doug woods

I came across this article on the Mashable website which looked at the future of teaching. It is not often that you find an article about education on this site, so I was intrigued. The article is titled The Future of teaching, so I was doubly intrigued.

The article claims that research has shown that online teaching appears to be more effective than face-to-face teaching. My own experience of learning online would tend to disagree with that but let’s hope that online tuition has improved, I’m sure it has, since my last experience of online learning.

The key message appears to be that online learning needs to be used in combination with other methods to be most effective. Well, I guess that is not a new or an earth shattering message.

However, I do feel that the article has a positive message for the future of education. It shows that online tuition can be effective and most certainly has a role to play in the future of education. For me., this is an important message as we move forward with Home Access. It not only tells us that online learning can be effective, it also emphasises that those learners without access are at a disadvantage.

Many of you will know that I have been involved in Becta’s Home access programme. Articles like this only help reinforce my view that a successful implementation of home access is important for improving the learning outcomes for all learners.

Related Article on Educate IT

Related Article on  Interactyx

Update (May 2010)

It is perhaps timely that this post is resurrected, for it is a day after the announcement of the closure of Becta. IT is tempting to issue the riposte that with the agency’s closure perhaps the future of learning, at least in England and Wales, is not online!

There is also some question regarding Home Access. It seems that while the current funding is expected to run out in June this year, the funding for a subsequent round may or may not be made available. Home Access, as I’m sure you all know, is a government programme to provide internet access and devices for disadvantaged families with learners. The wider programme, however, covers more than just the physical kit and connectivity, it is also about raising awareness of the benefits of online access and training people in the use of computers. Much of this is aimed at those people who don’t quite meet the criteria for the free kit or who, for a range of reasons, choose not use the internet. It remains unclear at this time whether funding for this part of the programme will remain.

I spoke in the original post of my own experience of online learning. I am reminded at this time of my visit earlier this year to the Learning Technologies Exhibition in London where, I’m sorry to say I saw evidence of a very poor state of affairs in online learning. Sure there seemed to be much talk at the associated conference, that I couldn’t attend, of new developments in online learning but what was on display at the exhibition was very different. It was quite evident that the wares on display showed the clear dominance of direct instruction in online learning, a preponderance of ‘training’ rather than ‘teaching’ or ‘learning’. I feel that this is something that will need to change if e-learning is to become accepted in schools.

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• Government to close Becta (downes.ca)
• BECTA to be closed (tech.bl0x.info)
• Government to close Becta (guardian.co.uk)
• Becta, Jamie Oliver, and the Romans (moodlea.blogspot.com)
• dot.Rory (bbc.co.uk)
• Curtains for Becta (mclear.co.uk)
• Government to axe Becta (computing.co.uk)
• Mixed Signals about Online Teaching (bwatwood.edublogs.org)
• Becta Technology Exemplar Network Mini-Network Event (elearningstuff.wordpress.com)
• Home Access scheme won’t be cut this year promises Government (computeractive.co.uk)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Comfortable Technology -Learning Transformation pt4
• A Hundred Ways to Show What They’ve Learned
• ICT Out of Sight, Out of Mind
• What is Home Access (part 2)
• Primary Schools better than Secondary at teaching ICT?

Tags: Becta, Education, Electronic learning, Home Access, Home Access Programme, Human Interest, online learning, online tuition, Technology/Internet

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 20:05 and is filed under Classroom Technology, Home Access, Transforming Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.