The blog is already 3 weeks old and I am getting quite a few responses from people interested in this field. I enjoy reading the messages and responding to them. One of these emails addressed the question of the future of conventional school in the age of distance learning. This is, naturally, a frequent question when discussing online learning:

Will distance learning replace the physical school some day?

 As part of my job as a CEO in eTeacher, I get to meet with teachers (In the past when the company was small I met them more often here in the company and also in the schools), and this issue seems to be on teachers’ minds, coming up often in my conversations with them. There is usually at least one teacher that remarks sarcastically “pretty soon they won’t need us anymore” or “when will it replace the school as we know it”?

As far as I’m concerned, as opposed to other technological revolutions (the industrial revolution and technological inventions that replaced human workers), distance learning will not replace the teacher or the school. On the contrary: It will open up more opportunities for both teachers and schools. Teachers will find more work outside of school and schools will have another tool that will enable them to enrich their curriculum during and after school hours (we will probably discuss this issue further in this blog).

Many of the teachers who work for eTeacher work in schools in the morning and with us in the afternoon hours. Some teachers live in remote places where there are no jobs in their specific fields, and they can only find teaching jobs through distance learning companies. There are also those teachers that work for us full-time. Some of them relocated to other cities or even countries and could keep their jobs while doing so. We have created hundreds of teaching jobs for teachers around the world and that really is the answer to the question. More jobs, more opportunities!

And as for schools; we all know that a school is more than just a place that provides knowledge. It is also an educational institute and an arena for social interaction, growth and development. It is a basis and an anchor on which our economy and workforce is based since  it enables us parents to go to work knowing that someone is watching over our kids.

So, besides providing knowledge, distance learning cannot all other school duties.

I am very clear on this. Distance learning will not replace teachers or schools!

See you next week.