I love where education is headed. This is a weird statement to make as a teacher; my income is currently based on the existence of relatively traditional schools. I could of course switch to tutoring, non-traditional educational institutions, become a consultant, or otherwise use my skills in related areas. But the truth is that I like working with high school students* and find the traditional setting perfectly acceptable. Yet I love the change that I see building up around me to invert some of what we now think of as schooling.
I recently mentioned Dan Meyer’s “Be less helpful” comment. It fits very well with the ideas of Modeling Physics (building from experiences and models of them with a big dose of Socratic Questioning), Peer Instruction, the recent explosion of the podcast (or vodcast) in education whether in chemistry or in general, and the flourishing of free online resources in the form of OpenCourseWareand textbooks (sorry for the physics centric link – follow links to go to the overall sites) or even whole Universities. Moving the basic transmission of ideas into a student centric space and focus the time in the institutional (social) setting for discussion, activities, and assessment (including more informal feedback style assessment similar to Eric Mazur’s Peer Instruction as well as formal tests). Its powerful stuff even if it isn’t really new. As I’m sure many people have noticed its really what a good literature class already does!
There are questions of course.
1. Can this inversion do anything about the smart under-achievers? Can such a switch motivate them to gain something from a podcast, video, or web site that they wouldn’t get a from a lecture, textbook, or teacher led activity?
2. Can this work in a setting with underprivileged students? The quantifiable data seems to say that this group isn’t doing much outside of class. If you combine that with the possible digital divide it might be rough. The flip side is that podcasts and audio are accessible with minimal and ubiquitous hardware. Plus playing them, or even a vodcast, might not seem quite a publicly nerdy as reading a book.
3. If perfect is the enemy of good and many teachers are at a good point right now is the benefit worth it? Purely thinking as a classroom teacher I find this the biggest question. It is not a matter of the amount of work but instead its a matter of having the transition from one style to the other disrupt the learning and lead to a result that is worse then either method. Or, to put things another way, is there enough buy in among all stakeholders that a teacher can safely learn these methods while doing them. Clearly this is a case by case basis.
I posted about the LEAF yesterday. I love the idea of an electric car from a traditional manufacturer with reasonably normal looks, a non-sports car mission, and a useful combination of speed and range. While I’m sure that the LEAF can not go 100 miles at 90mph I think its reasonable to make the assumption that it can go fairly close to 100 miles given a blend of 35 – 65 mph speeds like many people would see in a commute. Of course there are chicken and egg problems concerning recharging stations but all new technologies have this.
However as I went to sleep I was wondering about the recharge rate. It seems awfully fast. The batteries hold 24kWhr of energy. 80% of that is roughly 19kWhr. Given half an hour of charging time and a 200V outlet (yes, its probably 220V but the math is easier this way) I’m getting a 190A average flow of charge. That’s doable but its fairly large – this is not your normal dryer circuit.
90mph top speed (that’s actually much higher then I think it needs to be but I understand why it makes little sense to cap it at around 65mph) and 100 mile range make it very practical. Stated recharge to 80% of battery in 20 minutes (listed as 30 minutes on a different site) is even better. Nissan’s official website is here.
Once again Dan Meyer has summed up one of a key insights into teaching in a pithy statement “Be less helpful!” I’m not sure what I can really add to it as its really the same inside as the one behind guided inquiry teaching, problem based learning, and even the ideas expressed by AP workshop presenters. His restatement is terrific and is something that I at least, and possible others, need to reconnect with every so often. If I can get an embeddable link I’m going to put it on my permanent videos page.
On the other hand I think I can usefully comment on the ending of his presentation. His audience is made up of open source aficionados and coders so his ending plea is quite appropriate but unneeded. We already have collaborative spaces for sharing teaching methods, teaching materials, and teachable media. Dan’s blog is a great example. We have blogs, Nings, wikis, forums, mailing lists (how quaint but effective), various social networking sites, and multiple author blogs if the idea is to get away from one person directing the conversation. Do we really need another site or app or communication method? We do need more interactivity between social groupings but that is not a technological problem.
Of course maybe I’m not getting his message. From Dan’s response in one comment I suspect the distinction is that he want’s collaboration on the media itself while I would be satisfied with expanding the use of collaboration about the media and easy access to the media. In particular I see little purpose in editing some media in such a way that the original is lost. If I have an edit that I believe is of general utility I should upload mine with citation to yours as the inspiration and let people compare, contrast, and critic them in context. Again, the value seems to be in building a useful size community not in a new technological fix.
