The Daily Riff - BE SMARTER. ABOUT EDUCATION.

Thanks for the comments and links, Frank. I will be interested in checking them out - as will many of readers.

Instead of relying on lectures and textbooks, the Modeling Instruction

paradigm emphasizes active student construction of conceptual and

mathematical models in an interactive learning community. Students are

engaged with simple scenarios to learn to model the physical world.

You can watch one Modeling class in action here:

http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/modeling-instruction/

In comparison to traditional instruction, under expert modeling

instruction high school students average more than two standard

deviations higher on a standard instrument for assessing conceptual

understanding of physics:

http://modeling.asu.edu/modeling/Mod_Instr-effective.htm

More discussion about the ineffectiveness of lectures here:

http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/pt-pseudoteaching-mit-physics/

I’m a HS physics teacher. Info I would find useful: (1) knowing how

many times a student attempted the same problem; (2) knowing the

answer history, i.e, what the student's wrong answers were; (3)

knowing the type of mistake a student made when choosing a wrong

answer, e.g., did he forget to square the distance, did she apply

kinetic energy conservation instead of momentum conservation, did he

disregard the fact that the forces where in opposite directions, did

she confuse force of friction with coefficient of friction, did he

assume constant velocity when in fact it was accelerating, etc. That

is INFINITELY MORE useful that knowing how many times he rewound the

movie, how many times she paused it, or how long they spent on a

module. Those times could be affected by (1) distractions from family;

(2) self-imposed distractions like facebook and texting.

On a related KA tangent: I’m still on the fence about flipped

classrooms in the form of “watch lecture at home first, practice in

class second.” It reinforces the notion that school is about digesting

someone else’s knowledge, rather than constructing your own. The

videos could be a useful resource following knowledge building in the

class, but I haven’t found any KA videos that work for me.

While Khan argues that his videos now eliminate “one-size-fits-all”

education, his videos are exactly that. I’ve actually tried finding KA

videos for my students to use as references for studying, or to use as

a tutorial when there’s a substitute teacher. However, I teach physics

from the Modeling Instruction paradigm, and so I haven’t found one

good one. They either tackle problems that are too hard (college

level) or they don’t use a lot of the multiple representations that

are so fundamental to my teaching (kinematic graphs, interaction

diagrams, energy pie graphs, momentum bar charts, color-coded circuit

diagrams showing pressure and flow, etc.) that the videos are useless

to me because his videos do not align with proper Physics Education

Research pedagogy.

Pete, appreciate your comments.

I agree with your first sentence but have to depart from there.

Answer to all the others: it depends. (Not what everyone wants to hear).

One child may like Khan. Another may not. That's the power of technology. It's giving us options.

We can't measure students on how they like Khan. Then we're making it no better than students fitting the school. The one-room schoolhouse was more flexible. Kids had the opportunity to find the person in that schoolhouse (or vice versa) that could best help them learn, in addition to that busy teacher.

And, we can never discount the value of human connection. Substitute some, sure. (Especially if the situation is replaceable and better). Because "we can" doesn't make it better, or "we should."

Cliche but works for me here.

I also don't think Khan is necessarily student-centered or teacher-centered in its pure form. It's how one uses it.

Jason Rosoff -

Don't give up. I'm actually rooting for you.

Been an advocate of KA since the positive post last year, mentioning it several times as a fabulous resource - - -

I made it very clear the point of the riff was a critique of what was said

in the video. When you have a TED video, visited by Bill Gates, no less,

embraced with rousing applause, you know that WHAT was said will be taken by many as the smart thing. There were obvious points that I had pause for concern, and don't want viewers to think certain initiatives are

so great (gave my reasons).

Somebody had to do it.

I will spend more time with your information to give it the full context as you requested (I personally have been on and like the vids, but not all do, as you know). Will do another post or comment soon-

Appreciate the feedback - know launching is "kinda crazy." But having Gates in your corner isn't exactly roughing it, although his involvement has certainly raised the bar in terms of expectations and scrutiny.