Szilárd VAJDA's blog

Zoom is nowadays THE software. Everybody can claim otherwise, but the facts are just simply facts.

None of the other solutions (Teams, Skype [for Business], Hangouts, Blackboard Ultra, WebEx, Facebook, Whatsapp, etc.) provided as possible alternatives by other companies can level up with Zoom. Professional companies, school districts, governments, state agencies, universities, individuals they used it on daily basis and it is working. No complaints, -except the zoom bombing which is solved by now by the usage of a password and the waiting room, and if the bandwidth is holding up is and you posses a desktop, laptop, smart phone or a tablet you are good to go.

I imagine after this pandemic is over(?) there will be a new entry in the English dictionary: to zoom (inf. zooming). A few years back the verb to google was introduced, so I do not see an impediment to let a new word be among the most used one beside googling. The language evolves either we like it or not.

We have the pandemic (see COVID-19), and we have the tool to educate students. What is the problem? -some could ask. There are many problems but nobody wants to acknowledge them because everybody is in survival mode and admitting any kind of fault can be fatal. So you see and hear this message over all the channels that "online education is so cool, good and awesome". No it is not, but everybody is afraid to admit it. 

I am talking to educators in different countries all over the world and the same problems, concerns emerge from each of them but nobody is listening. Everybody is  praising the "heroic work" of educators who had to switch from one day to another to a completely new style of teaching, but these are just meaningless empty words. The more they say it the more they become empty. I feel petty when I am hearing this kind of discourse over and over from statesmen, politicians, education secretaries, etc. 

It is obvious that educators can not change in such a short period of time and deliver the same content using a device with a camera and mic. It is just not possible. And let's not forget that many of these educators they are completely against this type of education and they have a good reason. Once we will return to the normal f2f style lectures we will see the huge gaps in the students knowledge because of this highly praised education style. 

This online education might be good for a very narrow niche of students who i) can not afford structured education, ii) they work and they do not have the time for it, and iii) they are interested in one particular topic without considering the bigger picture. Everybody else like i) students who want a comprehensive education, ii) students who value the social interaction of the education and iii) students who can afford education they do not want this type of online education. [I do not agree with iii) but I am sure you will call me communist and/or socialist if I would state that education and healthcare should be a fundamental human right and it belongs to everybody without distinguishing among people based on race, gender and social-economic background. Unfortunately, it sounds as utopia in these money driven societies, however there are some working models in the world such as Germany, France and many other EU countries just to name a few.]

However, for some reason nobody is asking the students what they want. They are considered as bystanders in the process and some higher authorities they just force them to be part of this new way of delivering knowledge like it or not. Of course, we can not do a referendum to see what everybody wants now and to adapt to everybody's need, but somehow we should find a common ground to be able to deliver the knowledge to this young generation but also making sure that the path is the right one or at least the most efficient one.

There are many technical difficulties. People they do not have the right devices, they do not have broadband Internet access (this is happening in 2020!), or they are just not educated to operate these devices and technologies. However, we spend money to go to the moon or create stelar armies, etc.  Hmm ...., interesting and weird to see how a so-called "modern society" focus its interest in building a better future, a better world. 

Let's be optimistic! Suppose that we have the technical support to deliver and to receive those lectures. Beside the technical mambo-jambo we have two key players in this same equation: the student(s) and the educator.  As we "do not care about the students" let us leave them at the end of the food chain "where they belong". 

How about the educator? She/he might be not familiar with the technology which means that they will struggle just to start a Zoom meeting or some other meeting. The lecture might not be in a format which can be delivered just by telling nice stories about it and it can not be brought to the students on a slide or another. Let's think for a minute how you explain a chemistry student how to synthesize a compound  without showing it in the lab. Good luck with that! Cool, huh? 

You have to have interactions with the students but they hide behind their cameras because they feel uncomfortable so the lecture might become a monologue and can bring a lot of frustrations on both sides. The key element of education: the interaction is missing completely or minimized to an extent which will have considerable side effects in the future. Instead of concentrating on the lectures the educator right now has to concentrate on the technology (software, Internet), the mic, the camera, the cameras of others, the chat, the waiting room, the shared screen and the lack of interaction. And let us imagine that on top of this we are teaching our students how a convolusional neural network is converging and why. [...] Good luck professor! You have 50 minutes to do so! But we educators are "heroes"! We do not care, we just want to deliver all the lectures as it would be in a f2f setup no matter  if this is just not possible due to the nature of the situation. 

I almost forgot! Some educators they do not even have interactions with the students! They just send them dry material copied from a book and eventually they might respond to some questions via e-mail. This "delivery method" might(?) function at universities but definitely it is useless at K-12 level education. 

How about the students? They are the focus here because the whole education process is happening for their benefit but as mentioned previously, nobody cares about them. They are treated as soldiers whom should follow orders. Come to lecture, Zoom in, follow the uninteresting slides of the professors (if they have some), read all the material which are passed so easy by the educators to them and the huge burden which they carry as they have to understand all the material mainly on their own. Can you image to learn computer programming in a language such as C/C++/Java by yourself, do Gauss elimination just by reading a formal definition in a Math book, prove that a given problem is NP complete or how to transform it into one?

Cruel thing! And for many students it is just frustrating and very difficult. Do we care? No, we don't! We just send them even more materials via an e-mail attachment which costs us one minute but it might cost a week or more the student to go trough that material.

Result? Angry, frustrated students who will give up eventually because beside their completely chaotic daily routine driven by the pandemic they do not manage to see all the connections, tricks etc. among the multitude of topics which we educators are throwing on them. Are we helping them trough these difficulties? Some of us might care and do whatever is necessary to help, but many of us we just simply do not. 

Is this the recipe of the successful education? [...]