Alternately he might be referring to the fact that most online communication still has to go through a text medium. The idea of being able to easily add comments to a post via audio or video might be terrific. If that’s what you were meaning then my hat is off to you Dan.
First off, the title is more confrontational then it needs to be. Both curricula (Modeling Physics and Active Physics) are guided inquiry ways to teach high school physics. While there are some differences in approach they really have a very similar underlying philosophy.
The problem is that “high school physics” is a rather vague phrase; it covers approaches from no math to rigorous calculus and academic levels from the not as academic ninth graders to the most academic college prep seniors. Active Physics is aimed at the lower math, younger, and all inclusive end of the spectrum. Modeling is aimed as the upper end of high school ages with a more academic focus. Which explains why I am a little hesitant about my school’s* attempt to teach a college prep physics class to juniors and seniors using a combination of Active Physics and Conceptual Physics (I’m leaving out the fact that the other physics teacher wants to try out an independent study approach** and any possible problems caused by the mixing of two not necessarily compatible curricula).
* Really one of my two schools. The non-magnet physics class.
** More on this approach later. Conceptually its a good idea if the practical aspects work.
Just a quick note that my last post went through some major revisions. If you read it soon after it came out (ie prior to this message going out) you might want to revisit it. Or not.
I am very much in favor of both the increasing access to information and increasing indexing/searchability of information that digital data and an interconnected web provides. As I posted earlier I generally am in favor of moving away from physical books and towards electronic ones that can incorporate linking, media, and annotation as well as potential cost savings. Similarly, I’d have to say that the technological tool that I would buy in a heart beat is the child of a Kindle and a Fujitsu 6012 with 4G access. The wearable computer in its different incarnations (notably Dr. Mann’s always on computer and a computer aided sixth sense) as well as many others are also interesting. For various reasons I’m never going to be on the bleeding edge of technology but I certainly don’t oppose it. Yet some outside discussion has brought up the fact that this earlier post is a fairly pessimistic view of the future of electronic texts.. I have to agree that it is.
So I’m stuck trying to figure out my pessimism. Most likely its really just an overreaction to some of the memes floating around. The overload of “blogging is dead/journalism is dead” that I was running across last week. While its an interesting discussion it tends to focus on the news aspect of the web which is, naturally enough, a segment that is dominated by a quick turn around time, always on mentality. Add a healthy, or not, dose of sites conflating the ideas of blogs and marketing as if the only reason to blog is to make money on it (either currently through ads or by marketing your “brand” and attracting business). Finally season generously with edtech blogs with an almost religious fervor concerning the benefits of web2.0 in education without much of a concern about anything other than getting people using the web2.0.
Even if I don’t have a smartphone (or even a pda) I think the trend towards more and more accessible and indexed data is a very big win overall. But while I feel that the pessimism of my earlier post was rather a passing mood there are certainly questions. For right now I’m going to let this trail off with a list of thoughts and little commentary.
- Why has Wikipedia avoided the tragedy of the commons while others (smaller) wikis often seem to suffer from it and wither away do to no one really adding significant content?
- Digital sharecropping (and perhaps the related digital subsistence farming). What does the Freemium model bring to a discussion of education?
– I wish I could still find a reference to the data I saw that showed the rate of increase of YouTube content increasing over time even as it becomes harder to reach any specific level of exposure/fame/hits/ success. Plus the related idea of average quality going down while total content increases.
* – the idea for the title of this post and the intro picture popped into my head through the association with digital data and digital lives. I am well aware of the grim and ironic nature of the song. There is no intentional reference to any digital-media-is-the-end-of-the-world type of theme!
I almost never read anything by Paul Krugman although I occasionally come across references to his writing that is generally less then favorable. On the other hand I’m glad a read this piece. Thanks go to elgorade for bringing it to my attention.
I missed this video when it when viral but I think it has now become my intro to projectile motion for the AP students next year. Is it real? How can we tell?
Blogging has been very slow recently. A one day workshop and a day camping with the Webelos are part of the problem but I’ve also been letting my son have the computer to work on his Java programs. The tablet is great for some things but I find that longer blog posts are a pain to write using the TIP.
On a not really related point, I am finding the Java class to be very frustrating. Its unclear if it is the fault of the specific class, the nature of an online programming class, or my sons nature but whatever it is I dislike the fact that he is mostly copying various examples and then modifying them. He doesn’t really seem to know the syntax. I’m sure then are loads of interesting diversions into learning styles and methods of instruction in this situation but I’m going to leave it as a comment for now.
