Can You Become an Online Teacher? Yes.
June 9, 2012
I want you to consider making some short videos for free that show a targeted audience how to do something. Anything.
If you do it once, you can do it again.
I offer a free course on how to get started. It's here:
How can I motivate you to begin?
This video may help. It is inspirational. It is with Bill Gates, Salman Khan (Khan Academy), and a man from the Kaplan training program. Walter Isaacson (The Wise Men) interviews them. It's on education in the digital age.
Khan is doing it full time. He has 800 YouTube videos in math, from 1 + 1 = 2 to calculus. It's all free. He has over 2,000 other videos. Now he has money from donors to hire specialists in learning. He has added digital examinations. At least 6,000,000 students visit the site monthly. There has been nothing like this in history.
His system breaks down age-based grouping. This means it goes back to the little red school house. Age-based tracking was an invention of the late nineteenth century.
We really don't know how most students learn. My guess: one size does not fit all.
Self-pacing is best. This is the basis of Dr. Arthur Robinson's Robinson Curriculum: $200, once per family, K-12.
There must be feedback: exams, correction. Some of this can be digital. Some probably can't.
Voice-overs on top of visuals work well. This is what Khan provides. Watch this for two minutes. It's on circles.
We know from other studies that super-achievers have tutors in their youth, then highly skilled trainers. We don't know yet how to provide this online. (I think we will, with Webex or a competitor.)
Not every aspect of education can be automated. But we should automate everything that can be. It cuts costs. This is trial and error today, but there is big money being spent on finding out.
Gates said that a key missing ingredient is student motivation. This is always a problem. No system has ever been really successful. Children are kids. They don't like long hours of hard work. (Who does?)
My recommendation: multiple programs targeting multiple kinds of kids. The free market will provide this.
He said there is a successful charter school that puts 48 kids in one room. They like it. Why? "Because it is small." What's that? Small?
They broke it into three component parts: 16 kids with a teacher, 16 in peer teaching ("little red schoolhouse"), and 16 getting video-based training. They rotated.
Gates is right: there is political resistance to change in education. He mentions the teachers' union.
I think the physical campus is doomed for education. But it's great for keg parties, casual sex with half a dozen partners, and $200,000 bills sent to parents.
The whole thing can be done online for under $15,000, total. A student can pay for his own college with part-time employment at a fast food restaurant. He can graduate in four years. I wrote a manual on this.
Is this really possible? Yes. This student graduated in the month he turned 18. I have hired him to produce videos on how to do it. Here is his course on how a student can use Evernote, which is free.
Now watch the panel discussion.