Adding Video To Teaching Methodologies

Perfect demonstration of what's wrong with education today. No personal involvement, just high tech data. Swell.

As I have said before I do think it is sad that many old timers are not able to appreciate videos, and other modern tools of teaching.



I am not aware of anyone who thinks that we should have no personal involvement and just high tech data.

I have seen promising results from experiments even though educators would not desire to see "no personal involvement and just high tech data.
.

I too have the impression that few educators would like to participate (either as students or teachers) in a system devoid of interpersonal involvement, but the system seems to be headed that direction. I wonder to what extent this trajectory is influenced by the profits to be made from the manufacture, maintenance and sale of machines (just like war and border security).
A retired old-timer educator

I do not think that there will ever be a system without interpersonal involvement completely but we do live Inside technology and I think we should give it a chance.

Some posters appear to have skewed my intent.
This thread is not about some sort of idealized teacher / student interaction.
This thread is not about condoning nor condemning on-line versus in-class.
My topic is not intended as a bias on either position.
I like my classes to be engaging as well as challenging, I like my homework assignments to reflect similarly; I have no fear of modern toys.

Those modern tools seem scary to some old timers. Teaching should be progressive but many people are conservative in their thinking and do not like to see changes unless it supports their status quo way of thinking.

It's not the tools that are scaray, rl. Not for me, anyway. It's the growing over-reliance on such tools that bothers me. When I was teaching, I knew a number of teachers who would schedule entire classroom periods of nothing but videos mostly because it relieved them of the onerous duty of actually having to do something themselves (beyond pushing the right buttons, I mean). They could sit and watch the videos along with their students and have, in effect, a free period. What really bothered me was that this was often encouraged by the administration.

Why is a PowerPoint presentation superior to a flip chart? Or to the use of a chalkboard? (There are no chalkboards any more anyway. It's all felt-tip markers now.) I'm just vain enough to think that I can do a better job of explaining a concept than a professional actor doing the same thing on video. I also think that if I opt for making a video of myself doing the explaining and keep running that instead of being present in person, I rob the students of the opportunity to question me or to snicker and laugh at my gaffes which alert me that I'm probably doing something wrong.

I didn't mean to hijack chumley's thread and apologize if I seem to have done so. But the whole concept of turning the classroom into a movie theater-cum-video arcade bothers me. See, I used to use the technology quite a bit back when I was teaching. (It was a bit more primitive back then compared to what 's available today.) But I was always forced to admit to myself, if I was being honest with myself, that I was doing so because I'm essentially lazy and that's the easier way out.

Chumly, I think this is a great idea.
Why? Because people learn in different ways and for centuries teachers haven't changed their techniques much. At least with a video anthology, you can hit replay till you have the proverbial lightbulb moment.
We have the technology. Might as well use it and improve the tried and true, a system that has failed many students.
Plus if a teacher has a sick day, they can get his lecture in lieu.
Smart.

But students can watch lectures at home, and class time can be devoted to discussion or working through problems. Classrooms become less didactic and more interactive.

I'd approve of that, DD -- watching a video as a homework assignment. But that's rarely how it's worked.

Wasn't that the idea of the OP?

Was it? I may have been over-hasty in my criticism. I'm just unalterably opposed to technological advances usurping the human interchange which, to me, is the basis of all true education.

This may not be the first home work assignment you give your students but there is something to learn here.
I find this person to be very intellectual even though you will see that some of his research is flawed. but who is perfect?

Videos have their place. I have no objection to videos for homework assignments and no objection to the use of videos in general. I posted a video on a2k, a demonstration of fire building technique. And I've watched some of Setanta's Beatles videos.

On a2k, I look for dialogue. One cannot have dialogue with a video. Folks will have to explain themselves in their own words. (OK, a few well documented quotes are acceptable.)

Are you OK with videos about class room experiments which teach how to avoid starting fires?

I do not use Powerpoint and never have. I do not use flipcharts and never have. I do not use a chalkboard and never have as I use a white-board.Regardless of how you may have seen others use/abuse video, you are extraordinary mistaken in your naive oversimplification of video as an either/or proposition. Sadly it's quite clear you do not understand how to use media in a real-time, in-class, teaching environment.

I use the white-board, two projectors, animations, a document camera, interactive video techniques, labs, shop, etc. I prefer the Socratic method and I teach physics mathematics, electronics, electricity and the like at the post high school level.

You are woefully out of touch and in complete error. Video can be most definitively be interactive / conversational.

Will the dialogue be visible to other members of a2k?

I think it could be if they were interested.