Kind: captions
Language: en
this will revolutionize education no
prediction has been made as often or as
incorrectly as that one in 1922 it was
Thomas Edison who declared that the
motion picture is destined to
revolutionize our educational system and
that in a few years it will supplant
largely if not entirely the use of
textbooks yeah and you know how that
worked out by the 1930s it was radio the
idea was you could beam experts directly
into classrooms improving the quality of
education for more students at lower
cost and that would mean you require
fewer skilled teachers a theme common to
all of the proposed education
revolutions like that of educational
television in the 1950s and 60s studies
were conducted to determine whether
students preferred watching a lecture
live or sitting in an adjacent room
where the same lecture was broadcast via
closed-circuit TV what would you prefer
in the 80s there was no debating
computers were the revolutionary
solution to our educational woes they
were audio-visual interactive and could
be programmed to do almost anything you
like
well at the time they could run Oregon
Trail but their potential was obvious
researchers suspected that if they could
teach kids to program say how to move a
turtle around a screen then their
procedural reasoning skills would also
improve so how did it go well the
students got better at programming the
turtle but their reasoning skills were
unaffected even by the 1990s we had not
learned from the failure of our past
predictions and I quote the use of video
discs in classroom instruction is
increasing every year and promises to
revolutionize what will happen in the
classroom of tomorrow video discs yeah
those giant oversized CD things remember
when they revolutionized education
nowadays plenty of things are poised to
revolutionize education like smart
boards smartphones tablets and MOOCs
those are massive open online courses
and some believe we're getting close to
a universal teaching machine a computer
so quick and well programmed that is
basically like having your own personal
tutor in
Sheen a student could work through
well-structured lessons at their own
pace receiving immediate and personally
tailored feedback and all without the
interference of a meddlesome and
expensive teacher do these claims sound
familiar over the past 100 years a lot
of areas of life have been
revolutionized but education is not one
of them by and large students are still
taught in groups by a single teacher and
that is not what a revolution looks like
some might blame this state of affairs
on the inertia of our educational
institutions it's just too hard to get a
huge bureaucracy to change but I think
the reason technology hasn't
revolutionized education is something
else something that goes to the very
heart of what education is let's
consider the process of learning say you
want to teach someone how a human heart
pumps blood which learning a do you
think would be more effective this
animation with narration or this set of
static pictures with text obviously the
animation is better I mean for one thing
it shows exactly what the heart does for
decades educational research focused on
questions like this does a video promote
learning better than a book our live
lectures more effective than televised
lectures is animation better than static
graphics in all well-controlled studies
the result is no significant difference
that is so long as the content is
equivalent between the two treatments
the learning outcomes are the same with
all different media how is this possible
how can something which seems so
powerful like animation be no more
effective than static graphics well for
one thing
animations are fleeting and so you might
miss something as they go by Plus since
the parts are animated for you you don't
have to mentally envision how the parts
are moving and so you don't have to
invest as much mental effort which would
make it more memorable in fact sometimes
esthetic graphics perform better than
animations and I think this points to a
really fundamental aspect of Education
which is it doesn't matter what happens
around the learner we are not limited by
the experiences we can give to students
what limits learning is what can happen
inside this
head that is where the important part of
learning takes place no technology is
inherently superior to any other
researchers spent so much time
investigating whether one medium or
technology was more effective than
another that they failed to investigate
exactly how to use the technology to
promote meaningful thought processes so
the question really is what experiences
promote the kind of thinking that is
required for learning recently that
research is being conducted and we're
finding out some pretty important stuff
I mean it may sound obvious but it turns
out learning with words and pictures
together whether they're animation &
narration or static pictures and text
works better than words alone also we
see that anything which is extraneous
needs to be eliminated from a lesson for
example on-screen text
competes with visuals so learners
perform better when it is omitted than
when it is present now that we know how
best to make educational videos and any
experience can be simulated in the video
setting YouTube must be the platform
that will revolutionize education I mean
the number of educational videos on
YouTube is increasing every day so why
do we need teachers well if you think
that the fundamental job of a teacher is
to transmit information from their head
to their students then you're right they
are obsolete I mean you probably imagine
a classroom where this teacher is
spewing out facts at a pace which is
appropriate for one student to fast for
half and to slow for the rest
luckily the fundamental role of a
teacher is not to deliver information it
is to guide the social process of
learning the job of a teacher is to
inspire to challenge to excite their
students to want to learn yes they also
do explain and demonstrate and show
things but fundamentally that is beside
the point the most important thing a
teacher does is make every student feel
like they are important to make them
feel accountable for doing the work of
learning all of this is not to say
technology has had no impact on
education students and teachers work and
communicate via computers and videos are
used both inside
and outside of classrooms but all of
this is best characterized as an
evolution not a revolution the
foundation of Education is still based
on the social interaction between
teachers and students for as
transformative as each new technology
seems to be like motion pictures or
computers or smart boards what really
matters is what happens inside the
learners head and making a learner think
seems best achieved in a social
environment with other learners and a
caring teacher
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