All school is online school

[floozy]

It's interesting how little criticism I see of the way both work and school have become completely assimilated into the Internet. I rarely see this mentioned when people promote a more offline existence, despite it being one of the main things that makes having Internet access necessary. I mainly just wanted to share my own feelings about the subject.

The Internet is bad for our attention spans. This much is obvious. Short attention spans destroy the ability to think deeply in a way that's entirely antithetical to our modern school system. High level coursework requires deep thought and deep work, but assigning/complete work throughout the Internet introduces the same kind of speediness that's become ubiquitous to it. The deadlines are stated boldly at the top of each page. Your schoolwork now comes in the form of a "dashboard", complete with infinite scroll. There are hundreds of tabs and modules and external sites that you are expected to navigate. I'm not an idiot; I know how to do these things. But that level of engagement is something I do for fun while messing around online. It's not an academic space. It's just a small fragment embedded in the larger network. It's not conductive to truly sitting down and understanding the material, being forced to sit with and articulate your own thoughts in silence. The energy is hyperactive and schizophrenic.

Learning was a lot easier when I was younger. I know this is due to a lot of factors, some of which are natural. Kids absorb information easier. The coursework gets harder as you get older. I've fried my own brain with an internet addiction (though I'm trying to recover). But I can't help thinking the entire way we're expected to learn now is a bit fucked up. The way I learned in elementary/middle school was through worksheets and essays, all on pen and paper, with no distractions. Each task was isolated amongst itself, not just one tab in a sea of other tabs. It didn't feel like I was multitasking then; the most I would do was listen to music. We still used computers occasionally, but that too was a single and isolated task. It was just a tool then. As I understand it, this is how most of humanity was educated. I'm not sure it was such a good idea to try and move education entirely online. Not just socially, but in the coursework itself. I feel like not much thought was given to this decision and that the consequences of it aren't fully understood. To many people, it may not seem that different from normal school. All I can say is the energy and the way my brain feels during/afterwards are entirely different than I feel when I've actually sat down with a book or written out an essay on paper.

Anyway, I'm the youngest person in my life, so I'm not sure if elementary and middle school have moved online as well or if that's reserved for high school and college. I think younger minds are even more at risk for this kind of thing; education homogenizing itself into the glossy and featureless sludge that most of the internet now provides. Anyway, time to go type out an essay

 

[Mamisu]

Yeah my last year in high-school is when they started moving everything online, and I hated it. I would imagine kids nowadays hate it too.

 

[Abaris the Hyperborean]

I've noticed something similar among younger kids who spend much of a school day on a laptop, doing assignments through a digital platform of some sort. It was like that for me to a certain extent in high school, but there were still a few teachers who didn't bother setting up whatever digital platform we used and handed out worksheets. After covid it's all become digital. It was a necessity to teach remotely, now it's become baked into the system; the school building is nothing more than a building where students go to be on their laptops.

 

[manpaint]

Yeah, having classes be entirely online is a bad idea.

I personally only witnessed the very start of it - so I don't know how things have progressed since, but I'd assume it just amplify the feeling of isolation.

Despite my deep hatred for soundful school environment, I must admit that the ability to talk to other human beings IRL allow you to have humane interactions and devlop your social skills.

Why people like online school and remote work is beyond me. The only real advantage is that you can mute people.

 

[Collision]

The Internet is bad for our attention spans. This much is obvious.

Is it obvious? I don't think it's obvious that a telecommunications network affects your attention span.

Short attention spans destroy the ability to think deeply in a way that's entirely antithetical to our modern school system. High level coursework requires deep thought and deep work, but assigning/complete work throughout the Internet introduces the same kind of speediness that's become ubiquitous to it. The deadlines are stated boldly at the top of each page. Your schoolwork now comes in the form of a "dashboard", complete with infinite scroll. There are hundreds of tabs and modules and external sites that you are expected to navigate. I'm not an idiot; I know how to do these things. But that level of engagement is something I do for fun while messing around online. It's not an academic space. It's just a small fragment embedded in the larger network. It's not conductive to truly sitting down and understanding the material, being forced to sit with and articulate your own thoughts in silence. The energy is hyperactive and schizophrenic.

