Technology Take Over

A little over a year ago my younger brother came to me and expressed his disinterest in school.  He was not doing great in high school so after deep consideration he and my parents agreed to enroll him in Cyber School.  At the time I thought it could be a great thing for him, but I do not feel that way now.  It did not take long for him to fall behind in his class work because it was so independently driven.  I did not think of the comparison until later, but it is the same thing as taking a class online in college, which is not a decision I am thankful I never had to make.  I am very against online classes because I appreciate and value the student-professor relationship that develops face to face in a traditional classroom setting.  After a year of Cyber School my brother re-enrolled back into public school.  But what do we honestly think about the idea of learning online?

In an article published by the New York Times on Oct 8, Trip Gabriel and Matt Richtel, dig deeper into online learning (Carnegie Learning).  In the beginning of the article the two discuss how the Cognitive Tutor software program did not significantly affect test scores of students.  I do think it does have something to do with the measurement of success, maybe they have not come up with the proper way to measure the increase in learning properly.  Nevertheless, I still am not a fan of online learning.  I also get the feeling that teachers could be using as a replacement to them teaching the students, which in my mind could be a reason it is not working like schools want it to.  I think that the online learning should be used after a teacher teaches a lesson to their students; it could be a review tool.  I cannot help but ask myself why schools are paying so much money for this software if it is not even working. 

In the article it says that the full curriculum can cost nearly three times as much as a typical textbook over six years.  THREE TIMES!?  What, that is an insane amount of money to be wasting on a program that hasn’t been proven to work better than traditional teaching.  Later in the article it talks about the history of the program.  It was founded in 1998 and the founder, John R. Anderson recipient of the 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science award, seems to be a credible and honorable man.  It was nice to read about a success story of a school using the Cognitive Tutor, but it does not make it seem dependable when the school stopped using the software in 2007.

I am a firm believer that students need the teacher-student face to face interaction to help them learn.  After all, at the end of the day, a computer is stupid.  A computer does not have feelings and does not know what you are trying to tell it to do.  It is merely a system that uses binary code to say if it understands what you are typing or not.  I may not have ever taken an online class, but I know I would never want to.  As I said earlier, I value the relationships I have created with my teachers and professors over the years.  I know I have been successful because of these relationships and I will continue to be successful because of them.  It has been proven that online relationships take three to four times longer to build than one in person does.  The relationship and bond you create with a professor is on a different level then the one you have with friends or family.  A professor experiences your academic and professional side and should help to shape those sides while they have you in class.