Should Professors Be Required To Teach With Tech? 319
An anonymous reader writes "Are professors who don't update their teaching methods like doctors who fail to keep up with the latest ways to treat disease? Or are professors better off teaching old-school? From the article: 'It is tough to measure how many professors teach with technology or try other techniques the report recommends, such as group activities and hands-on exercises. (Technology isn't the only way to improve teaching, of course, and some argue that it can hinder it.) Though most colleges can point to several cutting-edge teaching experiments on their campuses, a recent national assessment called the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement suggests that old-school instruction remains the norm. Only 13 percent of the professors surveyed said they used blogs in teaching; 12 percent had tried videoconferencing; and 13 percent gave interactive quizzes using 'clickers,' or TV-remotelike devices that let students respond and get feedback instantaneously. The one technology that most teachers use regularly — course-management systems — focuses mostly on housekeeping tasks like handing out assignments or keeping track of student grades.'"
Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
In short... (Score:3, Insightful)
Teachers should not be required to teach tech. The only areas I can see where tech would help things are in engineering or science classes. But even in a science class, you are just using a computer as a data-logger, that's it. Math shouldn't be using tech, as the students should be learning how to do the math without the tech. Computers only help out in crazy high level classes where you have to start doing things like matrix manipulations, etc. Do I care that my teacher does or doesn't have a blog? No, that's silly. If they want to post office hours on a website, fine, go right ahead. Video-conferencing? Practically worthless in the teaching environment.
No!! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no sense in demanding "tech" to be included for what ever reason! Just because "tech" is used does not make a lecture better.
Technology is not the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Teaching is fundamentally a human activity. The best way to ensure quality teaching is to hire good teachers. A crappy teacher who keeps a class blog or uses videoconferencing is still a crappy teacher. A good teacher who stands in front of the class and engages the students using nothing more than chalk and a blackboard is still a good teacher.
Technology is all but irrelevant here, but it's trendy to propose it as a way to improve education because it skirts the real issue of hiring excellent teachers, and allows administrators to throw money at the problem in the form of tech budgets.
Writing code with pencil and paper... (Score:2, Insightful)
...really sucks. I'd like to see more schools adopt testing methods that allow students to write code during exams the way that code is meant to be written - with a computer!
Re:Its not always needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
What benefit would forcing professors to teach integration with powerpoints bring? If anything, I believe there are entire concepts which are better taught on a chalkboard, not with powerpoints or slides. Things where the process matters (like integration, or physics problems) where simply seeing the steps laid out before you seems to miss out on some of the 'magic'. I really feel this because I've just completed a term where I had a calc prof teaching all on chalkboard, and a physics prof who had most of the material laid out in powerpoint, and would fall back to the board when asked a question, or having to elaborate.
There is nothing wrong with encouraging profs to try something new. Provide them with resources and information on new ways to teach. Don't force them. You'll likely just end up with a bunch of profs pissed off at the university admin, and classfuls of bored students.
That said, I do find the use of the clickers really useful. I do wish more courses/profs used them.
Bad analogy alert... (Score:4, Insightful)
Educational technology, on the other hand, is required to undergo precisely no testing of any kind(aside from basic electrical safety and not catching fire type stuff), and frequently receives very little. The vendor is always terribly enthusiastic, of course, and there may or may not be a study or two of dubious quality; but the adoption is driven much more by optimism and hype than by data. Since there is pitifully little testing, the idea that newer=better is largely nonsense.
As TFA notes, certain technologies that are more or less unequivocally superior have been widely adopted by all but the most fossilized. CMSs beat the hell out of distributing photocopies and shuffling paper. They have largely replaced the distribution of photocopied stuff, with the common exception of the near-ceremonial "handing out of the syllabus on the first day". Similarly, computers are largely superior to typewriters for working with text, and both are more legible by far than handwriting, so most documents are now written on a computer(though, for markup/editing/grading, handwriting is still competitive).
If you are going to "require" something, you had better have good reason to believe that it is the better way to go.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
Professors should teach with whatever medium they feel most comfortable with. As a student, I am there to learn the concepts and ideas they are providing. Anything that gets in the way of that transfer of knowledge is a bad thing.
Let's reverse the question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In short... (Score:3, Insightful)
Computers only help out in crazy high level classes where you have to start doing things like matrix manipulations, etc.
That's not exactly 'crazy high level'. Matrix Algebra is usually a sophomore level class, and a watered down one at that.