I'm not sure why you believe this. For instance, right now I am sitting quietly at my computer and articulating my own thoughts in silence (or relative silence because I have some fairly loud hard disks and fans in my PC). What about computers or the internet prevents you from sitting quietly and understanding a topic? I have a hard time believing that it's web design elements or the presence of a convenient calendar for determining when assignments are due.

The way I learned in elementary/middle school was through worksheets and essays, all on pen and paper, with no distractions.

You couldn't have turned on a radio, television, or played with a video game console? They didn't have doodles, checking the refrigerator for snacks, or calling your friends on the phone when you were in elementary school?

As I understand it, this is how most of humanity was educated.

Personally, all of my primary and secondary education was offline like you described. I received acceptable grades but I never performed spectacularly. My post-secondary education has all involved computers, digital assignments, calendars, and whatever else. I've done far better in a university environment than I ever did in elementary, middle, or high school. I'm highly skeptical that the ubiquity of computers and convenient telecommunications systems have affected me in either case.

To many people, it may not seem that different from normal school. All I can say is the energy and the way my brain feels during/afterwards are entirely different than I feel when I've actually sat down with a book or written out an essay on paper.

Is something stopping you from reading books or writing on paper? Certainly, it isn't the internet. Perhaps, you're taking classes that are organized poorly or being forced to use poorly designed educational software in lieu of textbooks. I can definitely agree that those are substantial problems, but they're caused by educators and not by the internet.

 

[floozy]

Is it obvious? I don't think it's obvious that a telecommunications network affects your attention span.

I'd say the evidence is pretty conclusive. Social media developers game your attention span so you'll spend the most time on the app and dope your serotonin receptors to keep you "on" all the time. Here's a study that goes more into depth; it's far from the only one of its kind. You can argue that it's only certain kinds of internet use and that it can be used responsibly. I don't disagree, else I wouldn't be here.

I'm not sure why you believe this. For instance, right now I am sitting quietly at my computer and articulating my own thoughts in silence (or relative silence because I have some fairly loud hard disks and fans in my PC). What about computers or the internet prevents you from sitting quietly and understanding a topic? I have a hard time believing that it's web design elements or the presence of a convenient calendar for determining when assignments are due.

I have issues with the layout of Canvas itself as well as my school's communication system. I have to keep my email open most of the time to be cognizant of for assignment changes/announcements. I get system notifications, app notifications, what-have-you. I have to cross reference multiple tabs and websites for a single assignment. It's not that cross referencing doesn't exist on paper, but there's something really disconcerting about switching between dozens of tabs without the textile association that you are turning over a page, opening a new book, etc. It cheapens the experience for me and reinforcing the homogeneous feeling that a lot of the internet tends to give me nowadays. These are some inherent issues with it. The other issue is that being online is distracting because its a place for both work and fun. I feel as though you're trying to bait me into admitting more personal responsibility, that I can choose not to look at distracting websites/surf the web when I'm supposed to be working. Maybe so. Doesn't change the fact that it happens for me and for plenty of other students and that that serotonin reward system is still in place. Now clearly I can focus decently enough to make this forum post and to keep up with school, but I'm saying its not the same level of depth I could probably achieve having a discussion in real life or in writing.

The brain perceives text on screen differently from text on paper. Reading from a screen is associated with shorter attention spans and less comprehension.

You couldn't have turned on a radio, television, or played with a video game console? They didn't have doodles, checking the refrigerator for snacks, or calling your friends on the phone when you were in elementary school?

Nope. Did my work at a homework club or in my kitchen. I would take breaks, but I couldn't walk away from my responsibilites as easily as I can open another tab and waste a few hours.

Is something stopping you from reading books or writing on paper? Certainly, it isn't the internet. Perhaps, you're taking classes that are organized poorly or being forced to use poorly designed educational software in lieu of textbooks. I can definitely agree that those are substantial problems, but they're caused by educators and not by the internet.

