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Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
I got a little ahead of myself bringing in the laugh track yesterday.
The point I meant to make before getting to laugh tracks and the like had to do with the relative absence of "Dorky Teacher Humor" in MOOCs and flips as opposed to live classroom teaching.
Presumably, MOOCs go easy on the Dorky Teacher Humor. At least I think I would go easy on the Dorky Teacher Humor if I were recording myself for a MOOC. You don't want to be recorded for posterity making lame jokes about the 5-paragraph essay.
To the extent that teachers and professors do suppress D.T.H. when they are taping themselves, a taped lesson is going to be much less compelling than a live one.
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
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11 comments:
Absolutely. All of the above. So many times lessons that are technology heavy and touted as the next great thing are lessons that would never pass muster in a classroom of today (that is, one that thinks facts are what you google and that working in groups with the guide on the side is the be all and end all).
They *are* old school, they are very often "drill and kill" -- but without the things that make those work in an classroom with an interesting teacher.
Also, even if D.T.H. were added, it wouldn't usually work. Teachers do that dorky humor by reading the crowd. They try some humor and go with what works. It's different with different kids and different classes. There is no way that you can adjust your humor or even just your pacing and style of delivery without seeing and hearing the responses of the learners.
Also, even if D.T.H. were added, it wouldn't usually work. Teachers do that dorky humor by reading the crowd.
I should outsource these posts to you guys --- my 'read the crowd' post is t/k!
The entire feedback loop (for want of a better term) from teacher to students and students to teacher has been severed as if it didn't exist in the first place & didn't matter if it did.
One thing I find interesting about flipped classrooms, is that the concept seems to be a capitulation to the idea that teachers are actually supposed to teach something. The "watch the lecture at home" format means that there should actually *be* a lecture--a sage on the stage. Teachers can pretend that during the school day they are just guides on the side, but only because they have given the kids a lecture first.
MOOCs also eliminate the feedback loop. A teacher can give the exact same lecture to two different classrooms, and one will seem to get it and the other won't. That's the MOOC--one lecture to different classes.
In a real classroom, the teacher can look out at the blank or sleeping faces and determine if their approach is sinking in. If not, they can rephrase, change the emphasis, tell a joke or a story to get attention, drop a book to wake people up, etc. In a pre-recorded lecture, there is no feedback being received by the teacher and the lecture can't be tailored on the fly to the class's needs.
I did comment to my sister that the lectures in some of these MOOCs are so terrible that they should hire actors!!
Little tics that aren't noticeable in a classroom lecture stand out in a video lecture. Many of the professors have that long drawn out "uhhhh" that in a live classroom makes sense given that they are probably writing something down but is just annoying in a video lecture. Most just read their slides.
That said, I love the ability to rewatch a lecture or part of a lecture or pause it when I need to take a break.
"That said, I love the ability to rewatch a lecture or part of a lecture or pause it when I need to take a break."
A book is even better for that.
"The "watch the lecture at home" format means that there should actually *be* a lecture--a sage on the stage."
I realized that too. They also send home notes to parents telling them to practice math facts at home. One quickly realizes that they are not opposed to things like drill and kill. They don't mind if parents do the tutoring and tracking. They just don't want to see them at school. They just want to do the fun stuff in class.
If you flip a traditional class, then students would get the lecture at home and do individual problem sets at school. If, however, you use flipping to give you more time for group work in class, then they expect students to view the lecture AND do the problem set at home (with no help) before coming in to spend the whole class time on enrichment. With that kind of flipping, how much time do they spend on reviewing the homework and allowing students to get it right?
Any teachers want to share their best dorky teacher humor moments? I once belted out the Dead Skunk song, complete with my best (worst) hillbilly accent! I can't even remember why (repressed memory, no doubt). Or how about the time I was teaching vocab in my high school English class and used "Megabus" as one of my illustrations for the root "mega," after which I needed to explain what the Megabus was and inadvertently set off a mass exodus to Chicago (on the Megabus) during spring break--many of the kids going with out parent permission!
Share your stories and let's get in a festive holiday mood!
My most famous dorky teacher phrase is "Chemists are lazy and cheap." We come back to this a lot, in why we don't make problems harder than they need to be (why you always titrate with HCl or NaOH for example), and why we use common chemicals not exotic ones!
My sense is that many teachers don't want to teach, they want to present. A few want to teach poverty students, as it makes them feel needed. They view nonpoverty as getting enough at home that they don't need to come to school. Of course the nonpoverty parents view those teachers are worthless, as they have extremely low expectations...but I notice that Common Core means they won.
"...but I notice that Common Core means they won."
But some of them don't seem to realize that. They want to just present with NO expectations on performance. I can understand that when students walk into their classrooms two or more years behind. However, many teachers think that their problems are the problems of education, so rather than fix the system, they just want their problems fixed.
When we talk about what can work in education, there has to be a realization that there is a huge difference in what people think the goal is and what they think "works" means. Many educators want to just float all boats while keeping the onus on the student. I like the material my son is getting in high school, but many of my son's teachers are just not very good at helping students. One common comment I hear is that so-and-so is a great teacher if you already know the material.
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