Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, online high school shill.

Yeah, Besty is that you? I don't doubt for a minute that this pro-online HS person isn't hawking his/her own wares to the DOE.

At then end of the day, we're still humans, and we learn through meaningful, hands-on, collaborative effort. Can't do that online. That's why online college degrees are junk and nobody respects them. Do we really want to make our children's HS diplomas equally valueless? This is a clear push from DeVos to destroy the public school system and turn it into a money-making venture for her cronies. At the same time, it will drive out people of means from public schools and into the Christian academies (where they can learn about Creatioism) that she favors.

I see you.

The problem is that most of the cooperative learning going on in schools is not meaningful but simply time sucks that could be taught much more efficiently through direct instruction

- A teacher

+1000 Another teacher here.

OP,

This may sound odd, but by any chance is one of your sons getting married in Phoenix next month?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to think it's more than a "minor increase in burden". It would require a significant technological effort.

Like what?

Setting up videocameras in every classroom, troubleshooting issues with the cameras/streaming platform/etc. Then dealing with micromanagement from parents who are watching all this just to criticize the teachers.

band width issues, opt out issues among students (a logistics nightmare), teachers who don't stand in front of the room the whole period (a good strategy but hard for the streaming). Changes to the dynamic among the kids if they know their life is being filmed.... not to mention purchasing all of the technology to do this in all the rooms all the time...

Awful idea.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many people here would like to be videotaped on their job, all day everyday? And then having 30+ pairs of eyes critiquing your performance?

This.

Lots of colleges do it. Trainers/conferences video their folks.

And if you know it's part of your job, then I don't see the problem.

I see the parent issues as totally manageable (as I see them manageable now despite all the howling about how annoying parent requests and so forth are). You set the boundary as you would with anyone else and stick to it. It's really not hard. Schools have made it much harder but not clearly communicating what's up for discussion and what is not and sticking to it.

Where are colleges videotaping their interactive classes? Even training classes don't typically get videotaped. Even if they do, the questions asked by students are going to be different than if a person wasn't taped.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many people here would like to be videotaped on their job, all day everyday? And then having 30+ pairs of eyes critiquing your performance?

This.

Lots of colleges do it. Trainers/conferences video their folks.

And if you know it's part of your job, then I don't see the problem.

I see the parent issues as totally manageable (as I see them manageable now despite all the howling about how annoying parent requests and so forth are). You set the boundary as you would with anyone else and stick to it. It's really not hard. Schools have made it much harder but not clearly communicating what's up for discussion and what is not and sticking to it.

This from a Sept 2 article in the NYT - this is just the first three para. It does not directly address the OP thread but it indicates how teachers might "market" themselves to larger student audiences and gain influence through the use of tech/social media.

Silicon Valley Courts Brand-Name Teachers, Raising Ethics Issues
By NATASHA SINGERSEPT. 2, 2017
MAPLETON, N.D. — One of the tech-savviest teachers in the United States teaches third grade here at Mapleton Elementary, a public school with about 100 students in the sparsely populated plains west of Fargo.
Her name is Kayla Delzer. Her third graders adore her. She teaches them to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up. She remodeled her classroom based on Starbucks. And she uses apps like Seesaw, a student portfolio platform where teachers and parents may view and comment on a child’s schoolwork.
Ms. Delzer also has a second calling. She is a schoolteacher with her own brand, Top Dog Teaching. Education start-ups like Seesaw give her their premium classroom technology as well as swag like T-shirts or freebies for the teachers who attend her workshops. She agrees to use their products in her classroom and give the companies feedback. And she recommends their wares to thousands of teachers who follow her on social media.
“I will embed it in my brand every day,” Ms. Delzer said of Seesaw. “I get to make it better.”
Ms. Delzer is a member of a growing tribe of teacher influencers, many of whom promote classroom technology. They attract notice through their blogs, social media accounts and conference talks. And they are cultivated not only by start-ups like Seesaw, but by giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, to influence which tools are used to teach American schoolchildren.
Their ranks are growing as public schools increasingly adopt all manner of laptops, tablets, math teaching sites, quiz apps and parent-teacher messaging apps. The corporate courtship of these teachers brings with it profound new conflict-of-interest issues for the nation’s public schools.
Moreover, there is little rigorous research showing whether or not the new technologies significantly improve student outcomes.

from a Bloomberg article on Sept 6 2017

...In the West, early efforts at online education floundered. The technology wasn’t good enough, and there was significant institutional resistance. Many remain unpersuaded that digital instruction can replace the traditional classroom. In China, however, a combination of factors have given online schools a boost: Finding good teachers can be a challenge, especially in subjects like English and in places beyond the biggest cities, while internet access and mobile services have spread widely. For the nation’s education-obsessed tiger moms and dads, it’s worth the risk to prepare their kids for a high-tech future.
Skeptics believe online education will probably remain a small part of the overall industry. But Curtis Johnson, an author who has championed online teaching, is convinced that global adoption is coming, owing in part to experiments in nations like China. “This is just as inevitable as watching movies or listening to music or reading the news online,” says Johnson, who co-authored the book Disrupting Class with Harvard University's Clayton Christensen in 2009.