Hate to break it to you, but that's the way most high schools and universities function now. Pretty much everything is handled online through Canvas. It's basically what I've been complaining about this entire post. Work is assigned and expected to be completed and submitted online. They don't accept handwritten work for most assignments and projects.

 

[skelegorg]

yeah, as a much more pen-and-paper person myself i really didn't appreciate the movement to online submissions.

also, as far as distractions and such go, my school required everyone to have a laptop (they'd give you a chromebook if you couldn't afford one) and almost the whole class period, even while the teacher was teaching, you were supposed to have your computer up. the number of hours i saw wasted on browser games was astronomical. i can name a number of people i knew personally who were completely lost after every lesson because they played tetris or emulated pokemon forthe whole period.

i tried to dabble with handwriting-to-text converters but my handwriting is too small for any publically available OCR software to be able to pick up a full page of my writing. the resulting mess took a few hours to proofread in and of itself for all manner of errors. i think digital submission and assignment completion is a disadvantage for a lot of students.

plus, it removes any degree of separation from school and home. now i spend all the school day on my computer, then go home and do my homework on my computer, and then in my free time the last thing i want to do is work on my projects which are on my computer, the same effect work has on a lot of people. however i think its more harmful to students, particularly middle and high school students, as it creates an non nurturing enviroment for people developing all kinds of hobbies, although it does the benefit of driving people offline to discover hobbies there.

 

[Collision]

I'd say the evidence is pretty conclusive. Social media developers game your attention span so you'll spend the most time on the app and dope your serotonin receptors to keep you "on" all the time. Here's a study that goes more into depth; it's far from the only one of its kind. You can argue that it's only certain kinds of internet use and that it can be used responsibly. I don't disagree, else I wouldn't be here.

Based on the article you're citing here, I would say that the evidence is not actually very conclusive at all. For example the article says this:

However, there is a paucity of observational or experimental studies examining how long-term internet use could produce sustained changes in brain development, connectivity, and structure, and how this may underlie internet-induced alternations in typical cognitive processes. Of note, there is a particular dearth of research in children and adolescents, whose younger brains may be more responsive to the potential neuroplastic (i.e., flexible neurological dynamics) changes associated with increased internet use. To our knowledge, only one existing prospective study has examined the associations between internet usage and brain development in youth.

The authors also say this:

Despite this strong observational link, the question of course remains whether excessive use of the internet is a causal factor for ADHD, or whether adolescents with probable ADHD are more susceptible to excessive internet usage. Future research, particularly research using methods that allow investigation of the causality and direction of relationships, will provide much-needed insights into the potential adverse impacts of the extensive internet usage on attentional disorders in young people.

I think their conclusion sums it up nicely:

Whereas the effects of internet use on the brain are not yet fully understood, there is convergent evidence from multiple fields that our extensive interactions with this novel feature of society could influence our attention, memory, and other aspects of cognition. Further longitudinal work is required, particularly in young people. [emphasis added]

I certainly am arguing that the internet and the web can be used responsibly. It seems to me, also, that this is focusing an awful lot on exactly one way of using the internet (i.e., the web). It makes me wonder, to what extent do the researchers and their subjects actually understand the internet as a technology? If the internet is just gossip blogs and social media then that's a very narrow scope.

I have issues with the layout of Canvas itself as well as my school's communication system.

Like you, I've had to use this software extensively (along with other similar things). I agree it sucks in a variety of ways but I don't agree that it has anything to do with the internet. Educators choose to use this software and, in my experience, they also choose to use it extremely naively.

I feel as though you're trying to bait me into admitting more personal responsibility, that I can choose not to look at distracting websites/surf the web when I'm supposed to be working.

This is absolutely what I am doing yes.

Doesn't change the fact that it happens for me and for plenty of other students and that that serotonin reward system is still in place. Now clearly I can focus decently enough to make this forum post and to keep up with school, but I'm saying its not the same level of depth I could probably achieve having a discussion in real life or in writing.

You're right that whether or not you should take more responsibility doesn't affect whether you have an attention problem. It does affect what should be done about it.

Nope. Did my work at a homework club or in my kitchen. I would take breaks, but I couldn't walk away from my responsibilites as easily as I can open another tab and waste a few hours.

