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How Students Are 'Evolving' With Technology
Scott Jaschik writes "A new study explores how "digital natives" (today's college students) have changing technology habits — and how those habits have infiltrated the classroom. What does that mean for professors and their teaching methods?"
Maybe it's just me, but I've tried taking notes on my laptop before and I just didn't retain the information as well as when I physically write notes with paper and pencil.
Let's hope the folks in Kansas don't hear about this.
"What does that mean for professors and their teaching methods?"
Nothing. We're all old-school around here when it comes to teaching.
I have had professors who acted on change in technology to keep-up with students and there were some who absolutely ignored it. The impact was, professors who changed themselves to accept the new technologies and incorporated them into their teaching method were able to convey their message across and were better accepted by the students. On the other hand those who did not do anything to change themselves became less popular.
Man, that No Child Left Behind thing must be knocking off more students than I thought!
"..but, but, I can get better! I can learn!"
"Sorry, kid, but no child gets left behind. [Click]"
You know, I love technology and all that it has done and is continuing to do, but I'm also starting to feel that technology is making a large portion of society very antisocial. When I was younger I used to enjoy going to the library, playing in the park etc., nowadays I see a huge portion of younger people skipping the libraries in favor of wikipedia or finding it online. Same goes for interaction, say dating... Why should someone head to a bar, coffeeshop, the laundrymat to meet someone when they could find it online. Alot of interaction has gone down the tubes and while it may be nice to think of an "e-classroom" of the future, I'd be pretty pissed if I couldn't clown around in person as opposed to faking smiles behind a screen. Screw that give me some dirty smelly kids, jokes, teachers throwing chalk at me versus a "digital classroom"
Infiltrated dot Net
I consider myself an early adopter and a person who's generally always interested in finding a competetive advantage, but one thing is for sure: when it comes to studying, I like to have something tactile in my hands. It's almost as though interacting with a paper medium is easier to deal with then a digital medium, and through that interaction I tend to learn more. It's why I've printed out all the Powerepoint slides to class and write on the slides in longhand rather then add notes on the actual slides themselves. I'm not sure if that's something that will eventuially change as people start becoming more exposed to computers at an early age, but I do believe that in my generation (college) people still generally prefer to have a non-digital medium for actual learning. I've rarely run into anyone who would rather read a digital textbook then have some sort of physical document/book in their hands.
Power is the ability to make a change.
That's not always true. I've seen a lot of professors who were able to capture the students' attention, and actually have them learn the material quite well, with only a blackboard and a piece of chalk. I've also seen a lot of professors with all this tricked out technology and completely fail at teaching, either by not getting the students interested, or completing failing at getting the point of the lecture across. So, while technology can help, especially if the professor understands it, I would say that the majority of professors who are bad, can't be helped by just throwing more technology at the problem. And professors who are already good, don't need high tech gadgets to teach.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
See, technology does has its advantages. Let's talk learning here. To me, when I was in school, there were two types of lectures, two types of classes, two types of professors/teachers. I could usually tell right away which type a particular class would be, and that would set the stage for me and eventually my final grade.
The two types:
- Rote memorization
- Conceptual learning
Back before google was a verb I couldn't just 'google' my question and get the answer within seconds. It was advantageous to use some of my (maybe a lot of it) on simple rote memorization.
But now, with so much information literally at my fingertips, I see no reason to fill as much of my memory up with the rote knowledge and facts. I feel that I am better served by learning the art of skepticism, philosophy, conceptualization, and the general techniques used to analyze, logically, the goings-on in my daily life.
I think that in today's schools, if they choose to embrace technology in this way, you will see that in this sense this is advantageous over not having the technology at all.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
This quote included in TFA is, I think, the best way to look at integrating new technologies with teaching: It's a truism that's pretty obvious, but bears repeating. In my opinion, technology can only enhance the teaching/learning experience, since good teachers will have the wisdom to deploy it carefully. Less skilled teachers will deploy it poorly (e.g. using it as a gimmick instead of an useful tool), but then again those are precisely the teachers that would be wasting student's time with other tools (chalkboards, textbooks, etc.).
This is not to say that there have not been "growing pains" with integrating technology into teaching. Certainly I've seen otherwise competent professors make mistakes with over-zealously deploying an immature teaching tool. But, overall, I think the unsurprising conclusion is that all these new technologies provide advantages to those who are smart enough to exploit them properly.