Chinese parents currently pay for fewer extra-curricular classes than their Asian neighbors. Last year, about 37 percent of kids in China received tutoring, compared with the 70 percent in places like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, according to UBS. But the research firm projects that ratio will hit 50 percent in five years, during which time the Chinese government expects the number of kids attending kindergarten through 12th grade to swell to almost 200 million.
Traditional tutoring companies, with brick-and-mortar classrooms, are already cashing in. New Oriental, founded by Peking University professor Minhong “Michael” Yu in 1993, is projected to reach revenue of $2.2 billion in the current fiscal year. TAL Education, which opened its doors about a decade later, now has more than 500 learning centers in about 50 cities and is expected to boost revenue to $1.7 billion this fiscal year.

Here's another one -

If the U.S. Won't Pay Its Teachers, China Will
VIPKid has raised $125 million and signed up 50,000 kids to study English, math and science online.
Bloomberg News
December 19, 2016, 4:00 PM EST

Cindy Mi leans forward on a couch in her sun-filled Beijing office to explain how she first got interested in education. She loved English so much as a child that she spent her lunch money on books and magazines to practice. By 15, she was good enough that she began to tutor other students. At 17, she dropped out of high school to start a language-instruction company with her uncle.

Today, Mi is 33 and founder of a startup that aims to give Chinese kids the kind of education American children receive in top U.S. schools. Called VIPKid, the company matches Chinese students aged five to 12 with predominantly North American instructors to study English, math, science and other subjects. Classes take place online, typically for two or three 25-minute sessions each week.
....

There's a story on Bloomberg News about U.S. teachers who tutor and teach on live-stream in exactly the way you describe to Chinese students - they get paid very well! And they don't have to chat with the parents.

One startup's success in China could have big implications for the future of education.
By
Peter Elstrom
and
Brad Stone
September 6, 2017, 6:03 PM EDT
• Subscribe to Decrypted on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe to Decrypted on Pocket Casts
In China, parents are desperately seeking good teachers for their children. A number of local tech startups are meeting that demand; one is even connecting them with American tutors halfway across the world. This week, Bloomberg Technology's Peter Elstrom explores VIPKid's data-driven approach to online tutoring to see what it means for Chinese students, as well as the U.S. teachers who are finding a new source of employment.
Want to hear more? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Pocket Casts for new episodes every week. Decrypted is a podcast that uncovers the hidden projects, quiet rivalries and uncomfortable truths in the global technology industry

My child's MS teachers are using Google Classroom more and more -- including posting the notes from class and the assignments. If you are home sick or miss a day, you can pull the notes up on-line. I think that is a reasonable solution. Video-taping classes just makes parents/kids think they don't actually need to GO TO SCHOOL. And there are other negatives/privacy issues as noted by others.

But, if the teacher posts the notes -- then kids who are absent have a 2nd-best option for getting the information. Seems like a good balancing of interests/needs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, online high school shill.

Yeah, Besty is that you? I don't doubt for a minute that this pro-online HS person isn't hawking his/her own wares to the DOE.

At then end of the day, we're still humans, and we learn through meaningful, hands-on, collaborative effort. Can't do that online. That's why online college degrees are junk and nobody respects them. Do we really want to make our children's HS diplomas equally valueless? This is a clear push from DeVos to destroy the public school system and turn it into a money-making venture for her cronies. At the same time, it will drive out people of means from public schools and into the Christian academies (where they can learn about Creatioism) that she favors.

I see you.

The problem is that most of the cooperative learning going on in schools is not meaningful but simply time sucks that could be taught much more efficiently through direct instruction

- A teacher

Then you as a teacher need to bring up what the issues are and how you think they could be done better. I hear our newly elected school board member wants to set up anonymous reporting regarding instruction. Still, do you want to be videotaped all day live and then viewed and scrutinized by parents, students, and anyone they want to share the video with?

Anonymous wrote:How many people here would like to be videotaped on their job, all day everyday? And then having 30+ pairs of eyes critiquing your performance?

This.

It would highlight the best teachers.

Anonymous wrote:Great idea in theory, but I would NOT want to be a teacher doing this. My limited experience with parents in this area leads me to believe that the large majority of them are bat$h!t crazy and I can't imagine opening myself up to that level of scrutiny.

I can see it now: why did you tell Johnny to quit pestering Sally? He was only trying to be friendly when he squeezed her neck until she cried. Did you really need to move him to another desk? That was humiliating to him.

Great idea in theory, but I would NOT want to be a teacher doing this. My limited experience with parents in this area leads me to believe that the large majority of them are bat$h!t crazy and I can't imagine opening myself up to that level of scrutiny.