I’m still rather proud that I caught the MOOC trend early. [Horn tooting.] Too bad I didn’t get the scoop on their impact on lower ed. [Deflated balloon sound.]
The New York Times has an article about how one high school is taking online education to the next level. The kids watch lectures at home and then do traditional homework assignments in the classroom. Some say this is a very effective approach for kids who don’t have the family supports at home for classwork.
I wonder what the teachers union thinks about this. My guess is that they hate it, because schools might start to argue that they don’t need a certified teacher in the classroom to help with homework. One teacher can provide the lectures to whole school districts and then an army of part time assistants can provide the homework help.
This isn’t about learning. This is about saving money.
Apt. 11d 
Flipped schools don’t seem like a bad idea as long as the implementation is done well. From the linked article, it seems like what they’re calling “homework” is actually labwork and projects. I kind of like the idea that homework means preparing for the work you’re doing in class rather than the other way around.
Internet education is here to stay so the goal should be how to integrate it with other teaching methods in ways that improve overall instruction rather than just replacing, or worse, degrading traditional methods.
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Geeky Mom Laura says she’s been trying flipping in her classroom. They are using some Kahn academy reviews, or previews in my 7th graders math class.
I’ve read at least one person on an online forum complain that flipping is really not working for her son, also in MS.
I like the option for review and preview. I’m wary when it’s actually used to extend the school day, and not really sure how it will work if it’s true flipping (do homework at school, do lectures/material presentation at home).
In lab based classes, I think part of the goal is just to have mor time for the class and it’s not different from asking students to do reading outside of class.
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I have a good friend who is a public high school teacher, and she thinks this is promising, especially since students will be able to watch a video repeatedly if they need to (and the more advanced students can only watch it once). She went to a conference on this over the summer and was planning to make a couple of short (8-10 minute) videos sometime this year. But this is not a MOOC – this is a flipped classroom, and the two are not equivalent, or at least don’t have to be. A Khan Academy video might be good for certain things, but teachers who are targeting specific student populations will know much better how to put together the right video (directed at the right school and state standards), or at least will know how to navigate a discussion of an “outside” video in the classroom.
One downside is that it may be just as time-consuming for teachers to help students individually with their “homework” and to arrange effective group meetings in the class (for those who don’t need the teacher’s guidance), so it’s certainly not a panacea. But it does have some up sides.
One important aspect of this is making sure students can access the videos at home or at before/after school programs – another money issue I’m not sure everyone has thought through.
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Exactly the same sentiments apply to higher ed: this is about money, not education; this is potentially useful for preview/review but only a well-trained live person can give differential guidance as needed in the classroom
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What specifically is about money? Is it the enthusiasm of schools for MOOCs and classroom flipping? I’m not really seeing that.
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If classroom work is seen as review or homework-like, some (not me!) will argue that a certified teacher doesn’t need to do that.
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It is hard to see how this would work outside of motivated upper middle class districts. In many working class and even lower middle class school districts, teachers have trouble getting students to do homework. If a large percentage arrive at school each day with no prior exposure to the topic, it is hard to see how one teacher is going to perform hands on activities with 34 students.
I love Khan Academy by the way. I’m less excited about the videos that I imagine the DOE creating.
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My gut impression is that this is one of those ideas that seem more wonderful in theory than they are in practice. My highly motivated kid is taking an online class right now, on a subject she wouldn’t have easy access to otherwise. She enjoys the class but has discovered something important about her learning style: she really likes interacting, collaborating, exchanging ideas with real people.
The parent who complained on the bulletin board complained because her son was being asked to watch videos and do homework on topics that hadn’t been introduce in class. I think the idea of the homework is to have the kids attempt it so that when they came to class they could ask about what they didn’t understand. In his case, he was unsure about what to do after watching videos, and would ask his parents to help. They would then end up teaching him the lesson. Then, he’d arrive in school mostly knowing how to do the homework (though potentially using methods his parents knew rather than the ones the teachers were trying to teach). And, I’m guessing, that’s how a teacher could handle the 34 kids, by having 20 of them teach themselves (with videos) or have their parents teach them. Of course then, those 20 are doing what during class?
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I am indeed flipping my MS classes. It’s hard. MS kids do not keep up with regular homework well, much less asking them to digest a video with fundamental concepts they’ve never seen before. My reasoning for doing this was to make the most of the 40 minute time period we have. I figured if they could spend 10 minutes at home watching what I would normally tell them in class, then they could hit the ground running. For the kids who are doing the homework, it’s great. And those kids are miles ahead of the others.
But, my class doesn’t “count”. It meets at most twice a week, so the kids already don’t take it seriously.
The way I see it working in our school is kind of an overlap method. You introduce a concept, the kids watch a video and perhaps take notes or a quiz, and then you reinforce the concept in class both verbally and through hands-on activities.
