Classroom Teaching and the Internet's wealth of knowledge.

sityeuropa

sityeuropa

sityeuropa

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3 Oct 2014
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Just having a little think and a comment on this video made me think.

Interesting how I have to go online and watch a documentary to learn this, instead of being taught it in school. No no no, let's learn the Scientific Method again instead.
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In school you naturally have better teachers than others. Some can hold your attention and others you would instead mess around or your mind would wander.

I watch a lot of science, evolution and quantum mechanics videos on Youtube. I find them very interesting. Surely a 1 hour video packed with experts on a specific subject could educate faster and more effective than a lot of teachers.

No way am I saying get rid of teachers / lecturers, but in High school I always remember the videos that were played, even though it was a limited selection at the time when I was a kid, the whole class would be quiet and soak it all up.

Like the below video, I would love to watch this in high school, and it would definitely ignite my interest more in sciences.

Any teachers here? Do you guys play these types of videos for your classes?

 
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Videos aren't so good at judging a confused look on people's faces who would never put their hand up in class and let everyone know that they didn't understand something. They have their place, but sitting in front of a video and being expected to soak in knowledge isn't developing many skills.
 
Caged said:
Videos aren't so good at judging a confused look on people's faces who would never put their hand up in class and let everyone know that they didn't understand something. They have their place, but sitting in front of a video and being expected to soak in knowledge isn't developing many skills.
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I get what you mean and I said definitely not to replace in any way. High school is more of a brief combing over of subjects, obviously the in depth college / university classes would require more lecturing.
 
we didn't watch videos very often in school but I do remember some of them well

a maths teacher showed us a documentary about card counting which certainly sparked an interest in gambling
 
Videos were good at school, but it was mainly an excuse to finger bang the lass next to you.

We did get to watch black adder for history once.... that was great!
 
Surely resurrecting Richard Feynman and cloning him million times to be used as a personal tutor for million physics students would provide superior results compared to letting million people watch videos about him?

If you are stuck because you can't understand and explanation, watching the same explanation hundred times over might still leave you stuck. However, asking one question and having the teacher give a second example might make it crystal clear for the person who doesn't understand the first one. The smaller the group learning, the more interactive it can be.

But videos do have some merit, because they allow people to spend the time they need with the subject instead of making everyone go at the same speed.

So obviously there are pro's and con's when comparing lectures vs. videos, but as far as I can see, neither can touch private tutoring with a talented teacher. Cost issues with private teaching are just as obvious.
 
Im a teacher but i teach English Lit. Sometimes I do play a video, but not really in the documentary sense, normally i do it to show the adaptation of a book or something, however not so often. The other day it was Independence Day in India so I allowed my classes to watch Ghandi and write an essay on the film. This went down very well!

I think from a science and a history POV then showing videos like these are great as they show things you just cant re-create as a teacher. But you cant do it all of the time.
 
I use videos in class occasionally if they have a purpose, though tend to avoid them. I know another teacher is planning to show Alien for three periods next month, followed by a discussion about aliens. They can be useful, but can also just be a lazy way of pretending to teach.

That said, I love playing scrabble with my classes, which is also not really teaching as such.

And yes, of course, efl is very different to a high school in the UK.
 
They're useful, but the point of a curriculum with set methods, content and qualifications is that if someone says 'i have xx level in xx subject' that theres a paper trail proving they have indeed done it and that their competency is measured up to a standard.

I too watch a lot of documentaries on the internet, but then you have no basis whatsoever to prove if that was a lie or not or if i have any ability to speak on the subject matter or if i'm just bluffing it to sound better than i am. (The truth is i don't, but i do the equivalent via bbc4 and reading).

Certainly expecting kids to have the desire to seek out, watch and verify knowledge from the internet is sadly a pipe dream. Even schools have trouble motivating (kids gonna be kids).
 
I'm a teacher but of adults rather than children. We use video a reasonable amount, especially for small nuggets of information.
Attention threshold for people watching a video seems to come in at about 3 minutes on average.
 
Teaching involves ensuring the students understand the concepts and can recall. Also, there are different let
levels of learners and various ways students learn.

Videos on Quantum Mechanics will usually interesting ideas and concepts. But it is far from the truth. I did Quantum Mechanics in my Physics degree. The course was taught as a mathematics discipline. And it was hard. Took me six months to get my head round the maths. It was also the least satisfying; as you don't really see all that stuff in glittering videos but just lots of mathematical tools and operations.
 
School is also a societal idea, trying to create societies and all that. Personally I learned next to nothing at school, I went away and taught myself, the fact that my mum is skilled in English lit and dad is a college teacher in science made it easy for me to find out answers.

I do remember my English teacher once saying, 'there are two kinds of snob, the ones who think they are better than everyone and the ones who think they are worse than everyone'. I still hold onto that one.

This was in the age before the internets. A lot is about motivation, ambition and maturity however, I think if I were at school nowadays the internet wouldn't help me academically, I would be playing games, watching youtube videos and still leaving things to the last minute.

Just wait till you go to University, great place for learning.
 
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