balancing the blessing and the curse of online resources
Out of my six classes this year, five of them require me to engage with a Web site outside of class. As a freshman I remember having only one or two classes with resources available online, and in just two years the prominence of online supplements to class has grown rampantly. Online classrooms and school resources are inevitably the future of education. We cannot, however, let it become a substitute to real, hands-on, classroom experience but should instead merely allow it to supplement it.
Everything from communicating with friends, to listening to music, to taking notes can now take place on a four inch screen, making it so that teens now spend an estimated seven and a half hours consuming media a day, according to a 2010 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Since kids already spend over 25% of their day taking in media, according to that same study, it is important to give them reasons to take time away from screens.
In the context of learning, it is especially important to have time away from the screen because, as a 2014 study by Norway's Stavanger University found, people retain less information reading off a screen than they do reading print.
The internet, however, presents far more benefits and opportunities to education than obstacles. 64% of students on Debate.com were in favor of using online classes and class materials online. In the internet age, when one in four students-- that’s 5.4 million-- take at least one distance education course, as according to a 2012 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, it is undeniable that online classes are the way of the future.
Online resources provide some opportunities to engage with students, teachers, and the class material in a way that the classroom venue may not always allow. For example, recently in English class we held our entire discussion for Kurt Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House” in small groups on a Web forum. I found that this was appropriate, for such a complex text, to give the story the full attention it needed for us to fully understand it. While we often have large discussions in that class, it only allows us to scratch the surface of a text. The online group allowed us focus a concentrated energy on the story over a course of three days, so we could continue honing our analysis, while still continuing discussions during class as normal. This was the perfect use of online class resources: to supplement not replace to in class learning.
Nevertheless, in-person classes are not always the best option for some students. For some students, especially ones in small schools or rural areas, online learning provides access to more options for specified classes or AP’s. Thanks to this greater access to other subjects that online classes provide, Tony Shu ’17 took an AP Economics class online during his sophomore year. “I did enjoy my [Economics] experience,” he said. “I liked how it gave me an opportunity to study something I wouldn’t have at school, and it opened a lot more avenues for what I want to do in the future. I didn’t like how a lot of it was independent study and I didn’t have the resources of having a teacher right beside me in classes to help me out, so it was a lot of self motivation and doing homework on the weekends.”
Shu pinpointed the largest complaint there is about online classes and Web resources: the need to interact with teachers and other students. Although a teacher can explain a concept or idea in an online seminar, students will never reach the same depth of understanding they would by fully engaging with the learning and asking questions.
Moreover, students taking online classes miss one of the most important parts of learning because they are unable to connect and interact with their peers. Some of the greatest ideas and best brainstorming come from conversations among students waiting for class to start or chatting after school. Peers can also help each other by explaining concepts or certain assignments, an interaction that online classes are just not conducive to.
These social interactions are especially vital at the high school level. Coming in at fourteen years old, we are still learning a tremendous amount about social skills and how to interact with teachers, adults, and each other. In an age where screen time is slowly replacing real face-to-face interaction, it is important to preserve the hands-on, engaging learning experience that students get in person and be wary of, while still embracing, the benefits of online learning.
This opinion was published in the October 2015 print edition of The Bradford.
Everything from communicating with friends, to listening to music, to taking notes can now take place on a four inch screen, making it so that teens now spend an estimated seven and a half hours consuming media a day, according to a 2010 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Since kids already spend over 25% of their day taking in media, according to that same study, it is important to give them reasons to take time away from screens.
In the context of learning, it is especially important to have time away from the screen because, as a 2014 study by Norway's Stavanger University found, people retain less information reading off a screen than they do reading print.
The internet, however, presents far more benefits and opportunities to education than obstacles. 64% of students on Debate.com were in favor of using online classes and class materials online. In the internet age, when one in four students-- that’s 5.4 million-- take at least one distance education course, as according to a 2012 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, it is undeniable that online classes are the way of the future.
Online resources provide some opportunities to engage with students, teachers, and the class material in a way that the classroom venue may not always allow. For example, recently in English class we held our entire discussion for Kurt Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House” in small groups on a Web forum. I found that this was appropriate, for such a complex text, to give the story the full attention it needed for us to fully understand it. While we often have large discussions in that class, it only allows us to scratch the surface of a text. The online group allowed us focus a concentrated energy on the story over a course of three days, so we could continue honing our analysis, while still continuing discussions during class as normal. This was the perfect use of online class resources: to supplement not replace to in class learning.
Nevertheless, in-person classes are not always the best option for some students. For some students, especially ones in small schools or rural areas, online learning provides access to more options for specified classes or AP’s. Thanks to this greater access to other subjects that online classes provide, Tony Shu ’17 took an AP Economics class online during his sophomore year. “I did enjoy my [Economics] experience,” he said. “I liked how it gave me an opportunity to study something I wouldn’t have at school, and it opened a lot more avenues for what I want to do in the future. I didn’t like how a lot of it was independent study and I didn’t have the resources of having a teacher right beside me in classes to help me out, so it was a lot of self motivation and doing homework on the weekends.”
Shu pinpointed the largest complaint there is about online classes and Web resources: the need to interact with teachers and other students. Although a teacher can explain a concept or idea in an online seminar, students will never reach the same depth of understanding they would by fully engaging with the learning and asking questions.
Moreover, students taking online classes miss one of the most important parts of learning because they are unable to connect and interact with their peers. Some of the greatest ideas and best brainstorming come from conversations among students waiting for class to start or chatting after school. Peers can also help each other by explaining concepts or certain assignments, an interaction that online classes are just not conducive to.
These social interactions are especially vital at the high school level. Coming in at fourteen years old, we are still learning a tremendous amount about social skills and how to interact with teachers, adults, and each other. In an age where screen time is slowly replacing real face-to-face interaction, it is important to preserve the hands-on, engaging learning experience that students get in person and be wary of, while still embracing, the benefits of online learning.
This opinion was published in the October 2015 print edition of The Bradford.