Re:Technology is not the answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Technology is a just tool. Knowing how to use it, and knowing how to teach could enhance a lot what you can do as teacher. And there are some difficulties at teaching that are more related to expressing yourself than knowing about the topic, so giving you another way to express yourself could turn a "bad" teacher into one that now could deliver his message. Of course, bad teachers with no clue about how to teach will still be bad. And good teachers with no clue on technology could get a degradation in how they teach if they are more busy trying to make the tech work than trying to actually teach.
In the end, is up to the teacher to decide if the technology could be useful or not. Forbidding or forcing to use tech is bad, but just having the tech available and letting the teacher decide, try, or learn about it won't hurt, and could give good reward at the end.
Re:No!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the article's author just lacks imagination, or is unwilling to suggest things that would actually improve education simply because they would be far too expensive and difficult. For example they could increase teacher pay or introduce a bonus scheme encouraging good teachers but that would be far more costly in the medium and long term than for example a one off $100,000 that looks great on the headlines.
Tell /.'rs no tech is dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
I use AdobeConnect, instant messenger, a blog, CITRIX, a variety of open source tools, and a bunch more but I am a technology professor. I don't use powerpoints with bullets (presentation zen?) and I hate snore fest lectures more than my students.
Telling professors to use tech is like telling a mechanic to use a crescent wrench. What is the context of the learning environment and what are the learning outcomes? I tailor my educational strategy to the educational outcomes. Critical thinking skills, don't need flashy graphics if linear processes are the desired result.
Heck. I'd be happy if my students simply read the text book, and additional reading. When I assign a reading on the web half the time I get complaints that I didn't print it and pass it out in class. Some of my students say 100 pages of reading a week is to much homework. These are the same students bragging before class that they spend 50-60 hours a week play the latest MMORPG.
The question is a two parter (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary asks two separate questions and then somehow magically links them together as if both questions can only ever by answered by the same answer.
Q1: Should professors use technology to teach?
Q2: Should professors stay up to date with teaching methodology.
Teaching methodology != technology. It may do in some cases, but it won't in most.
p.s. AFAIC, A1=No, A2=Yes.
dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the dumbest thing I've seen lately. Figures it's from education activists. I didn't think they could screw things any more than they have but apparently they're still at it.
Blogging? Taking tests with clickers? These people are pathetic. Please don't tell me we're paying for these a$$hats.
rd
Re:Writing code with pencil and paper... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Using what works is what matters (Score:2, Insightful)
As a faculty member who has been involved with web-based coursework, online lectures, and the integration of laptops in the classroom, I am less than impressed with most technology-based pedagogical "innovations".
It's not that teachers are typically anti-technology (although some certainly are), but instead that most teachers realize that adding technology does not necessarily improve the teaching experience, and in many cases can even be a distraction. There's a reason why the Socratic method of the lecturer standing in front of a classroom full of students has persisted so long - it works. It is very hard to beat the teaching effectiveness of a good instructor who can expand on concepts and formulate new examples on the fly, based on the questions asked during a lecture. Furthermore, technology cannot make bad teachers into good teachers, no matter how much money you throw at the problem. The man or woman in front of the class makes all the difference. Most tech-based classroom techniques are generally introduced with great fanfare, but generally fall by the wayside within a few years as everyone realize that they are more trouble than they're worth, i.e. too much time and money involved with no measureable improvement in student comprehension of the subject.
Most faculty are happy enough to use the web to distribute material to the class, or to post grades, but beyond that point you hit diminishing returns very quickly. I don't even try to post my class notes online, because I learned long ago that most students tend not to grasp the material unless you force them to create their own class notes. Beyond the current use of the web to distribute course materials, there are two pieces of technology that I would personally welcome to the classroom:
(1) A pen-based tablet with the ease of use of the Apple UI, for taking class notes. I'm not talking about the Windows / Wacom / OneNote tablets which still haven't gotten it right after years of attempts, but an entirely new concept that is more akin to the iPad experience.
(2) A augmented / virtual reality technology that would enable students to remotely "attend" a class with the same 360-degree audio-visual experience as physically being in the room. That's still a few years in the future, but I think it could make a big impact to education, as it would enormously multiply the effectiveness of good lecturers.
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Logical conclusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Given: "technology" is possibly necessary for good instruction.
Given: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Conclusion: The authors want magical professors.
