ICT · Class 9-10 · Chapter 1 · ICT and our Bangladesh
E-learning, and Bangladesh.
Good teachers are few and the distances are long. Between those two sentences sits the oldest problem in Bangladesh's schooling. E-learning does not solve it, but it can do one thing nothing could do before: carry one teacher's lesson a long way, and carry it many times over.
1. What e-learning actually means
E-learning is the practice of teaching through a CD-ROM, the internet, a private network or a television channel. The full form is Electronic Learning. Read that definition closely, because it names four media and only one of them is the internet.
This is where the commonest mistake happens. Students hear e-learning and think of an online class, then conclude that without the internet there is no e-learning. That does not even match the definition. And there is something the definition does not say but implies: e-learning does not remove the teacher. It carries the teacher's lesson further, and lets it be watched again.
branchestap a branch
Three ways a lesson travels
E-learning
Over the internet needs a connection
A live class: teacher and student at the same hour
A recorded lesson: whenever you like, as often as you like
Online material and question banks
Over the air only a television or a radio
Classes on an educational television channel
Lessons on the radio
You watch at the set hour; there is no going back
Off the line works with no connection at all
Lessons kept on a CD-ROM or a DVD
Material kept on the school's own network
Video downloaded onto a computer beforehand
There is a difference between a live lesson and a recorded one, and each costs something. In a live class you can ask a question on the spot, but you have to be there at the hour. A recorded lesson can be watched whenever and as often as you like, but a question does not get answered at once. For a student who works by day and studies in the evening, the second is the only option there is.
check yourself
One question
By the definition, which of these is not a medium of e-learning?
The CD-ROM is the first medium in the definition. People forget it because it works without a connection.
The internet is the second medium in the definition, and the best known of the four.
Right. The definition names a CD-ROM, the internet, a private network and a television channel, all four of them electronic. A printed book is not. Read the same book as a digital edition on a screen, though, and that is e-learning.
A television channel is the fourth medium in the definition. Educational broadcasting sits right there.
2. The road a live class travels
An online class looks like a trick: the teacher in one place, the student in another, and yet they are talking. There is no trick, there are five steps. Walk the steps and one thing comes out, and it is the most useful thing in this whole note.
step by stepwalk the steps
How a live class gets there
The teacher. The teacher is speaking. A camera catches the picture, a microphone catches the sound. Up to here everything is still physical.
The machine. The computer turns the picture and the sound into numbers and cuts them into small packets. Without that conversion none of it could be put on a wire.
The server. The packets travel over the network to a server. One student or a thousand, the server's job is the same; only the number of copies goes up. That is where the real power of e-learning lies.
The tower, or the cable. A mobile tower or a broadband cable carries the packets as far as the student's area. This is where most of the trouble is; when the connection is weak, the picture freezes.
The screen. The student's device turns the numbers back into a picture and a sound. The whole road takes a fraction of a second, which is why a conversation is possible at all.
Read the third step again. One student in the class or a thousand, the teacher's effort is the same. An ordinary classroom does not hold more than sixty, and even then the back row hears little. This is the one place where e-learning goes past the classroom, and it is exactly why a subject with no teacher anywhere in the area can still be studied.
3. What it can do, and what it cannot
“E-learning solves everything” and “e-learning does not really work” are both wrong, and both are easy to say. The truth is in between, but nobody remembers an in between they were handed. Sort the twelve tasks below for yourself.
sort thema chip, then a bin
What e-learning reaches
Pick up a chip, then drop it in a bin.
Right. Next one.
Not there. Ask yourself: does this one have to be done with a body, on this side of the screen?
All in place. Notice that almost everything on the right is a matter of a body, a relationship or an opportunity. That is why in practice a mixture of classroom and online works best.
So what works best in practice is neither one alone but a mixture of the two: classroom and online together, with practicals and discussion in the room and theory and revision on the screen. Put another way: which medium suits a lesson depends on the lesson.
kinds of lessontap a kind of lesson
Which lesson suits which medium
In the room. Holding the apparatus, measuring, getting it wrong and doing it again: none of that comes off a video. Watching the method beforehand, though, wastes less of the lab hour.
Both together. A video explaining the rule can be watched as often as you like, but it takes a teacher to point at where your own mistake is happening.
Online works well. The right pronunciation can be heard over and over, and your own can be recorded and compared. A classroom does not give you that many hearings.
Online works well. Zooming in and out of a map and switching its layers: none of that is possible on paper.
In the room. Dividing the work, arguing, deciding together: this is people's work with people. It can be done online, but it is much harder.
Both together. Recording your practice on video catches your own faults, but the real test is saying it with people in front of you.
Online works well. A timeline, a map and old photographs can be shown at once, which a page of a book cannot do.
All seven seen. Three online, two in the room, two together. That split is the argument for mixing the two.
4. Where the time goes
“It saves time” is written everywhere and nobody works out how much. Put your own real distance in below. Say there was an extra class you had to travel to and now it happens online; only the travelling and the waiting are being counted.
calculatorchange the numbers
Counting the hours
The figure comes from the numbers you put in, not from the book.
What you type goes nowhere. The page is yours.
One sentence has to go with the figure or the sum is incomplete: time saved and not used is not saved. The tiredness of travelling is real, and so is the harm of sitting in front of a screen hour after hour. That belongs on the list of limits too.
check yourself
Another question
Sohag's extra class was 25 minutes away each way, and 10 minutes a day went in waiting. He went five days a week. Now that the class is online, how many hours has he saved over four weeks?
The journey happens twice. Do not forget to double the 25 minutes.
Right. A day saves (2 × 25) + 10 = 60 minutes, which is 1 hour. Five days a week is 5 hours, and four weeks is 5 × 4 = 20 hours.
The 10 minutes of waiting happens once a day, not twice. The daily total is 60 minutes.
Five days a week, not six. Five hours a week over four weeks is 20.
5. Where this stands in Bangladesh
E-learning in Bangladesh is not a proposal on paper. Multimedia classrooms have gone into many schools, where lessons are taught off a screen. There is a government online portal for teachers, where teachers themselves make material and share it with one another. Educational programmes have been broadcast on television, and digital editions of the textbooks are available.
The biggest change has come for the people who come last on the list: students in hard to reach places, students who cannot get to school because of a disability, and people carrying on their studies alongside a job. For them e-learning is not a convenience but the only door. Which is also why those with no device, or where the power is unreliable, being left out is not an inconvenience but a gap.
check yourself
Last question
A school has electricity and computers but no internet connection. How can it start e-learning?
Read the definition again. A CD-ROM and a private network are both in it, and both work without the internet.
Right. The definition itself names the CD-ROM and the private network, and neither needs the internet. Once the material is on the computers or the school network, students can watch it as often as they like.
Printed notes are not an electronic medium, so that is not e-learning. The computers would just sit there.
More teachers is a good thing, but the question was how to start e-learning with the computers they already have.
The cards below are cut from this note.
cut from the notetap a card
Five cards
QuestionWhat is e-learning?
AnswerTeaching through a CD-ROM, the internet, a private network or a television channel.
QuestionWhat does the e stand for?
AnswerElectronic Learning.
QuestionCan e-learning work without the internet?
AnswerIt can. A CD-ROM, a DVD or the school's own network is enough.
QuestionWhere does its real power lie?
AnswerOne student or a thousand, the teacher's effort is the same.
QuestionWhat can e-learning not do alone?
AnswerPractical work, group work and supervision; and with no power or no device, nothing at all.