My wife had to do online teaching and she spent way more time and effort this spring teaching than she did prior to the shut down. She spent hours and hours putting together those packets you mentioned and designing the material to be taught online, then many more hours and hours teaching a few kids at a time online. She worked harder than she ever did in a classroom and it was less effective. Many kids didn't have the resources others just didn't show up to the online dates. She spent hours on the phones with parents discussing each kid too get participation. You have no idea what you speak when you say, "They basically just put together assignments for people to pick up or download. Certainly some work but not much." Speak about stuff you know, this subject you do not.
Or you know, maybe, just maybe, it's possible that my kids weren't in your wife's class in the spring? I know it's a long shot. I mean, your wife probably had 30 kids in her class. What are the chances that my kids wouldn't have been in that thirty.
But if you could imagine that possibility, maybe you could also imagine the possibility that the teachers of our kids didn't do anything more than scanning in their worksheets that they would have used in class? Hell, maybe it's even possible that we are friends with our kids' teachers outside and talked with them about what they did and their frustration that it wasn't feasible for them to do an online lesson b/c they didn't have the production capability and the kids weren't at a level that they could read lessons to themselves? Maybe it's even possible that preparing for lower elementary classes is different from preparing for high school classes to be taught remotely? I don't know. I know it's a lot easier to focus on the likelihood that aliens have visited earth and we have some pieces of their aircraft, but maybe there are crazier things that are true also, like not all teachers being in the same position in the spring and not all students being in your wife's class.
ETA: Maybe it is basically impossible to record lessons and have time to do in person teaching. I was thinking that for our teachers that have been doing it for a while, they could record four hours of lessons in 6 hours. But that probably is ridiculously optimist now that I think about it. Even if all they did was record how they normally talk in class, they'd probably have more than 2 hours of prep and editing and retakes, etc, so that may not even be doable in 40 hours, and would probably be more timeconsuming than just the synchronous option.
