Asimov's Short Story: The Fun They Had

I will start with a tedious tautology, the story is what it is. An outdated overused argumentation about the apparent lack of personal connection that arises by using the most incredible information sharing technology available to us, which in turn means that this loss of personal connection is somehow hindering our education or at least our characters in a negative way. "Online learning today is non-personal and has a computer-generated feel." Computer-generated, yes, mostly because 'online learning' usually happens on a computer. "Non-personal", now that is dependent on where you are getting your online education. In fact if you take an online education such as the Khan Academy, you have the exact opposite effect. I can tell you from personally experience that some of the courses on there are much more personal/adjusted to what I want to see and learn about right now. If I do not understand one topic, a simple pause and further research leads to me to understand that maybe crucial little detail. Whereas in a classroom this would be impossible since with 30 kids, there would an interruption non-stop and we would all get nowhere. "Students feel disconnected from the facilitators and find that they are interacting more with a computer than an actual person." That would be relative to how much you are learning. Remember just because you are learning something online that does not mean you are excluded from discussing this material with anyone. The bleak and boring feel of school in the short story are simple errors of incorporating the same mistakes with a different system. Once people actually get to chose what they want to learn and stay on a topic until they fully understand it, this disregard of actual information or anti-intellectualism will not so easily arise, this would reflect in end results. Again, I can give a personal confirmation of this and a study that has been done on online education: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com... Now pertaining your's and the story's objection that this sort of online studying completely shuts out a necessary personal connection between people: (Again Khan Academy) (http://www.khanacademy.org... More information on how this has been implemented already and the results are found on the site and in the talks he gives, excuse the "indirectness" of this source) What this institute has done is implemented the activity of online learning in a very effective way. Leaving the learning for actual computers (computer-generated problems, video lectures, etc.) but adding the element of discussion. Previously in schools, the learning part had to be done entirely during school hours, a complete waste of time and usually results in a small percentage of the course actually understanding what has been talked about without rereading the material. But if you can relocate the traditional at-school-learning to online-learning, you have recreated a much more efficient environment of discussion. This is the crucial Asimov and you misunderstand. Online-learning gives way to actual human interaction based on discussing material in a thought through manner, while traditional means of getting information across actually prevented this. Instead of spending 5-8 hours at school and only picking up very little information you can do this online at home in much less time. Opening up your free time for quarrels with a multitude of persons ranging from teachers to your peers. Therefore online-learning has the exact opposite you and Asimov purport it to have.