This, also, sounds like a personal responsibility issue to me. Perhaps you should find a workspace where you will feel more accountable.

They don't accept handwritten work for most assignments and projects.

I'm well aware of this but I still question why you can't work on paper. Write your essay by hand and transcribe it when you're happy with it. Are you being compelled by someone to do your work exclusively through a computer?

 

[bnuungus]

So I agree with OP here but Collision is bringing up some interesting points with the personal responsibility stuff. I think it really comes down to your personality in that regard. Some people (like myself and I'm guessing OP as well) simply need other people present to be motivated enough to not actively waste time. It doesn't really come down to an issue of laziness (I mean it sort of does but it's more than that), it really comes down to what your personal work flow looks like. I know that for me personally, I will jump at every excuse to relax and the ability to open another tab is too great a temptation to actually stay focused on your actual work. Idk, it's clear to me that in general, attention spans have lessoned in recent generations and so tempting students to waste time by having everything be online is on the educators, not the students. The teachers should be the ones to help develop the students attention spans

 

[handoferis]

Why people like online school and remote work is beyond me. The only real advantage is that you can mute people.

Remote work is pretty simple:

- I save thousands a year and a significant amount of my lifespan not commuting
- I get to spend all day with my cat
- I get to cook decent food at home instead of buying something awful or expensive in city center
- Temperature always how I like it
- My desk is better than anything an office can give me
- I don't have to be around people that come to work sick (which was gross even before covid)
- I don't have to be there when someone microwaves fish in the office

School different in a lot of ways, mostly in that the responsibility for all the things around it rarely falls to you to cover.

 

[bnuungus]

Remote work is pretty simple:

- I save thousands a year and a significant amount of my lifespan not commuting
- I get to spend all day with my cat
- I get to cook decent food at home instead of buying something awful or expensive in city center
- Temperature always how I like it
- My desk is better than anything an office can give me
- I don't have to be around people that come to work sick (which was gross even before covid)
- I don't have to be there when someone microwaves fish in the office

School different in a lot of ways, mostly in that the responsibility for all the things around it rarely falls to you to cover.

yeah I hated online college but for whatever reason I really enjoy working remotely for my job. I wish I could do it more often

 

[manpaint]

Remote work is pretty simple:

- I save thousands a year and a significant amount of my lifespan not commuting
- I get to spend all day with my cat
- I get to cook decent food at home instead of buying something awful or expensive in city center
- Temperature always how I like it
- My desk is better than anything an office can give me
- I don't have to be around people that come to work sick (which was gross even before covid)
- I don't have to be there when someone microwaves fish in the office

School different in a lot of ways, mostly in that the responsibility for all the things around it rarely falls to you to cover.

Well I guess it's fine if you manage to substitue the social element with something else, but I suposse this is not exactly an easy thing to do for most people.

From a "sustainer" point of view, this is somewhat unsustainable from a technological point of view. Remote work often means storing file in the cloud, using 3rd party applications (i.e Microsoft Teams) and presumably something else for the punching system. This create multiple points of failure, but I guess this is technically the compagny's problem and not yours.

That being said, I have some sinking feeling that augmenting our reliance on the internet is just digging the world's grave further. I can see many problem emerging from such lifestyle in the long run. Sustainability problem aside, I can think of the following:

• All jobs somehow requiring internet even if it's normally 100% online.
• People that struggle or can't use the internet will be screwed
• Remote work acting as further class division since you would expected to have a computer
• Further OS homogeny (i.e you need to have Windows to have a job)
• Workplace becoming toxic in a similar manner to social media.
• People becoming more echo-chambered due to not meeting different kind of people IRL
• Compagnies gaining more data on everyone
• Incrased loneliness for everyone
• People can't fully express themselves since everything is now recorded.

 

[handoferis]

I still socialise with my team at work, we just don't do it in any company sanctioned way - like we met up to have a picnic and get drunk in the park a few weeks ago

 

[Shantotto]

It's interesting how little criticism I see of the way both work and school have become completely assimilated into the Internet. I rarely see this mentioned when people promote a more offline existence, despite it being one of the main things that makes having Internet access necessary. I mainly just wanted to share my own feelings about the subject.

