"Bringing good teachers to places where good teachers won't go". - Sugata Mitra
Doesn't this sound eerily familiar? As in, like, Teach For America eerily familiar? Now, granted, in his TED Talk video Mr. Mitra is speaking of literally bringing educators to the back streets of New Delhi, but the overarching implications for those of us in the educator world is the same.
I'm all for rapidly bringing teachers into areas where there is a shortage. My concern is the same one I have with TFA. How long before the teacher streamed by video into classrooms is seen as a viable alternative to the current educators already in place? In areas in which there is an excess of teachers?
Computers are cheaper than health benefits. Computer unions never demand a cost of living pay increase. Sure, once Skynet comes online the computers will try to kill and enslave us (Google it), but until then streaming an educator into classrooms does have a nice ring to it as the potential solution to our country's education budget crisis.
Mitra does makes some good points. Technology has empowered our kids to do some amazing learning. I agree wholeheartedly that "if children have interest, then education happens"; but telling me that "children will learn to do things on computers on their own"? Well.....duh.
With all due respect Mr. Mitra, there's a reason I go to my 16 and 10 year old nephews for tech advice: kids know things about computers because they play with them. They tinker with a reckless abandon that only comes with being born into the digital age. They don't fear them like the rest of us (which is also exactly why we will resist our new computer overlords while they will bow down to them).
This technology could change the world. Let's just hope it is not at the expense of giving our kids a living, breathing teacher in the room. There is more to life than learning how to use the interwebs and translate a google doc. There is a subtlety and nuance to being alive that kids learn through mentorship and interaction with other human beings. Life is best learned from the living.
Otherwise you get this for your parent teacher conference...
HAHAHA. I love this video. It does bring up an excellent point though. When the teacher is teaching from a video how will the parents learn about the progress of their child? I suppose that the parents will be able to track the progress of the video learning, and what chapter/grade level they are at, but what else will they be able to learn? In the future will it not be important to see how our children interact with other students, deal with stress, or how they are growing as person? I believe all of these things are just as important to learn from school as general education knowledge. What are computers and video teachers going to do for the personalities of the youth?
ReplyDeleteI know you used to rock Atari and held the high score in pong!
ReplyDeleteKids are not afraid of technology because its aimed at them. All of the tempting games for kids force us to give all of our money to MSFT and AAPL. Technology must be used as an aid in the classroom, not as a substitute. Robots can't teach community...but it might be fun to see how that plays out!
Love the video! Where did you find it? that pretty much sums up the issue. Yes, amazing things can be done with technology, but it's just a tool. Using it to replace teachers would have some horrible negative consequences, in my opinion.
ReplyDelete