Online School… Pros V Cons… From a Future Teachers Perspective

As someone who completed most of their post-secondary education during the years of COVID, I am quite familiar with both the positives and negatives of online learning. As an older student enrolled in first and second-year courses, I found online classes to be perfect. I could remain in bed with coffee while my camera was off and pretend to listen to the hour-and-a-half to three-hour lectures happening in the background. At that time, however, I hadn’t yet learned about ADHD and how my brain worked. I was simply coasting through courses with Google as my best friend, and what was supposed to be individual online work often turned into group efforts with my roommates (who were not in school).

One thing that proved to be extremely helpful for me was having lectures recorded. Although I spent little time paying attention during the scheduled class meetings, I was able to go back and rewatch lectures at my own speed (1.5x, to be exact). This allowed me to stay engaged and actually grasp the lessons being taught.

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– Looking back now, as a future teacher, I realize that in the older years, students (like my past self) have ample opportunity to disengage and lose that sense of community that school is meant to foster.

Revisiting class notes from this day I found a Distributed Learning Discussion that pinpoints my classmates (and my own) thoughts and discussions about learning online and the pros v cons that go along with it.

One particular thing that I valued is learning about this week is The Five R’s For Indigenizing Online Learning . I got ChatGPT to summarize the abstract for this article for a short snipit of what we learning:

“The article discusses the creation and implementation of the First Nations Schools’ Principals Course (FNSPC), the first online professional development course for principals of First Nations schools in Canada. It covers the contexts, goals, and design of the FNSPC, as well as the complexities of integrating Indigenous values into online education. The article also explores how utilizing the Five R’s (respect, relevance, reciprocity, responsibility, and relationships) transforms challenges of Indigenizing online education into opportunities for both traditional and non-traditional Indigenous learning within the FNSPC.”

As future educators its our duty to follow in respect to Indigenizing learning and making our lessons about more than a checklist from the curriculum and incorporating a more community and relationship based environment for students to thrive in.