I do know public school teachers who do this successfully. Many are in 1:1 schools and if not, they make DVDs/CDs available to take home or watch in the library. There’s almost always more than a day between posting a video and the day it’s “due”.
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Maybe this is connected to how I teach, but I don’t see how this would work well in a discussion-driven course like my English classes. Would my students read during class and watch videos of staged discussions? That seems….weird.
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I’ve used Khan Academy for my kids in summer breaks when they’re bored. I’m not a teacher, but I don’t find K.A. videos as useful to teach brand new concepts for middle school, when concepts are far more complex. But it could just be a matter of incompatible learning style, too.
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KHAAAN!
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Jonah hates the Khan videoes. Finds them very boring.
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There are many kids at our school who don’t have consistent access to a computer or the internet at home. I was very frustrated when I attended parent/teacher conferences with my “little sister” (BB/BS) – we were asking for materials to work on at home. Many teachers told us to go to Khan Acad. and offered no other resources. They didn’t have any books – they were using videos/presentations on the web. We can’t be the only city with unequal internet access issues? Makes it a little tough to do all the web-based learning at home?
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I find Kahn videos boring, too. I have found them useful to review a topic (and, by I, I mean, me, and not my kids, w/ 2 years of the most rigorous college math there is), when I’ve forgotten the details but know the general topic.
My MS kid uses it the same way, as review for a topic she basically understands, and an alternate description from the one the teacher has given in class. Used that way, they are useful.
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Also, the Khan videos are boring on purpose. I’d say their goal is to be a video textbook, with no frills. You have to want to know how to do what he’s showing you how to do on your own.
And, the videos I’ve watched are very much “show you how to do something” with not too much attention paid to when one would apply a particular technique or how far it would generalize to a problem other than the specific one being shown. Think showing you how to knit & purl or different methods of reducing stitches, or cast on or cast off without giving you any information about when you would do those things.
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Khan Academy is much better than a terrible teacher, probably about the same as a reasonably good one, probably not as good as an outstanding one. Khan Academy is probably fantastic for kids growing up in a home where their parents can’t help them with their homework — if they are motivated to learn. It is also free.
Khan Academy is also great for motivated parents who would LIKE to help a kid with their homework, but don’t actually remember how to do things because they haven’t done them for twenty years.
Flipped classrooms are often about customization, something which our younger students are now starting to see as the norm and to demand. If one kid needs to have something explained once and then he gets it, and someone else needs to see it three times, then it’s nice for the kid who learns quickly not to have to sit through the same material for an additional 45 minutes and it’s nice for the other kid not to feel rushed or stupid. Isn’t that what all that differentiation that the teachers have been yelling about for years is actually about?
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Autistic Youngest has a kick-ass math teacher this year for Advanced Functions. He’s got a master’s degree and his teaching ability seems to be amazing. Instead of math homework triggering meltdowns or inspiring me to dig back through to when I was tackling these topics too many decades ago, she’s comfortably settling down to her homework and steadily working through the problems.
Teachers who know how to teach, really know that, and deeply understand their subjects, can come up with multiple ways to get through to the students. Any body who sells a “one-size-fits-all” approach of MOOCs or flipped classrooms or lecture gods or small discussion groups misses the point which is that good teachers should have the training and the opportunity to assess their students’ learning and adapt the curriculum to those needs, not the latest craze or cost-cutting measure.
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I hate videos. A trend in tech instruction for users is to use video — say, for a new design of Smugmug and I find it mind-numblingly awfuly, enough that I cannot watch the videos and find myself experimenting to figure everything out. So, I’m not the target audience — I think kids watch videos differently than I do.
But, I want to see evidence that the videos (Kahn or otherwise) are better than a “reasonable” teacher in practice and not just in theory. I can imagine such evidence might exist, but my intuition is that some of the ideas, say that a kid who isn’t getting something will get it after watching a Kahn video multiple times are inherently flawed. My guess is that kids who aren’t getting it won’t get it by getting the same explanation over and again. Kahn has the advantage that it could be a different explanation. But, it has the disadvantage that it is a video and not a person interacting with someone who isn’t getting it. I can imagine that there are some bad teachers out there (maybe even quite a few in some schools) who don’t understand the material themselves, or are only going through the motions, and Kahn can’t be worse than that. But, it might not be better, either. The proof would be in showing that some kids actually learned.
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Before my son was enrolled in our local public school I would have been horrified at the Kahn academy model. Although he’s only in grade 3 and our local school is perhaps not top-notch, after seeing how much he learns in the classroom I’m about ready to say YouTube would do a better job, particularly with math education. Which makes me sad. But I don’t see the top-notch teaching going on at all. I am quite cranky about this and he is now enrolled in after school math classes.
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