Teacher in Development

I have to admit something: After about a year of fighting the insane traffic of my beloved Mexico City, I’ve often found myself daydreaming about teleclasses.  

What would a 30 second commute be like? Where all you had to do was walk down your hall, and turn on your computer to hook up with your student via internet?

You could say goodbye to traffic. Goodbye to wasted time if your student didn’t show. No more saying no classes because you would arrive home too late at night.

 The benefits are plenty, and they’re not just for the teacher. Students could take classes wherever, and whenever they wanted to. Classes would be cheaper in theory. Few to no books to buy. An endless source of customizeable content on the web.

I’ve read of AJ’s experiment with this, but and correct me if I’m wrong, it just didn’t seem to fly.

Why? Why would something, with so many advantages to offer, be so hard to actually do?

Today I came across two articles via edtechtalk.com , (sorry but I lost the exact link where these articles were mentioned) that got me thinking about the whole idea of teleclasses again. It seems to be working for them…

A Tutor Half a World Away, but as Close as a Keyboard - New York Times

and

For students, outsourcing makes help only a half world away. 

I wish I remember where I read this, but a recent survey on university students who did online courses said that they liked online for convenience’s sake, but missed the human contact.