The students of the 21st will have a very different experience then the one I grew up in. For one teacher’s will no longer be the most easily accessible source of knowledge. I think this will lead to a shift in the role of a teacher. Lectures are most likely going to be a very small part of a teachers job. This is already true in elementary and junior high, but I see trends in secondary to move away from the model. It is only a matter of time before it spreads to University. Why should I listen to my professor lecture on Newtonian Mechanics when I can go on iTunes to watch a professor from M.I.T. do the same thing for FREE? Why should I limit myself to the degree requirements of a university? Why can't I tailor my education to my needs? The knowledge is out there. It is NOT our job to disseminate information.
So where do we carve out a place for ourselves as teachers for these students? For one we need to embrace the web as a tool for teaching.
Furthermore, we are expert learners; we have the know-how to discern the truthiness of information. Our job will be to show students how to engage with the information, how to produce it, and how to share it with the world in a safe and credible way. We will be moving towards giving our students a media literacy with course outlines like the topics shared in Dr. Alec Couros’s blog post “90+ videos for Tech. & Media Literacy”.
The interactive web capabilities of the web 2.0 are engaging youth to create, participate, and most importantly give them a place to share their world view. Teacher's shouldn't be fighting with their studentshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif to listen in class and stop going on facebook. We need to help them go on twitter, blogspot, youtube, and wikipedia to help them create the content they want. With this we will have to carry on Larry Lessig's discussion on copyright and patents.
This will go a long way since we have no idea what challenges our students will face when they become employees. The pace of innovation is growing at an exponential pace. In my life I have seen the death the death of the Renaissance Man and know even the analog in a subject like Physics is over. There is not a single professional academic who knows the breadth of knowledge that spans all of their department. There is such a connection between subjects physical chemistry, medical physics, bio-physics, geo-physics. We connect them all and yet we still have separate buildings for these connected subjects. Our students will need to navigate the plethora of options and find their way in it. I’m not sure how this is going to happen and how we can help except to be one of many mentors they will need on this journey.
The one thing I’ve seen recently that has inspired me is Raghava KK’s TED talk “Shake up your story”. Raghava makes the case that we should not strive for the Renaissance man in the sense of breadth of knowledge we should focus on breadth of view points. We should be cultivating empathy so that our students who will deal with a more connected world will be able to understand the people from other cultures they will interact with. And as my friend Jun Allard said to me not long ago you can't farm out empathy. In the current economy isn't that something we should build on.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
21st Century Students and Web 2.0
The students of the 21st will have a very different experience then the one I grew up in. For one teacher’s will no longer be the most easily accessible source of knowledge. I think this will lead to a shift in the role of a teacher. Lectures are most likely going to be a very small part of a teachers job. This is already true in elementary and junior high, but I see trends in secondary to move away from the model. It is only a matter of time before it spreads to University. Why should I listen to my professor lecture on Newtonian Mechanics when I can go on iTunes to watch a professor from M.I.T. do the same thing for FREE? Why should I limit myself to the degree requirements of a university? Why can't I tailor my education to my needs? The knowledge is out there. It is NOT our job to disseminate information.
So where do we carve out a place for ourselves as teachers for these students? For one we need to embrace the web as a tool for teaching.Furthermore, we are expert learners; we have the know-how to discern the truthiness of information. Our job will be to show students how to engage with the information, how to produce it, and how to share it with the world in a safe and credible way. We will be moving towards giving our students a media literacy with course outlines like the topics shared in Dr. Alec Couros’s blog post “90+ videos for Tech. & Media Literacy”.
The interactive web capabilities of the web 2.0 are engaging youth to create, participate, and most importantly give them a place to share their world view. Teacher's shouldn't be fighting with their students to listen in class and stop going on facebook. We need to help them go on twitter, blogspot, youtube, and wikipedia to help them create the content they want. With this we will have to carry on Larry Lessig's discussion on copyright and patents.
This will go a long way since we have no idea what challenges our students will face when they become employees. The pace of innovation is growing at an exponential pace. In my life I have seen the death the death of the Renaissance Man and know even the analog in a subject like Physics is over. There is not a single professional academic who knows the breadth of knowledge that spans all of their department. There is such a connection between subjects physical chemistry, medical physics, bio-physics, geo-physics. We connect them all and yet we still have separate buildings for these connected subjects. Our students will need to navigate the plethora of options and find their way in it. I’m not sure how this is going to happen and how we can help except to be one of many mentors they will need on this journey.
The one thing I’ve seen recently that has inspired me is Raghava KK’s TED talk “Shake up your story”. Raghava makes the case that we should not strive for the Renaissance man in the sense of breadth of knowledge we should focus on breadth of view points. We should be cultivating empathy so that our students who will deal with a more connected world will be able to understand the people from other cultures they will interact with. And as my friend Jun Allard said to me not long ago you can't farm out empathy. In the current economy isn't that something we should build on.
So where do we carve out a place for ourselves as teachers for these students? For one we need to embrace the web as a tool for teaching.Furthermore, we are expert learners; we have the know-how to discern the truthiness of information. Our job will be to show students how to engage with the information, how to produce it, and how to share it with the world in a safe and credible way. We will be moving towards giving our students a media literacy with course outlines like the topics shared in Dr. Alec Couros’s blog post “90+ videos for Tech. & Media Literacy”.
The interactive web capabilities of the web 2.0 are engaging youth to create, participate, and most importantly give them a place to share their world view. Teacher's shouldn't be fighting with their students to listen in class and stop going on facebook. We need to help them go on twitter, blogspot, youtube, and wikipedia to help them create the content they want. With this we will have to carry on Larry Lessig's discussion on copyright and patents.
This will go a long way since we have no idea what challenges our students will face when they become employees. The pace of innovation is growing at an exponential pace. In my life I have seen the death the death of the Renaissance Man and know even the analog in a subject like Physics is over. There is not a single professional academic who knows the breadth of knowledge that spans all of their department. There is such a connection between subjects physical chemistry, medical physics, bio-physics, geo-physics. We connect them all and yet we still have separate buildings for these connected subjects. Our students will need to navigate the plethora of options and find their way in it. I’m not sure how this is going to happen and how we can help except to be one of many mentors they will need on this journey.
The one thing I’ve seen recently that has inspired me is Raghava KK’s TED talk “Shake up your story”. Raghava makes the case that we should not strive for the Renaissance man in the sense of breadth of knowledge we should focus on breadth of view points. We should be cultivating empathy so that our students who will deal with a more connected world will be able to understand the people from other cultures they will interact with. And as my friend Jun Allard said to me not long ago you can't farm out empathy. In the current economy isn't that something we should build on.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Tennis
So the other day I woke up with a great idea to center some math (and science around); Tennis.
The idea would be to watch several tennis players playing aces where they send the ball down the line. Hopefully this will generate some questions such as
In order to get a deep analysis the students could then move on to 2d projectile motion and see how the values change in this realistic model. Then what would happen if air resistance would be a factor?
The idea would be to watch several tennis players playing aces where they send the ball down the line. Hopefully this will generate some questions such as
- how fast the ball is going?
- how do they get the ball to hit the line?
- why do they make noises when they hit the ball?
- how does the spin of the ball effect the motion of the ball after it hits the ground?
- etc...
In order to get a deep analysis the students could then move on to 2d projectile motion and see how the values change in this realistic model. Then what would happen if air resistance would be a factor?
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