I love it when we have these types of conversations — the debates about what ‘works’ and what ‘doesn’t work’. It’s these types of dialogue that help us move forward in our thinking and plans to make education even better. This one discussion about remote learning is particularly interesting during the COVID-19 pandemic — and gaining in some frequency — as we have found some system success along with some real challenges.
- Is remote learning the future for public education?
- Has the pandemic showed us a better way to teach and learn?
- Have we seen the utopian light?
As with most topics in education, one often hears opposing arguments — and there’s certainly no exception with remote learning. There are some pretty strong opinions being generated:
“Remote learning is fantastic. My child is able to focus on their own schedule and terms without the distractions at school.”
“Remote learning is terrible. There is no meaningful social interaction with their peers or teachers. Motivation is difficult and they can’t stay focused on their computers”.
Each opinion is sometimes accompanied by articles or media posts supporting the perspective
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The Power of Why 
This is an important topic!
Please do NOT muddle it with references to “learning styles” that have been debunked so many times already! e.g. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.602451/full and https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/02/04/the-learning-styles-myth-is-still-prevalent-among-educators-and-it-shows-no-sign-of-going-away/
We can certainly discuss learning and teaching dispositions and students’ attributions or sefl-regulation, but the reality of education is this: Learning happens in interactions, not online or offline (in classroom). Younger students need more one-on-one interactions than mature students – but we all NEED interactions to support our concept development and weeding out our misconceptions.
I hope we can move away from the one-size-fits-all thinking towards supporting each students’ individual learning process whether online or in classroom. I have been working fully online for 8 years already.
🙂
Nina
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Hi Nina. Thank you for your comments. I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on my thoughts and my words that I’ve put down in my posts. The importance of addressing each students needs is certainly the important one in our planning — one that requires flexibility of thought and a variety of approaches that reflect a number of considerations around teaching and learning context.
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