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Comment by cubicle67 | Hacker News Reader

As someone with some experience in both education (I went to school once) and online (I have installed my own internet), I really don't think this will help.

One of the keys to education is motivation, something not imparted by any online learning scheme I've seen yet. It normally comes from interest in a subject, but from other factors too, all not far removed from personal relationships.

I hate, with a passion, the thought of subjecting kids to "education" via screen after screen of sterile click-through slides, or even their slightly fancier cousins, "interactive" lessons. ugh!

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But kids are lacking motivation for a number of things. One of which is the mandatory, boring subject matter and the way it's taught. It's also common society's mindset to think of "learning" as bad. Or at least that's what a lot of kids think. Some figure it out, but many remain with the attitude that learning is bad. These students also get so accustomed to being given every piece of info, they don't know or care how to find and learn on their own.

Is slides really worse than lugging a ten-pound book around all day and reciting emotionless, boring, seemingly irrelevant information? Perhaps the slides will be no different.

If any benefit of online education, it's the saving of our next generations backs. Most backpacks average 30 pounds. Is their a reason to carry such large amount of weight on our back through out the day, for 3/4ths of the year?

> Is slides really worse than lugging a ten-pound book around all day and reciting emotionless, boring, seemingly irrelevant information?

Yes, a thousand times worse.

Because it's not fixing the problem that the subjects are boring :)

I do a lot of work with kids and education; you simply cannot, from my observation, teach from a screen - unless the participant is highly capable of research it doesn't work.

We need to fix the physical teaching - not replace it with a worse unfixed method!

ErrantX, I don't think slides are a problem. They are simply one more medium teachers may use to communicate knowledge. Now, they are certainly not a replacement for actual textbooks, but they do have their uses.

I do think you hit on a very important topic, although indirectly. You state that the subjects are boring. I've had my share of bad teachers in all different levels of school (I'm a graduate student right now). The problem is not that the subjects are boring. The problem is that you have teachers that either have no interest in teaching the subject, or you have teachers that don't know how to teach the subject. I spend most of my time studying financial mathematics, but the most interesting class I ever took was one on American History in high school. Everyday was a brand new story, something intensely interesting. I certainly learned my American History, as I got a 5 on the AP test way back in the day. I also have to give credit to the same teacher for giving me a deep respect for all of history.

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