Teaching Gimmicks and the decline of teaching (Score:5, Insightful)
It is inherently better. If you're spending half the lecture writing something on the board that could very well be flashed up there in an instant using PowerPoint or similar, you're wasting the students time.
Well, to optimise it further, he just could give you the title and the page of the text book and save everyone to make and display power point slides. Unfortunately, most students are too lazy or too stupid to learn on their own and need someone to do the song and the dance going with the lesson. In the end, it doesn't really matter of the dance is writing on a chalk board or putting everyone to sleep with power point slides, the technology used has nothing to do with the learning success.
I would go so far to say, that someone who can't teach without technology gimmicks is a bad teacher. All the best teachers I met, didn't need it, although some of them liked to used it.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on what is being written. If you're just putting up notes for the students to copy, then sure; if you are using the board for interaction, powerpoint may not be the way to go. Using powerpoint puts you on rails, so to speak. You have to do things in the order that they come up in the slides, rather than letting ideas unfold naturally. When you write stuff down by hand, you can do it in any order. Ideally you will be able to do both (having both a blackboard and projector) but many modern University classrooms are set up such that deploying the projector means covering up the only blackboard in the room. Moreover, if you forgo writing things down on the board (due to not having a blackboard) and simply talk about important ideas, many students will not bother to remember those things because they have come to expect what is on the powerpoint is all they need to know (or are unfamiliar with how to determine what is important information out of a speech).
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
If your tech tool is PowerPoint then you are on the road to fail.
Re:Yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is worse. Instead of a detailed discussion, these PowerPoint slides give bulleted lists. A projector or a chalkboard is much better, especially for science and engineering courses. In those courses you would typically have read the text and handouts and the lecture would step you through the reasoning. Each step you would have to pay attention to understand the logical progression. This is certainly not true with PowerPoint.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because delivering information at the highest blazing speeds possible is inherently good teaching...? Seriously?
I have learned a lot more from talented teachers wielding a piece of chalk than from the drones who clicked through 90 packed slides in 50 minutes. PowerPoint is a great way to put your audience into information overload, ensuring that they learn nothing (google "Death by PowerPoint"). Good chalkboard management is much harder to do. I am not saying that PowerPoint can't be used effectively, and I do believe that all of these tech devices add to the learning experience when wielded skillfully and in the appropriate scenarios. But to suggest that teaching by PowerPoint is inherently better? No. No. NO.
It's not the technology that matters. It's the quality of the teaching. Good teachers remain good teachers even when the power goes out. Bad teachers remain bad teachers no matter how much tech (ppt, ARS, web stuff, whatever) they use.
Re:Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. To pharase a quote applied to statistics: some use tech as a drunk uses a light post; for support rather than illumination.
the good teachers will rarely need more than a chalkboard and the best will rarely need even that. But throw all the tech you want at a bad teacher and they will still be crap.
Re:No!! (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't agree with this more strongly.
Technology can be a useful addition to a lecture, but it doesn't ALWAYS add value.
The most engaging, informative CS courses I ever took involved nothing more than the instructor using a blackboard. Some of the worst on the other hand, came as a result of poorly applied tech.
Re:Using what works is what matters (Score:4, Insightful)
The Socratic method does not involve a lecturer, much less a lecturer standing in front of a classroom full students. Rather, the Socratic method consists of a discussion leader asking leading questions of a small group in order to get them to realize that they already have the answers bouncing around in their head.
If more professors used the Socratic method, I doubt that there would be as much emphasis on some of the more misguided trends in "interactive" education: group projects, small group discussions, web forums, etc. Much of the time (but certainly not all of the time), these props are a reaction to the perceived impersonality of the lecturer standing at the head of the classroom method that has dominated academia in the Anglo-phonic world through most of modern history.
The problem, though, is that the Socratic method doesn't scale well. You can cram 1000 students into the lecture hall if its large enough and they'll all be able to hear the lecture about equally as well. But you can't use the Socratic method very well on a group of more than about 10.
Re:Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
But I don't think going interactive using technology will work well in front of 100 or so people
That's the point. The key is not so much tech or not. It is the class size and other factors that is the main obstacles of preventing interactions between the teachers and the students. A class of 100 simply doesn't help student to learn math and science properly in my opinion.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely contrary to my experience. When I was in university (admittedly in the dark ages in the late 1980's), I much preferred teaches who wrote on the board rather than using slides. It was easier to keep up with them, and watching the board content "develop" over time somehow made the material stick in my brain much better than watching a slide.
