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I did very poorly academically despite or perhaps because of being sent to a fee paying British boarding school for 10 years.
It was not until during my university years when I decided to educate myself in the areas I was actually interested that I actually started to learn anything of use(I became a voracious reader of literature - Roman, Greek, Victorian and more modern works - and started to learn for once).
As far as I was concerned the 10+ years of school was pretty much a complete waste of time - what I learnt at school, that was of any interest or use to me, I could probably have learnt in 6 months.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Time wasted at school could be huge, but not exactly 100%. Systemic education is still rather important in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) area, either it's implemented in regular classrooms, or in the virtual ones.
<lol>Life is 2short 2remove USB safely
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DrABELL wrote: PS. frankly, eLearning should be implemented on a mass scale long time ago: what is that special they are doing in the classrooms that cannot be done online?
I don't believe there is a one-size-fits-all solution; however, online education should certainly have a part to play but the friendships, sports and social activities that are a vitally important part of child development cannot be done online.
BTW, that site of yours really shows your age! 
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'1Size fits all' already been covered in details (C'Mon, read the entire uber-comments thread  ):
online education comes in many sizes, like 1280x800, 1366x800, 1920x800, 2560x1440, etc.
<lol>Life is 2short 2remove USB safely
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I'm strictly 25*80. If it don't fit that, it don't fit.
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Ja, auld habits die hard, but try thinking outside the box: EXAMPLE [^]
<lol>Life is 2short 2remove USB safely
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I have two kids who attended online high school (not a crazy home-schooler, not living in Outer Mongolia, it was kids' own personal issues), so I think I have a few things to say.
First off, if you can manage to stagger into a physical classroom and remain awake, you learn some things just by having the lecture enter your ears. That is, it is less boring to listen to the lecture than to count the holes in the ceiling tiles, so mostly you do. The biggest problem with virtual classes is that you don't need to do it at any particular time. There's always something else you can do, especially with your computer. Especially when you're used to using your computer to watch youtube and read 4chan.
Second, it's really hard for teachers to prepare perfect presentation materials. Teachers in classroom use feedback from the listeners to ad lib there way out of weakness in their materials. These weaknesses become glaringly apparent in a non-interactive classroom. Really good presentation can make a taped lecture hugely engaging. Crappy web TV of an imperfect live performance, not so much. Guess where on the spectrum most remote lectures fall.
Third, watching a lecture on TV is not as engaging as attending a lecture. Listening to a recorded lecture is harder still. Reading a book is even less engaging. The fact of the matter is, all other things being equal, that it's easier to have knowledge spoon fed to you than if you have to work for it.
Fourth, every pause or imperfection in the speaker's delivery, every scratchy mic noise, every compression artifact, is incredibly distracting on the screen, where we are used to high production values. We understand, at a level way below consciousness, that humans in meatspace say, "Um, uh...". On TV, we are trained to expect perfection. Perfect beauty (how many teachers are hired because they are really beautiful), perfect diction, perfect delivery, perfect screenwriting, perfect lighting, urgent pacing, a musical sound track to get your attention and help you understand what is good, bad, significant, important.
Without this stuff, you realize just how limiting the screen is. Your attention wanders. You wish they'd hurry up and get to the good stuff. And this is with lectures you actually sought out and wanted to watch. Now think how hard it is if you are just grinding through it because your mom says you have to go to school.
I think virtual education has a bright future. But the future won't arrive until we stop thinking we can make a cheap recording of a mediocre live lecture, compress the sh*t out of it, and stream it onto the tiny screen of your cell phone. Ultimately, we will have a choice of several well-produced, high quality lectures on each desired topic. Then virtual education will rock.
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SeattleC++ wrote: I think virtual education has a bright future. But the future won't arrive until we stop thinking we can make a cheap recording of a mediocre live lecture, compress the sh*t out of it, and stream it onto the tiny screen of your cell phone.
I would recommend to read the previous comments addressing various issues and, in particular, this one: it was already pointed out that online education can implement Virtual Classrooms with full duplex audio-visual and text communication between teachers/students. Such technology has been around for many years. Also, you can find in comments thread a concise but insightful pros/cons analysis of Real vs Virtual Classrooms. Best regards,
<lol>Life is 2short 2remove USB safely
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DrABELL wrote: read the previous comments addressing various issues and, in particular, this one: it was already pointed out that online education can implement Virtual Classrooms with full duplex audio-visual and text communication between teachers/students.
I refer you to my comment that squeezing even a full duplex audio-visual view onto a small screen is not as good as live presence. In fact, it is poor design to attempt to recreate the live lecture feeling on a tiny screen and tinny speaker. The presentation is best adapted to employ the strengths of the medium and mitigate its shortcomings.
I further note that, as I mentioned, while the capability has been available for years, its implementation into actual distance-learning situations has been mostly of poor quality, as witnessed by my own and my children's actual experience rather than some third-party analysis.
We probably agree that the best possible distance learning implementation can be competitive with actual presence. I eagerly await the day that the best possible distance learning implementation becomes commonplace.
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Well, who would argue that listening to Maria Callas at Metropolitan Opera is a way better than watching her performance on TV or PC. But not all of us are so lucky to reside in that particular ZIP code (plus, having enough extra cash in the pocket). As a matter of fact, many of us would be just glad to have at least that minimal opportunity, i.e. quality PC video streaming. The same could be said about real/virtual classrooms. Btw, the quality of video-streaming currently is pretty high (refer to my kinda auld but rather popular articles on this topic posted on CP YouTube™ Embedded Video Player: Extended API (C#)[^] )
Best regards,
<lol>Life is 2short 2remove USB safely
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DrABELL wrote: what is that special they are doing in the classrooms that cannot be done online?
Childcare. Classrooms are a really good way to look after a large number of children with a small number of staff. Otherwise someone has to stay home all day every day to look after the child whilst they do their online learning. They might even clog up your internet connection thereby stopping you spending all day posting comments in forums such as this one
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"Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Additionally, a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."
So, let me get this right...a service temporarily unavailable error causes a service temorarily unavailable error...this could take a while... 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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No, being unable to use ErrorDocument causes that!
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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And did a black button light up black saying "don't press that"?
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OriginalGriff wrote: Service Temporarily Unavailable
That's how I feel every morning 
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... What exactly was abusive about this?
Heavy hitter too: platinum level abuse vote.
Now, I don't care about rep points, but I do get the feeling that someone is abusing their position...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Shirly winkled away somewhere in a log file somewhere there is record with an ID of who dumped on you. The privileged should be able to get at it!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Well .. yes .. unless that service is temporarily unavailable!
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Perhaps it's from the guy who wrote the error message? Easily offended, error message writers. It can't be easy knowing that everything you do is wrong! 
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Member 9082365 wrote: Perhaps it's from the guy who wrote the error message?
Or from the one that write the failing code ?
Patrice
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Albert Einstein
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I think this guy is also raging in QA. It looks he is easily upset if answers don't use the tone he likes.
He downvoted 5 of my answers in a matter of 10 minutes. Ok I tend to be not nice to people that simply ask for a solution for their homework
I have even been downvoted for recommending to use a debugger to someone that didn't understand what a piece of code was doing, and another one that did not understood why its code was failing.
Patrice
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Albert Einstein
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How did they got dressed so well. 
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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And you're not God! If you don't want to know then don't read it. There was surely enough information in the thread title?
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