Ken wonders if I’m up to my usual School 2.0 provocation with that lesson plan back there, during which I asked the tech wizards for their help.

Conflict for conflict’s sake is a tiring endeavor …. I’m serious on this one: what do you mean by ‘making this better’?

I dunno. Whatever School 2.0 thinks I’m getting wrong.

None of it targets me, I realize, but lecture (by which I mean a teacher leading a classroom, not a teacher talking at a classroom) has become this ‘net-wide punching bag.

The implicit (and sometimes explicit) suggestion in all that pugilism is that anything we’ve been doing (such as lecture) can be done just as well with networks, project-based learning, 21^st-century tools, etc.

With as much openmindedness as a cocky kid like myself can muster, I’m wondering how this lesson could be spruced up to meet School 2.0’s approval.

That’s a pretty honest summary of my intentions here. Nothing confrontational.

Complete honesty, though, would demand this note: if this lesson plan doesn’t offend the School 2.0 sensibility too much then could we please leave a little room at the party for lecture.

Not just because I like it but because it’s an essential part (and I mean it’s an essential part) of carrying kids who don’t know math (and I mean don’t know math) to that place where they do.

Update:

Chris comes through, delivers a suggestion for making that lesson School 2.0 compliant.

Sure, you could have worked in presentation skills such that, after the kids were done, they created some kind of public presentation of their findings… in fact, why not still do that? See if one of the kids can get a Gaming Commission rep to do a conference call with the class (use Skype – it’s got 2.0 street cred.)

Have the kids make a Google Preso of their findings or something so that the Gaming Commissioner can follow along, and then have the kids present it to that official for review and commentary.

That’ll give their hard work context and meaning by placing it back into the larger world.

Graham Wegner: holding the hype down in Australia.

Okay, just so I’m clear, this is the next educational paradigm? Really? ¶ Rhetorical question: Wld yo– –u re–ad b–log writ – te –– en liike thi–s? ¶ Ustream offers a choppy, low-res medium, one in which I’ll doubtlessly dabble soon, but one which pushes unedited, free-associative thought onto the careless vodcaster. I’m seeing streamcasts circling for thirteen minutes the same point one could make in a coupla body paragraphs. ¶ At least it’s new, though. New’s important. [via Vicki Davis]

A WaPo article on college lecturing habits with which I agree 100%. Worthwhile read for the School 2.0 sect convinced that lecturing is a) an instructional evil and b) on its way out, when in fact it’s neither. It’s just really really hard to do right. [via Jacobs]