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Not because it's inherently better (it's not), but because it's what students can expect to be exposed to for the rest of their lives/careers. So they might as well become used to it.
What kind of ridiculous job do you have, where your boss communicates with his subordinates through a blog, and where presenters at meetings prepare multiple-choice quizzes that staff have to 'click in' on? Are you Regis Philbin, returning to host the next season of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Of the technologies listed in the Slashdot blurb, only teleconferencing is likely to be important in a modern workplace -- and that is apt to have very narrow applications for most university courses.
Far more useful are the non-technology-centered teaching techniques mentioned: hands-on exercises and group activities. Those actually do much better represent how things are learned and done in the real world.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Requiring Professors to teach by certain techniques is certainly going to lead to disaster...What benefit would forcing professors to teach integration with powerpoints bring?
I want to address this. Full disclosure: I worked for several years as an A/V tech at UC Berkeley.
Your first sentence is spot on the money but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Professors are like petulant children when it comes to learning new technology--it's as if they're proud that they don't know how to operate a VCR or speak into a microphone properly.
But the part that you're missing here is webcasting. At Cal, webcasting is becoming a huge huge thing. The professors don't like it because it means fewer students show up for class (if I were a student I'd appreciate this because it would mean more access for me) but the administration LOVES the idea. It goes something like this: "If all of the students could just stay home and watch the lectures online then why are we paying to heat the lecture halls?"
This is the way things are moving. The webcasting program at Cal, despite using stone-aged RealMedia technology, has been astoundingly successful. We'd get emails from the other side of the world thanking us for what we were doing (and complaining that the professors didn't know how to speak into a microphone properly).
What I'm trying to say is, whether or not the professors like it, this is the way things will be trending in the next generation. Professors that don't know how to interface with techonology will become relics.
Not like this will happen anytime soon--by and large the profs get their way. It was just a year ago that we finally discontinued support for SLIDE PROJECTORS for chrissakes. I should only hope that they're phasing out the VCR's by now.
In the end, though, the people who suffer when the prof doesn't want to learn the tech are the students and even moreso the people who are watching the webcasts online for free--people who possibly cannot afford a proper education or live in a part of the world where such a thing is unavailable to them. To them, a professor that can't take ten minutes to figure out where to pin a lavalier mic on their lapel should be nothing short of an insult.
Re:Tell /.'rs no tech is dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
Just remember that you are not their only teacher. That's the thing that always got me in school... every teacher said "it's not that much!" but when you add it all together (and you're working a job through high school) it's a hell of a lot of work. 100 pages of reading a week isn't that much. But if I have to do 700 pages of reading each week because I have 7 classes? That's two novels a week.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tell /.'rs no tech is dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on the information density. A chapter of Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics is something like 30-40 pages and is too much for one week. A Harry Potter novel is something like 800+ pages and is light reading for a week.
Makes Me Want to Burn Someone's House Down (Score:4, Insightful)
Higher tech for the sake of higher tech is the worst thing you can do with technology. It's a scam. Examples:
(1) My home state of Maine gives every kid in school in the state a laptop. It's a scam so someone can say "look, we're hi tech". Teachers waste time on discipline problems, tech breakdown, being forced unnecessarily into using tech-driven instruction so as to not waste the laptops. I'm told that every day there has to be a UPS delivery to every school in the state from Apple with replacement laptops.
(2) Dean at prior college (non-union-strong) had a meeting where he demanded instructors use overhead projectors because of the expense of installing them, so we could show off how high-tech we are. If I put it up to a student vote ("Do you like PowerPoint instruction, or not?" -- "Do you like group projects, or not?") they usually decline. Scam.
Unfortunately, higher education is plagued by the need of education experts/PHDs to make careers/publication by "some new thing", anything whatsoever. That's why you get ridiculous churn in methods, teaching styles, group work, hands-on, technology, etc., etc. And it works hand-in-hand with book publishers who use the same as a reason to churn new book editions every so years, so that old editions can't be re-used.
