Distance Learning

How can or should we leverage distance learning at a School known for Harkness discussion?
For more on Harkness at Lawrenceville, see: http://www.lawrenceville.org/academics/index.asp
What I have in mind is [a classroom] where [students] could sit around a table with a teacher who would talk with them and instruct them by a sort of tutorial or conference method, where [each student] would feel encouraged to speak up. This would be a real revolution in methods.

8 comments:

  1. A hyperlink at Harkness discussion would have been helpful here. I suspected it involved meeting at a round table, but I had to leave the site to be certain. I think this is a very important question.

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  2. @Barry - Added a link to our site for more on Harkness tables.

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  3. As with so many of these technological questions, the advantages and dangers are tightly woven together, so that it's not an either/or but rather yes/and. It's not going to be Harkness or technology but rather Harkness and technology. The trick will be to do it right, so that we draw on the strengths of both. Connectivity makes it possible to bring to the table people who aren't physically present at the table. But there are at least a couple of dangers. First, there's a reason there are a limited number of spots at a Harkness table: beyond a certain number, conversation--real conversation--becomes increasingly difficult and less productive. Second, we don't want the conversations that technology facilitates to crowd out or replace face to face conversation--I would hate to see a table surrounded by students who, instead of talking to each other, were "chatting" in a virtual space. Even if the Harkness table is merely a a metaphor, a means to an end--learning through "tutorial," "conference," through the collaborative give-and-take of conversation--we need to be careful that we keep that end in mind.

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  4. Good warning Chris. I'm intrigued by two possible uses: 1) outside of class to continue conversations that began in class and 2) the concept of backchat to help us understand better what students are actually learning as opposed to what we think we're teaching - it's the classic distinction between the learned and taught currriculum. What other promising uses can people see and what other pitfalls/dangers can people anticipate?

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  5. An interesting article in today's Times on the use of distance learning in colleges and universities: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/us/05college.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl&emc=a1

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  6. Thanks for the reference Chris. We've been invited to participate in a new online consortium with other secondary schools. We're likely to join, so that we can experience the pros and cons of online learning at this level and in this enviroment.

    Many state education standards require all students to participate in at least one online course before graduating, because they beleive that much learning and education will happen in the future online. Interestingly, a few of teh best creative writing courses I've ever taken were online ones back in the 90s, because the technology platform required the teacher to give clear lessons and both the students and teacher to give thoughtful feedback on students' writing. The classes were all asynchronous.

    Any one else have any good or bad online learning experiences that we can learn from?

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  7. I've been teaching online gradute-level classes in educational technology and instructional design for over five years and, from my experience, the most important factor for students to be successful in an asynchronous online enviroment is the ability to self-motivate. Most of my students are very motivated by default (they actively signed up to get an advanced degree and are paying a lot of money for it and the benefits it provides) and no doubt students of Lawrenceville caliber would be motivated as well, but it's not for all students and I don't think it should (or will anytime soon)take the place of the face to face interaction with an effective high school teacher. Of course there are other important factors involved such as course design, delivery system, effectiveness of the online instructor, etc., but how and where online instruction can best be used at the k-12 level (or even undergrad level) is still evolving. As with all other aspects of learning, there is no one size fits all for online instruction.

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  8. Great, I think it's a perfect blogs that you have posted here and it help to complete distance learning program.

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