'Telelectures by foreigners' introduced in 50 schools in Gyeonggi-doNice to see Yonhap simply parroting a Gyeonggi provincial office of education (GPOE) press release. Had a minimum of research been done, it might have been noticed that three weeks ago budget cuts forced the GPOE to institute a hiring freeze on native speaking teachers in the province (from October to February - practically the same period this pilot program is taking place) and threatened the jobs of those who have not yet finished their contracts (though the GPOE denies this). It will be interesting to see if this is just a stopgap measure to deal with the cuts or if it will be implemented on a wider scale in the future.
From September until next February 50 elementary, middle and high schools in Gyeonggi-do will operate a pilot project in which native speakers living overseas will hold live 'telelectures.'
On the 10th the Gyeonggi office of education said, "To bridge the gap in English education we plan to have native speaker telelectures at 50 schools during second semester."
The telelectures will be held by native speakers living overseas in places like the US or Australia whose lecture will be linked in real time. Students will be able to talk to the native speaking instructors.
Schools will sign contracts with specialized companies for the video lectures.
Each school will make a request to the company for classes which need telelessons, and some schools will also have video lessons for their after school programs.
The provincial office of education will decide whether to continue and expand the use of telelectures after analyzing the results of the pilot program.
The provincial office of education expect that the telelectures will help bridge the English education gap for students in areas where it's difficult to hire native speaking teachers.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Gyeonggi-do to implement pilot program for native speaker 'telelectures'
On August 10, Yonhap published the following article:
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5 comments:
How are these telelectures any different from the (failed) robot experiments where the teachers taught remotely, their faces on the robots' heads?
The telelectures script includes the line "call me Robbie"
The high school I'm working at now tried this. It was hard to find and hold onto teachers. Even harder, was getting decent teachers.
I think they should get teachers from the Philippines or other, cheaper non-western countries. But what I suspect is that they'll try to get westerners that are un-/under-qualified. Also, I predict they'll try to get as many as possible while paying as little as possible, making the same mistakes all over again.
Even if the budget is much more limited, I still think this will happen.
All the things you mention that will probably happen [with the telelectures] have ALREADY happened with the remotely-controlled robots. That's why they were a failure and why the robots now take up closet space gathering dust.
I thought this ad gave a humorous look at one possible robot scenario. "Flaws? Maybe."
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