Ease is something that we have in spades nowadays. We are used to being able to order something at the click of a button from our cell-phones. Now some schools our offering to add more of this ease by offering online classes that you can attend from home. Whatever good intent those school staff may have, this is not a helpful move for those students. A physical classroom and in person attendance is for more effective. Physical classrooms offer hands on learning in the forms of labs and activities, chances for teachers to answer individual questions that the student may have, and offer less distractions than taking an online class from home.

Actions often speak louder than words, and in some subjects that is often the case. Learning about pressure and how it affects molecules in Chemistry and then getting to put in effect often helps cement what the student just learned about in their minds. It's this kind of hands on learning that the online learning is taking away. Often times students will be more likely to remember something if they see it in action and are able to put it into effect, than just hearing about the subject. Teachers implement these activities and labs for this precise reason, to give students a break from hearing them speak and to get up, move around, and implement what they just learned! Students using the online method do not have the chance to do these activities. They would have to be content with just learning about the subject. Take, for example, a subject like Chemistry as I mentioned before. In Chemistry there are loads of examples of labs that students will to, such as labs with dry ice or butane gas, showing laws of partial pressure or states of matter. All of which done in a classroom setting, not something you could do while looking at a screen.

It's safe to say that over time school subjects increase in difficulty. With lessons getting more complex over time, it's up to the teachers to help teach the students the best they can and answer any questions they might have. Most students's questions will often vary depending on how they are and how well they understand the subject. They will have individual questions, and in a classroom setting it makes it easier to pick out the student and answer the student's question and explain it. With an online class, that gets trickier. To do an online class, it would most likely be come kind of large video stream; with a teacher on a video and a couple hundred students tuning in online. This makes it immensely more difficult for the teacher to single out a student with a question. Look at a subject such as math. In a classroom setting, if a student had an issue with one of the math problems, all they would have to do is raise their hand and the teacher would come over and show them how to do it on a white board. With an online class, you would not be able to do something like that. A glaring issue for the online classes versus the physical classroom.

Something that all students suffer from in any class is the threat of getting distracted. Sometimes when a teacher is talking, the mind and eyes are prone to wonder around until the mind is brought back around to the lesson. If a student were to take a class from home, the distractions would be amplified. Often when a students mind wonders, it might be to something that the student would rather being doing at home. For an online class, the student would just have to walk around their house to find something "better to do". While in a physical classroom, the student eventually is forced to round their attention back to the lesson at hand, by the presence of the teacher and lack of objects that the student can use. In the home environment, the student doesn't have the presence of a teacher and their home is full of devices the student owns and can play with. While the student could have their parent come around and simulate that teacher presence, a parent will have other things to do leading back to the mess of distractions that will form.

The online classroom may have some advantages, such as being a way for sick or injured students to keep track of schoolwork, but it is outweighed by the disadvantages. The lack of hands on activities to keep the student interested and and to help cement the recent lesson being one. Another being the inability of the student to ask their individual questions directly to the teacher, and the last is the overwhelming amount of distractions that can arise. The online classroom is a decent idea, however in order to be as effective as the physical classroom it needs to make adjustments to mimic the physical classroom.