If my students can do the majority of their work with writing and reading online…
If my students can receive all of their assignments online…
If my students can maintain constant contact with their friends, classmates, and teachers online…
If my students can create spaces to come together or work alone online…

What do should we do in the classroom?

One of the biggest takeaways that I have been formulating at the Virtual Schools Symposium is that the hybrid model is not fiction. When students have access outside of class hours (and this is not a given by any means), shouldn’t we be expecting that they be connecting and collaborating during this time?

The more that I work with my new 7th graders (the students who I have only known under the Academy of Discovery Model), the more I realize that productivity is something that comes from having the ability to work at your own pace and schedule. I keep seeing the majority of essays being written at home even though I feel the obligation to give them time in class. I keep seeing my students make more meaning out of the emails and instant messages outside the classroom.

My real question, I guess, is what activity is so well suited to face-to-face contact that it can’t be replicated online? Whatever the answer to that question is, is what I need to be doing in my classroom, every day.

Here are my thoughts on what can’t be replicated online, yet:

• Debate – In its truest form, debate is a refined series of verbal arguments that require many people talking in rapid succession. Although you can do debate in an elluminate session, the passing of the mic is awkward at best and the visual separation of the competing sides is not possible.
• Networking – It is why we still come to conferences. Finding great people that you want to work with and that will challenge you is something that is lacking in the online world. A social network does create a sense of community amongst many people, but it the bonds forged are not immediate. They take time and tending. In face-to-face communication, it is easy to see the worthwhile. It is easy to recognize excellence. That is what classroom time can be: the search and recognition for excellence (in writing, in math, in science, etc.)

What are the things that you think are so essential in the classroom that they can’t be outsourced to a virtual space? (Do they still exist? Will they always exist?) I really want to know.

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