Last week I finished an online digital painting class at schoolism.com taught by the legendary Bobby Chiu. To show you how effective the class was, I learned how to turn this:
Into this:
And then into this!
All from the comfort of my home and time schedule using only Photoshop and a digital tablet.
I’m not a professional illustrator (yet), but I feel like I learned some amazing skills from a world expert on the subject and I felt like a kid having fun. So, I wondered “Could kids benefit from online schooling?”
So I thought of some benefits and drawbacks of online schooling compared to traditional schools:
Benefits:
- Get to learn from world experts, homeworks included (e.g., schoolism.com, MIT OnlineCourseWare) no matter where you live.
- Use superior interaction with content through technology (boardworks.co.uk).
- Get help with Adaptive/Personalized learning (knewton.com).
- Learn at your own pace and schedule.
(The online schools I include above do not target children per se, but I don’t see why their models couldn’t be adapted for children.)
Drawbacks:
- Schools are not just about knowledge transfer, they ‘re also about making friends and getting exposed to the real world away from home.
- It’s hard to enforce the “rules” when the teacher is not physically around.
As far as “enforcing rules”, a “virtual teacher” technology can easily be applied to record scores and progress as if the teacher was around (with deadlines, online testing etc.). So the most serious drawback of online schooling is the lack of the ability to socialize. Even though there are options that mimic social interaction online a la Facebook (schoology.com), unless kids leave home and meet other kids in person, they will miss out on a big part of life lessons if we replace schools with online learning.
So how about turning schools into “social activity centers” to get kids to play and interact together while they get schooled online? For the first time in history, we could give kids the opportunity (especially in developing countries) to get quality education from anywhere anytime at the fraction of the cost of traditional schools.
What do you think?