Here's a completely crazy idea -- base decisions like these on research as to whether it helps students (and not on just whether it makes some salesman/budget-administrator cream in their pants). Does such research exist? Consider this article in the last issue of the AFT's American Educator:
Can research provide any guidelines as to which classroom applications are most effective?... The studies on these point to two conclusions. First, the mere presence of technology in the classroom does not necessarily mean that students learn more. Second -- and, perhaps, a corollary of the first conclusion -- using these technologies effectively is not as obvious as it might seem at first. [American Educator, Summer 2010, Daniel T. Willingham, "Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn?", p. 26]
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/summer2010/Willingham.pdf [aft.org]
In short: The "hi-tech uber alles" fetish is, mostly, another in a long series of time & money-wasting scams perpetrated on the education system. There's little or no evidence that it helps student learning, and there is evidence that the time required to manage/prepare/leverage technology resources is directly lost from the educator's other existing duties of teaching, assessment, and feedback.
Re:Tell /.'rs no tech is dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of my students say 100 pages of reading a week is to much homework.
It depends on the reading. In an English course, that's a trifling amount. In a science course with densely-written prose that may need to be reread multiple times (or have proofs and analyses reviewed and rederived by the the reader) that's a pretty steep demand. Is this stuff that just needs to be skimmed, or is it stuff that needs to be closely read? It is technology news, or technology specifications? Are those 'printed from a website' pages, with a large font and lots of pictures, or are they 'telephone book' pages, with tiny print and no whitespace? Is there significant overlap with the in-class material, or are they in virgin territory? Are they software manuals rich in repetition and full of 'this-page-intentionally-left-blank'?
When I was in school, the normal full course load was five courses, each with three hours per week of lecture time, plus another five or six hours (varying greatly from term to term) of hands-on laboratory courses. Throw in another couple of hours of mandatory 'tutorial' slots on top, and we're at between twenty and twenty-five hours of 'you must be here' per week. If we assume that each of those hours in class has an associated hour of work outside of class, then the students are at a full-time (plus a bit of overtime) level of 40 to 50 hours of weekly work. (And don't forget that some of them will have ten or fifteen or more hours of part-time paid work on top of that, so that they can pay rent and eat.)
So, let's say your three-hour allotment of weekly lectures can legitimately draw an additional three hours' worth of out-of-class work. If the students spend two minutes reading each page (and reviewing, and making notes on the material), then they're at two hundred minutes per week You're already twenty minutes over quota, and they haven't even looked at the final group project, their assignments, or studied for their midterms or exams. At a brisk minute per page, they're left with just eighty minutes in which to do all of their other assigned work for your course.
Digital rights (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
It cannot be inherently worse, because its value depends on the observer.
If you already know how to maintain a model T but not a modern car--or if you're using it as a museum piece, or for riding in parades--then the Civic is no replacement.
The keyword is 'inherent'; inherent qualities are not subjective, and subjective means 'subject to a process'. There are many processes you can use a chalkboard for more easily than a powerpoint, and if you base your teaching process around those thing--especially if that's because that's how you think and operate normally--then replacing them with technology isn't equal, much less superior. Even if you added a tablet for writing on powerpoints easily, you lack the surface space of a chalkboard to show many things side by side, which helps if, for example, you want to relate back half an hour later to something you wrote earlier.
Now, there are caveats--for example, there's technology to capture what you write on whiteboards and allow the students to receive it, possibly with voice data, which helps sick kids or etc. You could argue that that's inherently superior to a whiteboard, but only because it is a superset of whiteboards (and you could argue white and blackboards are equivalent, which isn't true, but close enough).
Specifically any new technology that removes old features in order to add new ones isn't "inherently" superior. It depends on which features are needed, which are used, and how good they are at each.
Re:Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
You still have the problem of the information on the ppt, no matter how granularly you organize it, is locked into a set order. Student questions don't come in any predictable order, so working with chalk provides you with the flexibility to incorporate questions naturally into your presentation.
Another problem inherent to ppt is macdinking [catb.org]. Sure, you can make every element of a complex diagaram or equation come up separately, but that requires fiddling with details. Even if you're extremely disciplined and efficient (which in my experience are not qualities promoted by ppt), it takes more time to do this explicitly in ppt than simply adding elements with chalk as you talk about them.
My students have never complained that my lectures go too slowly for them, and I make extensive use of the chalkboard. Even if the terms are already on the ppt (I use both together), writing it out as I talk about it provides visual emphasis. Some students are capable of scanning a ppt slide to learn a concept; others can learn very efficiently from the textbook; some need to hear me explain it, or see me sketch it out. My job is to reach as many different students, each with a different learning style, as possible.
yp
Re:Yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
Really?