My general view is that rather than try to integrate specific technologies (which then become gimmick-like), it's best to simply make generic resources available to students and teachers (e.g. computer labs, Wi-Fi, laptop loaner programs, site-wide software licenses, etc.). When resources are available, students will inherently gravitate towards using them in the most useful ways. For example, rather than explicitly integrating a particular piece of tech into a course (a particular software package, forcing students to use an online message board, etc.), my inclination would be to make a bunch of avenues for learning available, and see which ones the students inherently use.
Is it some kind of surprise that most people don't bring laptops to lectures? Text notes are easy to take, but god forbid your professor draws a diagram and you don't have a tablet. Also, considering how much willpower it takes me to sit at my computer for an hour without firing up Tetris, I can see that it might have a bad influence on my grades. If it's not going to help me learn more I see no reason to have it with me.
I was in the first class of engineers which my school required to have a computer. That was 20 years ago. I now live in that college town, and have occasional interaction with the engineering department and its students. (No, that's not what I meant - get your mind out of the gutter). They use computers for the same things I did - CAD, spreadsheets, term papers. They get more out of them through the internet as many professors put assignments, notes and samples on line. We didn't play too many games because there weren't many immersive ones, and we didn't surf because the internet did not exist then as it exists now. The web had not yet been created (by web, I mean HTML and browsers). We didn't chat, unless you count BBSs - which I don't. We didn't download music or videos - most PCs didn't have sound cards, video wasn't really possible on an 8086, and p0rn, even if it existed was not really a hot item at 320x240 (in a stunning 256 colors).
It seems that most of the progress has been in added functionality (as in more built-in functions - 3D solid cad, more rows/cols) and speed of processing. Everything else seems to be more about entertainment, whether its games, connectivity, or casual information (surfing). Students can amass more crap via downloads, but if you never print it out or look at it on the screen page-by-page it's just as bad as a Kinkos-printed set of notes where you watch the comb spine slowly yellow over the years. Actually, I suppose its worse - without that yellow spine in the bookcase to remind you that you have it, you don't even remember that lecture note set exists, buried in some sub-folder in you document directory.
IMHO very little has changed in 20 years on the teaching front. The critical component to education in the interactive ability of the teacher and student to work together. Web-enabled learning still tens to fall short, imho, and expanding class attendance through distance learning just reduces the opportunity to get everyone involved in the learning process.
Wait...I take part of that back - email does make a difference. Quick questions can be answered efficiently in an asynchronous manner that wasn't possible in my day (yes, we had voicemail, but couldn't copy the whole class). Still, it doesn't really scream "new teaching methods are necessary," unless new teaching methods involves putting web blocking software in the routers to keep the kids from surfing in a boring lecture.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The only subject I have trouble seeing easily transferable to an electronic form without some form of tablet would be math and engineering subjects which require extensive equations. There is no good standard equation editor that can create and manipulate formulas nearly as fast as can be done by hand afaik. (Although LaTeX equations do look a whole lot better than by hand once you get all the symbols in the right place.)
As an engineer I stuck to desktop computers, took notes on paper, until this year. I have a Ph.D., and my comittee consists of a colleague at work, my advisor at school, and me doing work at both work and school and home. So I broke down and I use it for research, but I still take paper notes. You just can't effectively do a free body diagram on a notebook...
And I quote, "IT is not a good substitute for good teaching. Good teachers are good with or without IT and students learn a great deal from them. Poor teachers are poor with or without IT and students learn little from them."
I wonder what kind of ROI universities get out on their IT projects. I visit a lot of universities and I regularly encounter empty computer labs, students ignoring lectures while listening to iPods, texting on mobile phones, and/or playing games on their laptop; lecture times cut short by the professor's lack of understanding of the basic operation of poorly implemented presentation technology.
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. --Denis Diderot
Chalk and blackboard? Pfft. My MAE623 professor uses **transparencies** :P (despite the fact that each room is equipped with an LCD projector, and there are several rooms equipped with digital blackboards ... he is old school and uses the overhead projector)
I prefer a lecture with chalk over a ramble with PowerPoint slides any day. Unfortunately, teaching with PowerPoint seems to be hip these days - which might not be so bad in itself, but it is when they don't know how to use it correctly. Quickly rushing over a few slides with equations written all over it does not help. Watching someone slowly write out each step on a chalkboard, and explain why they did it along the way, does wonders for your understanding.
