Online Education and K-12 Students

By FredrickHobbs

How do we gain finest knowledge? Any educator will let you know that straight practice is the best teacher. Repeatedly, classroom educators will perform research and demonstration or have the learners observe or take part in a number of experimental actions. A good educator is a catalyst who permits the learners in the classroom setting to combine thoughts and explore. These days, the classroom educators have something else that has been located in the classroom that will permit students to perform same tasks as in the earlier period. This tool is called hypermedia.

A major illustration of influential hypermedia is the worldwide web, which gives more stuff than at the moment exists at most schools’ or media centers. As teachers, we know that learners study best when they are greatly motivated. Keen inspiration creates a touching constituent that raises retention and increases the quantity of time the student is involved with the learning material.

In 1956 Benjamin Bloom developed the taxonomy for the cognitive domain of learning or a linear progression through knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, and synthesis to evaluation. This is what we have come to know as Bloom’s Taxonomy. The classroom educators concentrate on lecturing to the cognitive levels of awareness and command as building a base for critical thinking, and there are some teachers who work at the application level. The higher levels of the domain (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) are now coming to the forefront are we teach how to think and not what to think. This move towards critical and conceptual thinking is to be applauded. However, distance learning is no further along than the classroom in supporting high level cognitive skills development. Much of distance learning appears to be geared to focus on knowledge and comprehension, which works well with procedural and technical training (Notar, Wilson, & Montgomery). The classroom teacher is taught very early in their career and in the schooling experience the process needed for learning to take place in the traditional classroom. The distance learning educator, too, must know the system and process of distance learning learning. In order for the teachers to be comfortable with distance learning, they must first be comfortable with computers. Teachers often feel uncomfortable using computers and are unaware of the teaching and learning that computers and the internet are able to support.

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While deficiency of specialized growth opportunities is often report in terms of quantity, quality also appears to be a significant issue. Traditional classroom type setting training sessions without follow up support have not been effective in preparing teachers to integrate classroom technologies. Fairly, solicitous and ongoing specialized expansion programs are required. The distance learner formula for cognitive learning is: objectives + learning process + relationship to instructional media=cognitive learning. This similar method has been utilized in learning from the start of organized coaching. All types of instructions require dialogue. Learning is sharing.

Most education takes place in contact between learners and educators and amid students themselves. Distance learning and many tools that come with it are going to be substantial and life changing. The way in which teachers teach has not changed. Instructors must still understand and quantify what they are going to teach, ensure that students’ needs are being met, and choose methods which will enable learning to take place, regardless of location. The learning atmosphere and delivery styles will carry on to transform. The benefits of online education include but are not limited to the flexibility to meet specific needs, providing equity of educational opportunity to students in various locations, low cost alternatives, new learning experiences, and expanded resources. Some of the disadvantages of distance learning include sound and video that may be less than broadcast quality, reliance on learner initiative to work in a situation with less supervision than a classroom, the need for technical skills to work with the delivery technology, and the possibility of social isolation. Distance acquisition of knowledge is often an expensive and time consuming process to start and especially to maintain. It is significant to identify whether it in fact improves student presentation. It is also critically important to know which distance learning education delivery methods and techniques are more effective, so students get the maximum benefit from the society’s investment in distance learning technology.

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Online education can be likely to outcome in attainment at least comparable to traditional teaching in most academic circumstances. More importantly, when implemented with the same care as effective face to face instruction, online education programs can be used to complement, enhance, and expand education options for students, at least at intermediate, middle, and upper grade levels.