I’m new to teaching math, after 40 years as an engineer. One of the things (among many) that really shocked me when I started this journey was walking into a school to find that absolutely nothing had changed after 40 years.

Well at least the mimeograph machines are gone (if you know what they are I know how old you are:>}). Here’s what’s new on the outside: tv in every room, tv on your smartphone, ipods, internet, computers everywhere (my house has more computation power than all of IBM in 1970), cellphones, 100+ channels of tv, 4 GB ‘sticks of gum’.

Here’s what’s new in (the vast majority of) classrooms…

Our kids live in a rich communication environment until they get to school, then it’s back to what?? My guess is that a teacher from the 19th century would be quite at home in today’s classrooms if you just trained them on copying machine usage. Actually, thay probably wouldn’t require copies.

I think I’m finally getting the sense; but need to fight the voices from the school that tell me I handouts must be duplicates of my bullet-point powerpoint, with a few words replaced by blanks. Because otherwise how will they take notes?

Thanks for the recommendation too. Never read Atkinson but I’m unsurprised we arrive at similar conclusions. I imagine my experience with trial and error isn’t mine alone.

His book is aimed at business presentation but makes the same arguments about graphic content.

I’m a firm believer in your concept (and his) and here is some food for thought that I’ve been chewing on….

A classroom is a wide bandwidth communication channel that most teachers underutilize. Most deliver just speech (coupled with horrid graphics) but there are four more senses competing for your student’s attention.

Think of a movie theater; darkened room, tuned acoustically for the presentation, sound that rumbles your bones, and high quality video action. All of the available bandwidth is sucked up by the presentation. If they can’t control it, they keep it out of the room.

For a classroom; teacher droning, dirty whiteboard with scribbles, Music lesson in the room next door, beautiful spring day outside the window, kids banging lockers outside the door, idiots making announcements on the loudspeaker, telephone ringing because the secretary wants something that could wait, and 30 desks with 14 different heights and finishes.

There’s really no comparison. Classrooms waste the bandwidth avaialable to them so it’s filled with crap you can’t control. Bad bad movie, no matter who’s doing the acting.