I had a teacher who put a box outside the classroom with a sign that basically said "Put tamagoshi or gameboy here during the class, any tamagoshi or gameboy found inside the classroom will be hammered", of course, I was 7 then and no one had cellphone or PDA at that time.
The rest of the article just seems to be obvious conclusions that doesn't require much study of anything.
I'm a mature student doing an undergraduate history degree at a UK university, and the lecturers say that historical research has been completely revolutionised in the last five years by the internet. As an example, take Early English Books Online (EEBO), which has scans and transcriptions of every book published in English between the invention of the printing press 1750. Instead of having to travel to obscure academic libraries to find rare books (or manage without them), I can read all the source material I need for my dissertation from home via a VPN connection to my university. With a tool like Zotero for Firefox I can download the books to my laptop and make notes all over them -- try doing that with a 17th century manuscript :-)
UK students today, if they can use MS-Word and can use a web browser, they can use a computer to an expert level. And there in lies the problem.
We have little teaching of actual programming and use of a computer (setting up a simple network, installing and configure software), just how to use a word processor. Although, the state of dumbed down education today, you'd half expect exams in how to send a SMS (text) message on a mobile phone, or how to get the top score in Tetris on a phone.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
It's hard to say no to a new tech grant because new computers and the possibility of a "laptop for every child" can look so good in the Sunday paper, but the truth of the matter is that high technology (like PDAs, cellphones, computers, even graphing calculators at times) are so much more distracting than helpful that I, working in education AND being such a techy have to be the lone educated person in the room saying thing like, "No, it will only hurt the kids! Just upgrade the office computers and pay for computer/program/database training for the staff!"
/sigh
That said, the only "infiltration" is the exploitation of the technology so as to make goofing off that much easier and that much less detectable.
I always get weird looks like, "What in the world do you know?" and I always have to reexplain that the kids know computers better than the administration would ever like to know and will find ways to communicate when they shouldn't or play/make games would they should be working.
At BEST, I'd like to see a completely crippled tablet mini-pc that exists solely for taking notes and uploading those notes to personal webspace. There is so little that tech has to offer the student and so much harm to do to the class.
Now, if you don't mind, I have to get back to writing a grant proposal for new flat screen televisions in the class room.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Having spent a lot of time in the education system, both in front and behind the desk, I have mixed feelings about all this IT craze. When I was a pupil back in the 80's, I had to brew my own text processor (cp/m computer, wordprocessor still to be invented...). Wonderful experience, I typed back home my (terrible) handwritten notes. I still don't think it helped me a bit learning my lessons, but it taught me about computers when it was still quite new and shinny. Coolness factor at the time, about zero. Being a nerd wasn't hype then.
Reel forward : 20 years later, I'm teaching criminal law. Still a nerd, but mainly as a hobbyist. Still produce most of my work on computers, likes wikipedia (but know it's not a source of scholarly value), use fluently most parts of internet. Students in front of me are wired as much as they can lift. After letting them do as they please (we're at university, they should be grown up, FFS), I have to step in and forbid recording devices in my class room, read the riot act (throwing the lowest possible marks as if shot in burst with a M16) at those stupid enough to forget I too can google parts of their dissertation to find the true author, etc. Now, I don't even provide a powerpoint during the course, they f*ckin' have to listen to me and write things down with a pencil. If they don't like that, my door is always open and works both ways.
Finally, my feeling is IT is very good for homework, library work, and anything research-related. But it's the worst ennemy of the student willing to truly learn. I know many will swear that it's helping them, but that's self delusion. I too had a friend before internet who used to swear sticking colored stars next to chapters heads was helping him. It failed. he should have read the actual contents instead of fuzzing around. So have done successful students for past centuries, so will they for centuries to come.
Nothing replace hard personnal work. But there is still a place for IT : it's a considerable step forward for anonymity of dissertations, and it avoids students having low marks for the sole reason the teacher can't decipher them because they have a bad writing.
The best use of technology I've been a part of was a college algebra teacher using the camera and projector to display problems as she worked them on her notepad. She used different colored markers and everything was faster because she wasn't spending time writing three-inch numbers on a whiteboard or constantly erasing.
Now look at my calculus instructor that tries to use a combination of whiteboard, computer's TI-83 emulator and online resources. It all feels disjointed and awkward, especially when he's constantly walking back and forth to turn the room light on and off.