I teach math at a decent university, and I could teach a semester's worth of material in one class using PowerPoint. Nobody would learn anything, of course. But speaking as a math teacher, it's really easy to go far too fast using things like PowerPoint.
As a former math student, I agree. Math definitely works better with a blackboard. It's much easier to follow the steps, and break parts off and derive/solve for things as needed.
Re:In short... (Score:3, Insightful)
And using a computer isn't useful in the teaching aspect. When performing computations on large matrices a computer is invaluable, but when learning the concept it isn't.
Re:Bad analogy (Score:2, Insightful)
Another thing I don't want to hear from a doctor is: "Oh, there is a proven and very reliable cure for it, but it's quite old and using it would not be modern enough, therefore I'll give you that more modern treatment, which has only a fifty-fifty success rate, but it's all modern."
I don't want the newest cure, I want the best cure. I don't care if the best cure was found thousands of years ago by the old Greek, or last year by a top researcher.
And likewise, I don't want to be taught the newest way, but the best way. If the best way to teach a certain subject is to use the blackboard, then for god's sake, use it!
Re:Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
I teach math at a decent university, and I could teach a semester's worth of material in one class using PowerPoint. Nobody would learn anything, of course. But speaking as a math teacher, it's really easy to go far too fast using things like PowerPoint.
Speaking as a former student, it's way too easy for some teachers to go far too fast using just a chalkboard. The medium used to convey the information is irrelevant. It's all about if a professor goes at a reasonable pace and actually makes sure students understand it (such as asking students questions that are similar, but not identical, to what was just presented). Simply asking "Any questions?" when you're going too fast for the students don't work because virtually no one wants to admit that they're completely lost.
Stop the bad customer service from schools. (Score:3, Insightful)
And because it's what students want and students are paying for the service. We should stop letting schools and teachers get away with bad customer service. It's just bullshit that they shouldn't have to provide good service to their students because students should respect their elders/educators.
Re:Teaching Gimmicks and the decline of teaching (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact it can hinder it. I often go into other teachers' classrooms to try and help them with integrating technology into their instruction. Powerpoint is a seductive killer with interaction.
Often times, when a student asks a question that is out of line with the next slide, a teacher who has become reliant on technology to teach for them, rather than using it to enhance their instruction, will ignore the question or gloss over an answer -- at the very moment you KNOW you have a student's interest, the absolute worst time to blow a student off.
Technology should be used in education as it should be in the real world, to facilitate the task at hand. Using PowerPoint is rarely a quality use of technology. Have the students argue with each other in a discussion board. Let them rate each other's work. Give them the ability to interact with the larger world, where their work will be judged, applauded or ridiculed, rather than with seemingly arbitrary letter grades.
The whole technology community should be engaging with their local schools to discuss how technology is used outside of the classroom. Too many teachers are lured in by pretty tech without considering how it will benefit the students beyond the "wow" factor.
</ SoapBox >
No (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. Not because it's inherently better (it's not), but because it's what students can expect to be exposed to for the rest of their lives/careers. So they might as well become used to it.
I disagree. The first duty - possibly the only duty - of a teacher should be to teach their subject in the best way possible. Just because people believe it is much better/easier to use some tech media doesn't mean that it is. Take Powerpoint presentations, for example: most people think this is an effective way of communicating, but studies have shown that in fact, the speech and what goes on on the slides disturb each other, so the audience actually get less out of it. Add to that, of course, the effect of a bad set of slides and a speaker who can't present, and you have something in an altogether different league of horror.
And apart from that, teaching is not just about presenting a subject to a class, it is also about meeting the students where they are, mentally, as individuals - all these cool blogs and what have you are not adequate for that; it is too much of a one size fits all. Some students have brilliant ideas, but are afraid of looking stupid, so they need to be enticed out of hiding; others are not nearly as clever as they like to think and probably need to be slowed own a bit with a sledge hammer to their foreheads. "Cool tech" just isn't up to the challenge, and a teacher can all too easily waste lots of time trying to (badly) master all the coolness.
Re:Teaching Gimmicks and the decline of teaching (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm of the opinion that there's no point requiring them to use tech.
It can help, lord knows I had a few lecturers who could have done with learning about how to throw their slides up on the net.
To all the lecturers out there:
I can either scribble down whatever you're writing on the board
or
I can listen to what you're saying, read what you're writing and think about it.
Not both.