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I think this perfectly captures the essence of the fallacy inherent in “I taught it therefore they will learn it” – i.e. Kahn Academy. The problem is basically the underlying assumption that education is purely a matter of transferring knowledge from the teacher to the student, during which time, if only the student can remain passive enough, they will obviously absorb what is being taught.

It’s not too difficult to realize that this mechanism (basically what we have traditionally called “teaching” is effective – in math anyway – for about 40% of the population).

I was remarkably struck by the post from TTmcdev above discussing the limitation of language as a teaching medium – couldn’t agree more, but there is in fact already a significant amount of very successful research/development done in this area and technology created that absolutely does what you want here, i.e. technology developed that augment’s a teacher’s ability to challenge individual students – in an appropriate manner that leads to PRIDE, ACCOMPLISHMENT, and eventual success.

For those of you familiar with ST Math (JiJi) at the Elementary level you will know exactly what I mean – for the rest check out this TEDx talk

http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxOrangeCoast-Matthew-Peterso

As we’re all aware, there are far more innovative ways of using technology to help students learn mathematics than the Kahn academy!

Lectures, because of their medium, many times muddle activities. Lecture should highlight, accentuate a demonstration or interactive activity. They are quite convenient, and the results are many times quite “average”. How many words out of every lecture are partially or completely discounted in a students “re-creation” of an idea. My guess, for many students, is 85%. Why do I guess this? Because you ask them to explain something back to you and they say, “this goes there.” They are sure “it” goes there. They’re right, and that’s what counts, they themselves need to feel right. Knowing and understanding WHY it goes there is too often secondary to “knowing” that it goes there.
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Children vary GREATLY in their ability to process language. Some children expend less energy re-creating the meaning of words in their minds. That’s what has to occur, a complete re-creation of our thought process. We should focus much more on this BASIC fact. I’m not saying that we should dumb down language. But we should be scientifically aware of the rate of information being disseminated in any given word or sentence and rate of speech. We need to focus on language as a perceptible sense. Especially with younger children, they have to articulate what they learn if they’re to have a continuous “narrative”, and therefore a good memory, of their knowledge.

I believe that younger children rely heavily on their operative memory and working memory to recreate the PROCESS of a mathematical task. Instilling a more declarative memory “teaching experience” would feel more concrete and obvious to build off of in the long run. But I don’t think we insist on it. How many students actually have the idea of a number line present when they are adding and subtracting?

Math and any subject CAN be, and should be, a source of PRIDE for students. There’s a lot of knowledge to accumulate. The lecture format has little if any room to nurture this very individual feeling of “I CAN”. That’s what students need. They crave it. Once again I believe the fault lies with the format of the lecture itself, NOT the teacher, although most certainly the lecturer. Every child participating in a lecture is covered by the EXACT same BROADCAST. But children understand that they are all different YET they judge their worth on their ability to understand and execute task X (they can’t help it).

So we have one broadcast, or word-stream, and many different children. What kind of tension does this create? It works much better for some then others. Even when we don’t pick up on this unequalness, children do. It hurts them, plain and simple.

Lecturing has been a acceptable solution to unavailability of individual attention. But NOW, we can not accept it any longer because we have technology that COULD help us keep our “finger on the pulse” of the learning. A thousand forms of instant feedback and monitoring is what technology can bring, especially in a small relatively stable environment of the classroom.

Yes it is true that EVERY student must learn the same facts. But this will never happen if we do not AFFIRM the individual in a HEALTHY logical sequence and order. We need technology to augment a teacher’s ability to challenge individual students -in an appropriate manner; that being a manner that leads to PRIDE, ACCOMPLISHMENT, and eventual success. Let your imagination run wild here. Its totally under-developed, practically non-existant arena for exploration. Its worth investing in.

Lectures, because of their medium, many times muddle actities. Lecture should highlight, accentuate, a demonstration or interactive activity. They are quite convenient, and the results are many times qiute “average”. How many words out of every lecture are partially or completely discounted in a students “re-creation” of an idea. My guess, for many students is 85%. Do we have studies on this?

I teach children. I think sometimes many forget what the role accumulating knowledge as in done in school has in a child’s psyche. Math and any subject CAN be, and should be, a source of PRIDE for students. The lecture format has little is any room to nuture this very individual feeling of “I CAN”. That’s what students need. They crave it. Once again I believe the fault lies with the format of the lecture itself, NOT the teacher, although most certainly the lecturer. Every child participating in a lecture is covered by the same EXACT same BROADCAST. But children understand that they are all different YET they still can’t help judge their worth on their ability to understand and execute task X. So we have one broadcast, or word-stream, and many different children. Even when we don’t pick up on this unequalness, children do. It hurts them, plain and simple.

We need technology to augment a teacher’s ability to challenge individual students in an appropriate manner; that being any manner that leads to PRIDE, ACCOMPLISHMENT, and eventual success. Let your imagination run wild here. Its totally under-developed, practically non-existant arena for exploration. Its worth investing in.

Or you don’t answer it. You say, “That’s a good question. I wonder how we could figure that out.”

So, here’s my attempt to find vocabulary for a more fine-grained vocabulary for learning methods.

If you reflect on what you know about the world, a lot of our knowledge comes because an individual “explained” an idea to us. And so instead of focusing on lecturing, I’d like to focus on explaining. People certainly sometimes learn when a matter is explained to them, so it’s natural that teachers will spend some time explaining matters to students.

A teacher has options when it comes to explaining ideas in a classroom. A teacher can explain things to a student, one-on-one, or a teacher can explain things to all of the students in the class at once. Another degree of freedom is that a teacher can either allow for questions from students during her explanation, or the teacher can not take any questions from students during her explanation.

Of course, the teacher can use props and video and other sorts of aids in her attempt to explain something to her student(s). It’s still an explanation.

So that’s the vocabulary. A teacher can choose to teach through explanation, and in doing so the teacher can explain to individuals or to the class, allow questions or not allow questions, use demos or not use demos. I’m sure we can add more to the degrees of freedom within explaining. For instance, we could distinguish between teachers who explain for an hour at a time (I’m looking at you, Sophomore year philosophy professor) and those that explain for just 4 minutes at a time.

I like this vocabulary for two reasons:
(1) Now I might know what positions some of y’all are defending.
(2) I think this way of talking about teaching gets at the heart of the confusion from students/parents/etc. We got so much of what we need to know from explanations. Why wouldn’t explanations work in the math classroom? Others will only see the light if we explain why explaining things, which works so often, fails so often in the math classroom.

If it refers to being able to reproduce, then lectures and electroshocks are very sensible means to teach.

…the term judicious telling.

I love it.

If I say it they won’t learn it.

I think more accurately, “If I say it, they are discouraged from learning it.”