One uses the technology that assists in teaching, the other seems like he's using technology for technology's sake.
From TFA: "...What they're doing when they're online is also changing somewhat, with the rise of Facebook and other social networking sites as the clearest trend this year (to 80.3 percent from 72.3 percent in 2006), along with streaming video and course management software, which 46.1 percent of respondents said they use several times a week or more (compared with 39.6 percent in 2006). ..."
... meanwhile, they probably do not learn to properly cluster only similar entities into umbrella categories.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I'm so glad that my eyes 'evolved' since my birth to allow me to read it on an LCD screen rather than the primitive CRT screens that my parents 'evolved' with. I guess my DNA got mangled about the same time that my fingers 'evolved' the ability to press little square buttons in order to produce this post.
In other news, I'm still awaiting the mutation that will allow me to 'evolve' the ability to let pop science jargon slip by unchallenged. I pray to God every day that to reach in with with His Noodly Appendage and screw with my chromosomes.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The idea is fairly old - Thomas Edison the inventor of the phonograph and co-inventor of movie films proposed commercializing education by recording the most charismatic teachers and showing them at schools. This supposedly would solve two cost problems: first you stimulate students with the best teachers; second you reduce the number of [expensive] teachers by replicating their presententions. EVERY TIME a new form of media was invented since Edison someone has proposed the same arguments for commercializing education- to this day, now with Internet text messaging and videos. To a small degree the InterNet has facilitated grade-school charter school and college-trade schools. It cuts the cost of classrooms, but not the labor costs of interactive teachers. There must be something fundamental about the interative give-and-take of teachers and students thats resisted change int the 2500 years since Plato's Academy.
I can point to several religious websites that will refute that very notion. I'm not sure if I find it ironic, tragic, or maddening that religionists will use the latest in multimedia technology, the product of the scientific method and research, to spread their anti-intellectual and anti-science message. And they would certainly take great umbrage at the use of the word "evolution" to describe the changes in their evangelism strategy. We're talking about using satellite and internet communications to promulgate the tribal superstitions of poor, ignorant goat-herders. Ugh! If we were still listening to you guys, you wouldn't have satellites and TV! You wouldn't even have PA systems!
Oh, well. At least the Muslims have been known to use the technology to party. I've heard of sucka MC's but never mullah MC's.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
As a college student I have to say what the hell are these paper and pencils I keep hearing about. Is it supposed to be a form of laptop replacement?
I'm currently sitting in a big lecture hall. Average physics (mechanics) class. Case Western Reserve University.
/. during class, but then again, it keeps me awake for when he gets around to the important stuff and stops just repeating 'F=ma'.)
There's a giant chalkboard in the front which the professor is writing on. There's a little desk off to the side that can send video to a projector. I think I learn the material better when he writes on the board, but sometimes a video demonstration is more convenient than trying to set up a complex demo (ie looking at a sequence of timed photos). He also provides the notes online, as well as all handouts. This is mostly to save paper, but it's still more convenient than paper, and even more accessible, since I can carry all my papers around in one book-sized object.
Educational tech is good in moderation. I love not having to carry around 50 pieces of paper, but I wouldn't want to be taught via streaming video.
(Of course, I guess it's very telling that I'm writing a post on
My university is an almost completely paperless campus. Every student, teacher, and administrator has a tablet pc. All homework, tests, notes, and whatever else you can think of is done with digital ink. It works amazingly well and considering how small and in-the-middle-of-nowhere it is I am surprised the large and progessive universities don't have systems like this already. http://www.dsu.edu/
Thought I'd share a quote from one of my top five professors... see subject.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
That is an excellent way to put it. I may borrow that from time to time.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
they were "intelligently" designed that way...
by corporate machines...
then whatever method you use to put it over shouldn't matter a damn.
Whether you use programmed sleep learning or sit in some olive groves with an Athenian philosopher, if knowledge is real then you'll learn it. If it's crap, then you won't.
And, on the whole, I would rather be talking to Socrates than typing at a keyboard, even if the assembled knowledge of the world was available on the net.
As a student, let me say: tl;dr
1/3 of jokes get modded OT. If you get the joke, mod 1 in 3 insightful/interesting/underrated to restore karma balance.
As far as real differences on either end of the log.