The Internet is bad for our attention spans. This much is obvious. Short attention spans destroy the ability to think deeply in a way that's entirely antithetical to our modern school system. High level coursework requires deep thought and deep work, but assigning/complete work throughout the Internet introduces the same kind of speediness that's become ubiquitous to it. The deadlines are stated boldly at the top of each page. Your schoolwork now comes in the form of a "dashboard", complete with infinite scroll. There are hundreds of tabs and modules and external sites that you are expected to navigate. I'm not an idiot; I know how to do these things. But that level of engagement is something I do for fun while messing around online. It's not an academic space. It's just a small fragment embedded in the larger network. It's not conductive to truly sitting down and understanding the material, being forced to sit with and articulate your own thoughts in silence. The energy is hyperactive and schizophrenic.

Learning was a lot easier when I was younger. I know this is due to a lot of factors, some of which are natural. Kids absorb information easier. The coursework gets harder as you get older. I've fried my own brain with an internet addiction (though I'm trying to recover). But I can't help thinking the entire way we're expected to learn now is a bit fucked up. The way I learned in elementary/middle school was through worksheets and essays, all on pen and paper, with no distractions. Each task was isolated amongst itself, not just one tab in a sea of other tabs. It didn't feel like I was multitasking then; the most I would do was listen to music. We still used computers occasionally, but that too was a single and isolated task. It was just a tool then. As I understand it, this is how most of humanity was educated. I'm not sure it was such a good idea to try and move education entirely online. Not just socially, but in the coursework itself. I feel like not much thought was given to this decision and that the consequences of it aren't fully understood. To many people, it may not seem that different from normal school. All I can say is the energy and the way my brain feels during/afterwards are entirely different than I feel when I've actually sat down with a book or written out an essay on paper.

Anyway, I'm the youngest person in my life, so I'm not sure if elementary and middle school have moved online as well or if that's reserved for high school and college. I think younger minds are even more at risk for this kind of thing; education homogenizing itself into the glossy and featureless sludge that most of the internet now provides. Anyway, time to go type out an essay

I've been thinking about this too. It was slow but inevitable like everything else going electronic. First it was pen & paper worksheets, then google docs for essays, then the occasional khan academy video, and by the time i got to college, everything was online module based. In college, often the instructor will either have pre-recorded lectures or flat out use another instructor at the college's lectures. I mean... it works, but something about it feels wrong. This is what YouTube was, when stuff at school didn't make sense. But now school is just a directory to youtube videos. Not all classes r like this of course and it really depends on the subject matter and especially instructor.

 

[LostintheCycle]

I had the wonderful fortune of spending my last two high school years in lockdown half the time. Whenever we came out of it for however long we would, it was always really sad to see how sapped everyone was, it's like nobody had any energy, especially the teachers. We senior students may have had it best because we were already old enough to make the choice to focus or not, even if most students chose the latter, but now there is a whole generation of kids who missed out on two years of extremely vital education in the earlier years, especially in that time where kids start hitting puberty, between grades 5-8, it would have tanked their communication abilities as well as sense of responsibility, and that's eventually going to rear it's head in the future.

You couldn't have turned on a radio, television, or played with a video game console? They didn't have doodles, checking the refrigerator for snacks, or calling your friends on the phone when you were in elementary school?

I think there is a distinct difference when you approach writing on paper in that for a lot of (young) people, the computer is not just a workplace but also where you play games and talk to friends. All the distractions are bundled with the work in the single object, whereas when you write pen on paper you can't easily switch to texting your friend or playing a game from that piece of paper without switching your attention to a different object. Take it with a grain of salt, this is psychological territory and I don't know much about that.

This is absolutely what I am doing yes.

I agree whole-heartedly with the sentiment of personal responsibility, but I think the environments created for students should be considered by educational departments heavily if they truly want to create better students, instead of shooting themselves in the foot over some stupid fad. That's also more realistic than teaching people how to be more responsible.

although it does the benefit of driving people offline to discover hobbies there.

