as: clubs, sports, or even just places to hang out and talk with the people you were attending virtual school with.

I am a tenured professor at a regional campus of a large state school in the Midwest. We do not offer any complete degrees online, but certainly offer classes in a range of formats: traditional face-to-face, online, and "blended," a combination of the two.

Almost all of the classes I teach now are "blended," with varying degrees of online content. This can be a recorded audio lecture for students to listen to, discussion boards, videos, practice problems, etc ...

Our university has created a number of Testing Centers across the system, which allow students to take tests in a proctored, secure environment, which helps keep cheating down, one of the key issues that some have with online learning scenarios.

My practice with using online learning is to make sure that that format delivers "value added" to students -- it is important to keep college-level classes from becoming glorified correspondence course, which is easier in an online setting than face-to-face. Personlly, I try to match the course material with the delivery method that suits it best.