My mom's a professor at a college where they wholeheartedly embraced computer technology in the classroom right from when it first became viable (for non-comp-sci professors) and from my observations both as a student and in visiting her on campus, it hasn't really made a big difference.
Those tenured old bores who droned on in endless lecture are now (mostly) reading PowerPoing presentations bullet-by-bullet. Engaging speakers who made connections with what students already know and what they will encounter after school are (mostly) just as effective. It's now possible to get the class syllabus on-line. Students who were meticulous about turning in assignments on time still are. The lazy ones who couldn't be bothered to look at a paper syllabus still don't. Those who took notes still do, albeit sometimes in a different way--the daydreamers are now playing Solitare.
Setting aside the hype, what makes a student (or professor) successful hasn't changed in the last few hundred years, at least. It's possible that old Zog was droning on about mammoth hunts while Grum was showing his actual spear moves for fighting sabertooth tigers.
I understand that there are those with poor organizational skills who feel there's been a great benefit to them, but I fail to see why they couldn't have had success using a paper planner.
Much like books, or other teaching "technology", computers can only empower those who are already prepared for learning and teaching.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I've found that if a lecturer isn't very good he's going to get worse if you give him Powerpoint.
There is a PC and Projector in every classroom. There's also a sound system, VCR/DVD, and document projector.
That's every single classroom.
A lot of professors choose not to use any of it though.
I've had one professor use the document projector and DVD player. I've had one use the PC and sound system.
My programming professor uses the PC and projector obviously.
All the rest use markers on the whiteboard.
I guess if the professor is old, they don't like technology.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I am quite a bit older than most four year college students, but that's due to paying my own way, and stopping and starting related to money issues.
.doc that you can modify with your own notes.
I remember being one of the first in my classes to have a laptop to take notes on. I simply type faster, without thinking about it, than I can write notes. At first, it was seen as an anomaly. Now, it's almost normal. In the last quarter I went to, a year ago, a good third of the folks I went in with had laptops. There is also internet access. The best classes integrated online content, like access to notes and material with the lecture. It is amazing to get a PDF, or
The worst had no online presence at all. I started with a computer science degree, and took the online presence for granted. Since I switched down to my "do you want fries with that" psych degree it's very hit and miss. I remember being in a 200 level psych class where the prof had no online presence, and stated he did not use email. A collective groan went up from the 200+ students.
My husband, graduating this quarter with an accounting degree, and ready to take his CPA testing, actually had a professor last quarter outlaw laptops in the classroom. There was a quarter long argument between most of the class and the prof about it. The younger, normal aged, students were most frustrated with that. My husband, being an old fart, just switched over to paper notes, but said he really missed his laptop, and had forgotten how tedious paper could be.
It is a testimony to my laptop use, in school, that my penmanship is not doctor grade illegible.
Nothing hides evidence like a stew. -Gus Pratt
I've always wondered when the next generational shift would become really apparent to me, and I think this is the moment when it's finally entered my field of vision. Half the comments on here sound almost exactly like my Grandparents when they talk about how evil the microwave is, or how we've lost an important part of life by getting a roomba. I'm even more shocked to find that anyone can go to school these days and 'not' find a large portion of the class taking notes on some kind of digital device.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Ass-imi-lated...
Re-sistance... was fyu-tyle....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Our masters program made use of a IRC channel to talk during some lectures, and it was completely a mixed bag. I could see that the professor would be suspicious of the typing and students looking at screens instead of them, but in some cases, having the TA on the backchannel was an excellent addition to the lecture, we could ask tangent questions and get the reply all without breaking the flow of the speaker. On team even did a visualization of the backchannel
Maybe if he stops using it it will go up even more.
At the bottom of the
Actually, i don't think it's surprising at all.
Hand written notes are still the best because you can use all the paper-space how you want. write, delete, write over, change size of what you're writing... it's all because it's so flexible, adaptable.You don't have to follw formats, click 4 times to change size, search for an option to insert a graph or draw a cross, a line to make logic connections...
Computers are better to keep everything in order, but order needs time!
"well, but we have laptop with touchscreens!", yeah, 2kg compared to -maybe- 50gr of paper, you have to pay attention not to put too much pressure while writing, and pdas are still not that better, with a poor touch-recognition, and...
you still have to rewrite it all!
so why bother with uncomplete and not-flexible tech?
i'll use pdas/notebooks to take notes when I won't have to worry the way I torture them, and when there'll be some kind of program that can translate my gerogliphics in a perfectly formatted document. Otherwise, i don't really see why anyone would take notes on them... you trow away battery power and flexibility...
