Day: September 20, 2010 (page 1 of 1)

Bill Gates thinks that a video with a nameless person showing math concepts is the future of education. He’s wrong. Here’s why.

In that video there is something missing. Some major feature of learning that is completely missing from all 1800 of the videos up on the Khan Academy website.

Do you know what it is? Of course you do!

Kids! None of the videos has kids asking questions about what is happening in the video. You can pause the video, fast forward it, rewind it to re-watch the video, but you can’t ask it any questions. The ability to ask questions is a critical part of the learning process.

You can still use these videos as part of your classroom because your students can pause the video, bring you over, and say "hunh?" They can ask questions. Until the student can ask questions of the video, it will never replace a classroom teacher; the best it can do is support good instruction.

I’ve noticed some things about a few people I know in the Pre-Internet generation. Just sharing my thoughts here and wondering how we can help them. Note that these generalizations don’t apply to everyone in this generation, but almost never apply at all to anyone outside of it.

• They often double click when they should single click
• They single click when they should double click
• They drag stuff around by accident because they forget to release the mouse before they move it again
• They don’t scan the entire screen and look for instructions so they often have to repeat entering information on a form
• They don’t keep track of multiple windows or tabs very easily
• Each program looks completely different to them, they haven’t learned the commonalities of their programs
• They find technology frustrating and slow, to them it is hardly ever reliable
• They want to hide their lack of knowledge of technology
• They generally don’t know the language of technology, icons, arrows, and other common notation is lost on them

Does this remind you of anyone you know? How can we help them? I can imagine it must be very frustrating to be in a technology rich world and not know how to use a lot of it, especially when it seems like every week there is something new you have to add to your repertoire of skills.

Here is a collection of resources I am building so my staff can talk about the International Day of Peace tomorrow. Hope they are useful.

5000 years of religion in 90 seconds (from here).

An interactive map which shows many of the conflicts between 1900 and 2004.

http://nobelprize.org/educational/peace/conflictmap/conflictmap.html

Lists of conflicts in recorded human history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_wars

Note: You can add up the number of years we have been at war simply by taking the time to add up all of the wars listed on the previous page. This could be a great activity for your students.

Things you can do with your students

Check out this broadcast of events around the world celebrating world peace.

http://www.un.org/en/events/peaceday/2010/broadcast.shtml

Talk about the relationship between religion & conflict. Think of other reasons why conflict occurs. How could we be proactive in preventing some of these reasons from occurring.

Look at other activities you can do with your students here:

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/calendar-activities/today-international-peace-20296.html

Sing along to Imagine by John Lennon