This was how training unfolded: each teacher delivered a stream of information that the students were expected to fully or partially grasp. The flow was like a moving train that the students had to board, not only through their willpower but also through their ability to comprehend. Often, there were no intermediate stops. Often, there was no concern for those who hadn't boarded. Often, the passengers didn't understand the sacrifice made in terms of comprehension. Anyway, that train reached its destination.
Then there were more comfortable, nicer, slower trains that made the climb easier (the good teacher), but they were still trains.
Proof of this is the private lesson which, to use the same metaphor, was like taking another train to try to reach the main one and hoping to get on it or, as in many cases, arriving independently at the destination, thus rendering the main train useless. A clear contradiction.
While this metaphor might raise a smile when thinking of teachers of the past, it becomes worrying if it refers to teachers today. Of course, today, that train is forced to make intermediate stops: educational planning requires formative assessments to determine who is understanding and how, and possibly to implement remedial learning actions. Not to mention that if we simply want to consider the issue of SEN and DSA, that train, it just can't run like crazy.
Yet that metaphor, in my opinion, is still deeply rooted in many teachers, and I am also referring to current ones.
The return to traditional lessons (ex cathedra) in the POST-COVID period was accompanied by many teachers with understandable enthusiasm but also with a judgment, in their opinion, failure of DAD.
The enthusiasm, besides being understandable, is fully shared. The judgment of failure on distance learning leaves me perplexed. It reveals a contrast between the two modalities, without considering an integration of the same. Furthermore, it is not specifically contextualized. What training? practical, theoretical, professional, institutional training and what if it was the latter, elementary, middle, high school, university, or simply all training?
Furthermore, recalling the metaphor above, if that modality, in my opinion already deficient in the traditional classroom but masked by the authoritarian role of the teacher, had been applied to DAD then, failure would not be a judgment but an evident realityDistance learning forces us to re-elaborate teaching methods, see (article: “Experience the virtual classroom”) and makes the one-way flow of information vague.
So the problem once again is not the tool but how you use it..
Often behind the criticism on the use of a new technology there are hidden the most hidden prejudices that have to do with the inability to go out from your comfort zone, to make a change, in a word to be flexible.
To give an example: the ballpoint pen, more precisely the “biro”, invented by the Hungarian László Bíró (1899-1985) who gave the patent to the French baron Marcel Bich, producer of the modern Bic pen, was not well received. This was a modern technology from the 50s, and its use was opposed by the teachers of the time:
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History repeats itself!!!
Well, a simple reflection is necessary that I want to summarize in points and, I add, I am surprised that public education operators have never made it, except a few, the most far-sighted.
a) I agree that distance learning is ineffective in elementary and middle school, where the relational aspect is fundamental. It's no coincidence that in these areas we talk more about education than about training.
b) For the remaining training areas and in especially for theoretical training, Distance learning has no elements that make it ineffective, as long as it's designed according to different teaching methodologies and abandons the idea of a one-way flow. I don't deny the relational aspect, and in fact, I'll return to it in the next point.
c) I'll start with a question: Why wasn't blended learning considered, that is, learning that alternates in-person learning with virtual learning? It's not that the relational aspect isn't important for high school and university students, but we know very well that the moments of greatest interaction occur during the esercitazioniThese are moments when students interact more with their peers and the teacher. We also know that exercises, for teaching purposes, are organized in groups.
Here then comes to light a different scenario from the one we witnessed when classroom lessons resumed: smaller flows of students going to class, organized and differentiated; no contrast between traditional classroom and virtual classroom, on the contrary, integration and strengthening; finally, training appropriate to the contemporary world where technology must be used and controlled, not suffered.
"When the winds of change blow, some build walls, others windmills.”. Chinese proverb
(Vincenzo Di Prisco - Head of the Management Process at Idee Insieme Training Organization)