Nothing beats note taking on paper with one of those four color pens, which seem to be increasingly hard to find, sadly.
Typing it all up into the computer later and adding diagrams (scanned or reconstructed in a drawing program) helps cement the info into your little neurons.
Not everything has to be made high tech, and in some cases the high tech "solution" doesn't really solve anything and can cause more problems. *cough*voting*cough*
Didn't they predict internet enabled refrigerators and coffee makers by now?
Some try to paint it as a generational thing, but, no. It's just a case of some processes and technologies having matured to the point where there's really nothing wrong with them, and any gains to be had by throwing a computer at it are diminishing at best.
Anyway, that's what labs are for. For any high tech/scientific degree, that's where the real learning happens.
it hasn't really made a big difference.
:) It's also useful to chuck like a spear at people carrying on their own meetings in the back, but I don't get much of that because I've become known for my accuracy.
There's increasing numbers of studies that show just this now that the computers have been in place for a while. Computers can't fix the fundamental problems with the educational system. The "solutions" used to be throw more money at it!" That didn't work either as anyone in California can tell you. Now it's "Throw more computers at it!" or even "Throw more computers AND more money at it!"
Those tenured old bores who droned on in endless lecture are now (mostly) reading PowerPoing presentations bullet-by-bullet.
Ha! Same thing here in the corporate engineering world! I put my diagrams and text on separate slides and talk to the diagram. Seems to keep the audience awake. And I use a good old WOODEN pointer. None of that prissy LED pointer crap here.
Most of us were taught in school using pencil und paper.
... fan)
Maybe somebody from a future (present? past?) generation, educated solely using digital means, might find weird the concept of felling a tree just to scribble on it's processed corpse.
Disclaimer: IANAGF (I am not a green
Even when I was in college about 10 years ago, there were a good many laptops, cellphones and PDAs in the classroom.
I think professors could, for most classes, counter these trends with a sign on the door saying, "No non-life supporting electronic devices beyond this point. Violators expelled."
I know that the American university (concept, not AU in DC) has become more of a daycare with ashtrays and STDs than a place of higher education for many, many students, but that doesn't mean that the universities have to cater to the lowest common denominator.
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some knowledge but not necessarily ultra-competent.
I have noticed attention span reduction over the years, so to compensate, I change "what I'm doing" about every 20 minutes or so, and I put a lot more video and music in my Powerpoint presentations. I would RATHER use Keynote, but the Studenten use Office, and they out number me almost 200 to one....
So, example:
A class of second years (sophomores to the Americans...) all come chattering in to Communications Theory Class. I put up a slide with the class title and my name, while "Radio Prague" by OMD plays at increasingly loud volume... (no, it's not some drippy synthpop tune - it's a chopped up shortwave radio fanfare from Cold War era Czech Radio). They get the idea to shut up. This is followed by 15 minutes of lecture about philosophy which leads into a "follow the bouncing ball" rendition of Monty Python's "Bruce's Philosophy Song" (there's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya bout the raising of the wrist...) which had everyone laughing and many singing along. From there it was into some intro discussion of critical theory peppered with videos from Wonder Showzen, ancient TV commericals, and then we watched NETWORK form 1976. After that more discussion about the film and communications, etc. with a track by Rage Against the Machine.
Basically, I have a very video and music driven lecture, because boring slides are boring, and artists have to get a solid point across simply and directly - so their work acts as a catalysing and intensifying agent. I could blather on for ages about problems with Corporate Ownership of media, or just show NETWORK, and get the same point across in a very convincing way... Still, lecturing is good for stuff that requires lecturing - sometimes you just have to explain it to people because they're just too stupid to get even a basic point. (Once I showed "BURN!" by Pontocorvo, and someone wrote that it showed how hard it is to control workers... nothing like completely missing the point...)
Interestingly, I don't let people use laptops during class - if I do, experience shows me they're going to spend all their time in Facebook...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
They telecommute to class and outsource their homework?
