Learning around the clock for school?

“A school … plans to offer pupils teaching around the clock“, BBC News report today. It seems that a college in Hampshire (England) is to open from 7am to 10pm and offer lessons via the internet throughout the night.

As a consequence of this measure:

• learning modules would be available online at any time; students would be required to attend classes for some activities, and the rest would take place on the Internet.
• teaching and administrative staff at school would work flexi-time;
• families taking holiday during term-time could structure their kids’year so that they still get the full 190 days the English system requires. Likewise, teachers would be enabled to arrange their holidays more flexibly.

So much for the news story… Now here come my questions:

1. Has this ever been tried before? I’ve always passionately advocated for blended learning, but this sounds going too far for a first step for me…
2. Has anyone given a thought to the social aspects of learning, and the development of values which can only get developed through f2f interaction? The article fails to report what percentage of f2f meeting will be required (it just says some courses will still be taught in the traditional way, though school hours will be longer)
3. Will there be fewer schools, to make up for the increase in length of school hours offered?
4. Who has supervised the methodology the of online learning to be offered? This really intrigues me…

All new roads look a bit dark and unsafe, I guess… I just hope I hear more about this as the plan is carried out (the project is expected to last two years).

Gladys

Comments make the difference indeed!

I’ve just read a thought-provoking entry by Anne Davis on the relevance of comments in blogging, and immediately thought I wanted to record that here… Basically, her point is that it is comments which encourage newborn bloggers to keep going… That made an impact on me for I related it to many issues I’ve been reflecting upon recently:

 1) When starting a blog, determining its target audience should be a first step. In the case of class blogs, this seems crucial to me. Unlike most people appear to believe, blogging’s not about what I have to say, but about who I expect to listen to me… It makes sense then to start by defining our intended readers and the best way to contact them.

(BTW, have you already listened to “I Started a Blog that Nobody Read“, by the Catbirdseat? Don’t miss it if you’ve ever started a blog!)

2) Networking blogs is essential. Each new blogger has to find blogs he’s keen on reading and acquire the habit of regular commenting on them…. Helping new bloggers master tools such as Bloglines or Feedblitz should be a teacher’s first priority… Apart from providing new bloggers with models, this will help them start getting “noticed” by bloggers who will in turn come back to comment on their entries… For the teacher themselves, finding out about sites such as Dekita or online communities such as Webheads in Action could make a whale of difference!

3) In my case, each blog entry is “inspired” by so many other cyber-friends that naming them would be overwhelming… and each time I post I feel the excitement of possible comments from unexpected readers! However, this also means a tremendous responsibility: learning to reply to comments… or do you want to become a blogsnob?

Enough blogging about blogging for a day, right?

Gladys