THE CLASSROOM AND THE COMPUTER SCREEN Online Education | Page 5

most learned and seasoned teacher. education, students and teachers need
Here is sympathy at work. to read one another and react. Any
In order to assess the fitness of any
communications platform that inhibits
communication medium for this sympathetic interplay between
educational use, we must consider its teacher and student has, at most, only
capacity for promoting sympathy limited potential for facilitating
between teachers and students. Does effective lessons. As Augustine put it,
the medium allow teachers and such a platform squanders “the power
students to read one another and then of a sympathetic disposition of mind.”
react? It must enable students to
The first principle of an ideal
exhibit what they have internalized education, sympathy, addresses the
from the lesson. They should be able to teacher-student relationship. A second
re-create the lesson on their own steam principle, the principle of fellowship,
and display the lesson their own way. considers how students relate to one
The medium must allow students to lay another. In an ideal education,
their contribution before a teacher in students study in the company of other
order for the teacher to react—to students. This principle acknowledges
adjust, clarify, improve and ultimately that both cooperation and competition
seal the lesson upon
Any communications platform
are keys to learning.
their students. A that inhibits this sympathetic The fellowship of
second question we interplay between teacher and comrades-in-
need to ask is this: student has, at most, only learning not only
Does the medium limited potential for facilitating builds a student’s
allow students to effective lessons.
observe how the
perseverance to push
past obstacles, it also
teacher reacts to their work? Students cultivates ambition that summons her
learn better when they see that their to high achievement. The principle also
own performance makes an observable recognizes how the presence of others
difference in the way their teacher acts provides a student with the traction
toward them. These two questions she needs to assess herself. While there
point to the fact that, in a sound is value in one-on-one interaction
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