Education

First of all, most of us don't lecture frequently, if much at all, anymore. If we do, we know to keep the lectures short and only for their best use: to quickly disseminate pertinent information. We then follow that up with practice so that kids can use that information quickly because, if they don't, they won't remember what they heard in the lecture.

I've worked with computer-based learning on the high school level in three different schools now, and in all three, we had the same results: many were signed up for the credit recovery online class, and few actually finished it. Teachers were involved, as were parapros, kids were held accountable, and the vast majority goofed off and didn't do the work it took. Yes, some were hard-working and driven enough to complete the class in time, but they were the distinct minority. Most students really don't learn best with online learning: I'm not saying they don't learn, just that they don't learn best. More and more students are kinesthetic learners, and so sitting at a computer screen for hours just doesn't work for them. It takes a teacher to vary it up for them and coordinate assessments to hit all learning styles.

With differentiated instruction, my students aren't all working on the exact same thing all of the time. For example, in Spanish, they have three different projects each to choose from to demonstrate mastery of vocabulary, conversational skills, and cultural knowledge. Those projects are differentiated by learning style as well as tiered so that my advanced students are challenged and my lower-level students are as well but on different levels. With my seniors, they are all working on an analysis research essay, but they chose their topics and are using different methods to get there (some do best with graphic organizers, some with outlines, some with other methods).

As for a teacher who isn't okay with a student correcting her spelling, I am sorry you son dealt with someone like that. I always encourage my students to correct mine and praise them when they catch a spelling error (which sometimes is deliberate when I misspell a spelling word to see who catches it). Some teachers still have the "sage on the stage" mentality, but more and more often, that's just not the case. Most of us see ourselves as facilitators, not the wise person with all the answers, so we teach accordingly.

Side note on computer learning: You'd be amazed at how often those contain errors, and there's no way to fix them. I've helped kids through online English credit recovery lessons with distinct errors, wrong answers on the quiz being counted as correct, etc. With a teacher, we can see an error in a test and fix it, but with the software, well, everyone's stuck, so the student has to learn the wrong answer in order to move on.