There is nothing convincing about the idea that people will find offline hobbies because they spend all their time online. I'd believe more that they'd try to find online hobbies because they already spend all their time online so it's a familiar environment. People can get sick of the devices all they want, they'll still sit down at the end of the workday to watch Netflix and scroll on their phone.

 

[handoferis]

From a "sustainer" point of view, this is somewhat unsustainable from a technological point of view. Remote work often means storing file in the cloud, using 3rd party applications (i.e Microsoft Teams) and presumably something else for the punching system. This create multiple points of failure, but I guess this is technically the compagny's problem and not yours.

• All jobs somehow requiring internet even if it's normally 100% online.
• People that struggle or can't use the internet will be screwed
• Remote work acting as further class division since you would expected to have a computer
• Further OS homogeny (i.e you need to have Windows to have a job)
• Workplace becoming toxic in a similar manner to social media.
• People becoming more echo-chambered due to not meeting different kind of people IRL
• Compagnies gaining more data on everyone
• Incrased loneliness for everyone
• People can't fully express themselves since everything is now recorded.

idk mate a lot of this sounds like a Certified Business Classic.

People had contracts for Office 365 and all that before rona (which is where the Teams prevalence comes from), other places had Slack, etc. Pretty much nowhere I've worked since I started working back in like 2010 has had a physical time tracking system. OS homogeny all depends on IT department of place you work, I have worked in Windows only zones, and "choose whatever you want" zones. You also could never say whatever you wanted at work (if you want to keep job).

Gotta remember that most white collar jobs have just been "go to this different place to use a computer" for nearly 20-30 years already now. The only difference is not going to the place.

 

[manpaint]

idk mate a lot of this sounds like a Certified Business Classic.

People had contracts for Office 365 and all that before rona (which is where the Teams prevalence comes from), other places had Slack, etc. Pretty much nowhere I've worked since I started working back in like 2010 has had a physical time tracking system. OS homogeny all depends on IT department of place you work, I have worked in Windows only zones, and "choose whatever you want" zones. You also could never say whatever you wanted at work (if you want to keep job).

Gotta remember that most white collar jobs have just been "go to this different place to use a computer" for nearly 20-30 years already now. The only difference is not going to the place.

I agree that it's not that different from the pre-rona white-collar job landscape. My main concern is that it will get pushed to other job fields where this will not be beneficial.

I will probably make my a thread soon about this whole "speedrun to utopia" idea since I think this subject can go for a while.

 

[handoferis]

I honestly don't think there is a job you can do that isn't already majority computerized / online that doesn't involve you directly manually manipulating things in the real world. Until they replace those workers with robots inevitably - the remote work part will be skipped, it'll just go straight to the jobs not existing anymore. (Which honestly, if it were me, would be a much bigger panic point than any of the things in this thread so far)

 

[Collision]

I agree whole-heartedly with the sentiment of personal responsibility, but I think the environments created for students should be considered by educational departments heavily if they truly want to create better students, instead of shooting themselves in the foot over some stupid fad. That's also more realistic than teaching people how to be more responsible.

I'm on board with expecting more of educators and educational institutions. What I'm not on board with is absolving students, or anyone really, of their responsibility. Everyone involved in the educational process needs to engage with it in good faith for it to work. Blaming the failings of people on technology is convenient but it won't solve anything. In fact, I think it will almost certainly just make the technology worse.

 

[skelegorg]

There is nothing convincing about the idea that people will find offline hobbies because they spend all their time online. I'd believe more that they'd try to find online hobbies because they already spend all their time online so it's a familiar environment. People can get sick of the devices all they want, they'll still sit down at the end of the workday to watch Netflix and scroll on their phone.

i disagree, the vast majority of the population gets sick of sitting on their computer for 11/15 of their waking hours. there is zero reason that someone would think that they should spend more time on their computers because they already do all their work on them. in the experience to everyone i've really ever talked to about this, being sick of their computers has gotten them to go outside more, start running, start reading, start doing all kinds of other things that aren't reliant on their phone and computer. of course it hasnt killed tv, netflix, etc. and social media but i think it hasn't driven an increase in computer-driven hobbies.