If a revolution in education production is possible, this is it:
"Humanizing the classroom"--with technology, incidentally. It's more than just humanizing the classroom; it's individualizing education. Educators have always been searching for ways to give each student the chance to move at her own pace; now that opportunity is readily available.
A colleague of mine is actually trying this method with her calculus class. Apparently you can make your own video lectures, which she has done, and she is assigning the lectures as homework. Then the entire classroom experience is for the students to work on what used to be homework. I'm really excited to see how it goes for her. I'd be willing to try this teaching method in the future; I sort of wish I'd thought of it before we started this semester.
And this is all thanks to YouTube...and a former hedge fund analyst. Spontaneous order, indeed.
The possibilities here are great. Rocketship Education is another example of using technology to increase educational productivity. The more we can automate, the more we can help teachers focus on the unique value they add.
ReplyDeleteMost studies of educational technology compare time on computers to time in the classroom. The results there are mixed, so some people say - "The technology isn't the answer, at least not yet." But what Khan and Rocketship show in different ways, is that you can use computers, flawed as they are, to extend learning time at low cost and make teaching time more productive so that students don't have to "learn more" on the computer to make using them a big winner.
People in education should be really excited about this. Not about the technology, a certain percentage are always fascinated by gadgets. What matters are the radically more cost-effective models that the technology makes possible. One of the hidden costs of the union influence on education is that productivity disappears as an issue.