Designing Web Success

Distance Learning Education Online Needs a Dictator

Education Online: I know that it is politically incorrect to suggest that you should work to pass your exams because it discriminates against lazy layabouts. But…

Conventional Education for the Lazy
If you are at a politically incorrect school the teachers will be the dictators. They’ll lay down the rules about what homework you must do and when it must be presented. They’ll keep an eye out for any learning difficulties that you have and try to help you.

You will be spoon-fed. If you are very clever you will sit in the classroom and learn without any effort, just because there is nothing else to do so you might as well listen to the teacher. The teachers won’t let you wander away to do something more interesting. They are dictators!

My son couldn’t understand why his school reports always said “could do better” when he was top of the class. He never did any work, so his success was really the success of his dictatorial teachers.

My Distance Learning Home Schooling
My father set aside a room in the house for our distance learning. There was all I needed there for study and no distractions. I had to sit in that room till the job was done.

Boredom is many times worse for me than work, even though I am very lazy, so I read all the textbooks from cover to cover and invented a good way to memorise vocabulary that allowed me to learn languages with very little effort. I was an ideal candidate for home schooling and distance learning.

That was my whole aim in life - to do as little work as possible with as little boredom as possible. Because my father was a dictator I got into the way of doing everything as soon as possible, so that my father would let me have time to myself when I had finished.

In other words I became my own dictator forbidding myself to procrastinate. Without a dictator your home schooling, distance learning, education online - call it what you will, will fail because you never get around to it.

Education Online Needs Dictators
Someone is going to have to be a dictator. If you are a parent with children homeschooling online you will have to be the dictator. If you are a student using distance learning guess what…there isn’t anybody else to be the dictator so you’ll have to be your own strict disciplinarian.

You’ll have to rule yourself with a rod of iron.

Keep Yourself Motivated for Education Online
Fine - if you don’t have a dictator what is to prevent you failing to put in your projects on time? Nothing. So find the fun in the work. There is always enough fun in any job for some misguided individuals to do it as a hobby.

There is a forum associated with most online education. Become the “answers person”. Whenever another student has a problem you answer the question before the lecturer gets round to it.

Oh yes, it does mean that you’re going to have to work hard to get the answer before anybody else does, but remember that the others will probably be procrastinating, and the teachers will have finished their 9 to 5 day and won’t reply till tomorrow, so you won’t have much competition. I revel in the thanks that come my way when I help another student’s education online.

Some studies will still need you to be your own dictator. I used to do one hour a day practicing the harmonium and one hour each day practicing the violin.

I was fortunate because my Father was a dictator. If I hadn’t done my practice towards the end of the day he would interrupt whatever I was doing and order me off to do my practice. This politically incorrect procedure made me determined not to be caught out again. So I completed my practice before I started doing what I really wanted to do. Later on I had got so much into the habit of doing my practice as early as possible that I could be my own dictator.

What if there isn’t a dictator?
Then don’t consider education online. You will fail if you keep putting off your study. You need a dictator to keep you going even if you are your own dictator. There must be no compromise or distractions.

My boss once congratulated me because I was continuing to write a computer program while the partitions in the office were being torn down and new wiring and equipment installed. The noise was horrendous and people had to keep going round me and my computer. My experience with distance education had taught me to keep at the job ignoring all distractions. You’ll have to do the same to benefit from education online.

The Sweetener to Education Online
If you are your own dictator you can do the projects with the related study in a fraction of the time that a conventional course would take. So you can enjoy yourself for the rest of the time, or if you are a real glutton for punishment, you can take two distance learning courses at once and get twice the satisfaction when you succeed.

Someone invented a tape recorder that would record a lecturer speaking at 50 words per minute and play it back at 500 words per minute without sounding high and squeaky. They found that our brains can handle the 500 words per minute better because our thoughts don’t wander off after distractions. So if you can read at 500 words per minute perhaps you can do ten home schooling courses at once?! I feel tired just thinking about it.

Ian McAllister is constantly amazed by the way people procrastinate without the advantage of home schooling. There are also some disadvantages. See more than a hundred viewpoints about online education here.
onlinedu.swag4u.com/

Home Schooling is Popular

Home schooling is becoming increasingly popular. Why? Because in some areas schools are too dangerous to consider. Parents want to have more control over their children’s learning environment. Schools in some districts lack essential quality in resources and staff to effectively educate children for the challenges of today’s global society. With home schooling, parents are able to expand the learning platform of their children to an almost infinite degree. School districts provide the required curriculum for children so that parents don’t go off on a non-productive tangent. This also helps to ensure that home-schooled children are on track with their peers of the same age and grade level.

What about those cases in which children have a first language other than English? Though not yet in supremely large numbers, the growing discovery of alarming numbers of children with illegal immigrant status raises the question of English as a Second Language (ESL) home-schooling and literacy. The task of developing fluency in English stretches from the children through the parents and even the grandparents in many cases. Immigrant families are cash-strapped. Often due to low levels of educational achievement, lack of marketable skills or even illiteracy, parents feel they are “trapped”. To earn more they must learn more, but how can this be accomplished without English language fluency?

Using A TBL Approach

One of many possible scenarios is home schooling using a TBL (Tasked-Based Learning) approach. In this approach, learners are taught useable, marketable skills using English as the language of instruction. In-demand skills such as Nursing Aids, Home Health Care Aides, Auto Mechanics, Electrician Helpers, Carpentry and construction trade workers, Cooks and even Teacher Aides could be brought up to marketable standards rather quickly. Certainly most would require less than a year of preparation to begin “giving back” to the economy that many now only abuse to the detriment of tax-payers and home owners who currently carry an over-burdened share of the economy.

Using a TBL approach, several problems would be addressed at the same time.

• Immigrants would learn a marketable skill

• Immigrants would learn English

• Immigrants would regain their personal pride and dignity

• Parents could set a valuable example for their children

• Children could be eased more into mainstream American society

• Children could more easily acquire useable English language skills

There are already quantities of online and low-residency English language and other programs available for both adults and children.

Certainly English taught as a second or foreign language is practical for home schooling. Teachers and tutors must make classes interesting, lively and on occasion even fun if they are to maintain the interest and attendance of these LEP (Limited English Proficiency) learners. In so doing, the problem of non-English speaking or LEP learners of all ages can begin to be addressed in earnest. Over-crowded, cash and resource-strapped schools need our help. Here’s one way we, as concerned TEFL professionals, can give it to them.

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an ELT Teacher Trainer, English language learning expert author and university professor in Cali, Colombia. He has published more than 350 articles and academic papers and presented at numerous EFL teacher training and TEFL conferences throughout North America, South America and Europe. For comments, questions, requests, to receive more information or to be added to his free TESOL articles and teaching materials mailing list, e-mail: lynchlarrym@gmail.com