Online school? Future scho

学考乐

2020-04-04 16:20:01

Online school? Future school?

I have always dreamed of going to school at home, how spectacular is that! Well, recently my dream has come true. Due to the global outbreak of coronavirus, we are technically stuck at home in self-quarantine. This has caused my school to shut down, so we are currently doing online school. In order to do that, we are using an app called google meet, which gives us the opportunity to have video lessons with my friends and teachers everyday, so we are still practicing our social-distancing skills. So far, I am enjoying doing online school. However, it was not as relaxing as I had expected it to be, because in fact we were getting even more assignments to do at home than at school, I even thought that we probably wouldn’t even have learned half of the things we learned at home throughout the weeks. And to be honest, my extremely busy schedule was actually driving me insane! After I have been in this online school situation for two weeks, I was really inspired to have some surprising thoughts which I think might lead to what future schools would look like.

My own experience over the past few weeks tells that online school and normal school both have the same effect and quality of teaching. Personally, online school might even make students more productive. Some people might find this controversial by saying students have a lot more chances to get distracted at home than at school as they are in their most familiar and comfortable environment. In my opinion, this completely depends on how conscious about this the students are, However, I think there are possible solutions to that: If a video lesson is held, students would be monitored by their teachers, and that way students would work more efficiently. But I just would like to clarify that I am not saying online school is definitely better than traditional schools. Also, I find that online school might not be the best choice for everyone to suit their personal needs, and there are obvious downsides about online school.

One of the reasons that made me consider education in the future might be taken over by online schools is because of the flexibility of scheduling to study at home. Even though students still have fixed time to attend online lessons through virtual classrooms, they still have a more flexible schedule. For example: they can decide when exactly they would like to complete the assignments, as long as it is before the deadline; They can spend more precious time with families and develop their hobbies based on interests while still catching up with the education curriculum. Apparently, there are negative sides to this, they get to spend more time with their families, and therefore have less time to socialise with their friends, and I perfectly understand how essential and important it is to have social skills.

Another advantage of online school could be the multitude of personalisation options, which relates to different student’s abilities. Teachers can adapt to different student’s needs, abilities, interests, learning styles… When working from home, students can generally work more productively. Because they can move at their own speeds through lessons, such as: spending longer time at challenging questions, and moving quickly on lessons which they have already mastered. Some of my research shows that some high-quality home schools in America have even developed a wide range of elective programs for students to enhance their academic performance and meanwhile pursue their personal interests. This could suggest that lack of interests and hobbies is not a problem anymore now with all the fast-developing high technology.

Overall, I believe that it is very likely in the future public/private schools would be replaced by online schools, or home schools. Especially considering the fact that in the U.S where online schools are most widely spread, over 2.5 million students are already homeschoolers. In my opinion, I don’t think there is a definite answer to the question whether online school is better or traditional schools. As I said before, I believe it completely depends on the student’s needs, abilities and interests. Because apparently online schools might be really suitable for some people, but some people just cannot study productively while they are studying at home.