Other then that, if you're actually interested in learning something, it's still all the same hard work and effort.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Between calculators and the internet students have no unplugged skills.
there is such a thing as a grad student TA. People who are young enough to have essentially never been without internet, TM, cell phones and chatware and don't seem much troubled by using anything that is downloadable are now facing the students as well as sitting among them. The senior who got wireless and could google the answer to the prof's question using his laptop is going to know what's going on when, just a year later, he is handling a recitation section as a TA. It is probably a real relief to the stereotyped generation of superannuated "professors" Scott may be trying to conjure up in his choice of words
;)
Or from another vantage point: profs who kept stingy office hours are just sticking to formula if they update that behavior by ignoring email...nothing new here, move along. OK, now to go RTFA
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
The killer sentence is in the second paragraph
"Most students (60.9 percent) believe it improves their learning."
Most students also believe drinking 10 pints of beer and farting loudly is really funny and will improve their chances of getting laid....
What the students believe and what is actually true may be two completely different things. I should imagine most professors will turn round and ask to see proof that the technology really does improve student learning before adopting a different teaching methodology.
(disclaimer: I'm a university researcher working in technology and education)
Exactly. The best professors are those who capture my attention and in doing so I find myself thinking through (both absorbing and analyzing) the information they are presenting. It doesn't matter if they have high tech or low tech presentations, but what is important is they get the information to the students so that they can both remember and use it in the future.
Never mind.
Have gnu, will travel.
Complete with keynote from Google's Peter Norvig (available online) and others -- http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007/.
I used to mindlessly parrot "PowerPoint sucks" until I sat down and thought about it.
Then, I thought to myself, "What would be a better way of getting the point across?"
Is your issue with the fancy animations that waste time? If so, then I agree that PowerPoint sucks in that respect. If it's with something else, I'd like to know as well, preferably with some alternate solution to PowerPoint.
Thanks!
-- An Anonymous Coward
Almost all the classes (all except math), have started using blackboard.com at my local community college (Harper College). A good portion of the teachers haven't yet come up with a good use for it besides posting homework assignments there instead of just writing it on the board or saying what to read at the end of the class when everyone's trying to filter out the door. Even worse, homework in my physics class is now 4 multiple choice questions posted online and she ("professor") never goes over them. The class time on Wed. is dedicated to practicing problems, but she won't even help. She just posts a PDF of the solutions on the online site. It ridiculous, at what point should I not have to pay for credit hours, eventually it might as well be $300 to send me a textbook (if that) and an account to the online site with solutions, plus a team of people that answer questions in a chat with a virtual MS-Paint OLE'd into the browser window.
I totally agree with you. Technology often doesn't enhance the abilities of the learner, but instead enhances the abilities of a good teacher. Let's use Walter Lewin's Lectures as an example.
He doesn't need high tech gadgets to make his point. He uses 3 chalkboards and a demo that applies to the lecture each time, and I found it to be one of the most educational and fun classes I've ever taken. As a result, I think I remember it better than most of my other classes.
Like many people have pointed out, if a professor can't lecture without modern technology, odds are that he's going to do worse with a powerpoint presentation and a projector. I've seen it plenty. I have also seen excellent lecturers use powerpoint presentations properly and are much more organized as a result of them. No more overhead sheets sliding off the table and onto the floor, no more having to dig through piles of sheets to find something discussed at the beginning of lecture, etc.
Likewise, the same argument also holds true for students. Some students are pretty good with using laptops for note-taking. I often wish I had some way that I could take notes without being bound to the size of the 8x11 sheets that I print the professors' ppt's off on to. However, the vast majority of students I see on laptops during lecture are doing at least one of the following:
Checking their portfolio performance (I'm a finance major)
Checking Facebook
IM'ing
email
collegehumor
random flash games
While they're doing the above, I'm having to sit either next to them, in front of them, or behind them, and having to hear them tapping away at their keyboards all through lecture. It gets as annoying as having two people sitting right by you whispering during the whole lecture.
Did anyone check Kansas? I'm curious if students are evolving overthere as well.
Dear Beautiful Mackenzie Morgan (an Actual Girl):
I'd like to sneak up behind you and start fondling you violently and then as you struggle to try to escape I'll take a scientifically-proven magic petrification ray from my bag and zap you with it, and it would first disintegrate all your clothing, leaving you gloriously naked, then it would start the process of transforming your body into marble, inducing in you a massive magically-induced which would be captured eternally as your body is turned into solid stone from the feet up to the head gradually, freezing your final moan of ecstasy as you become a beautiful, cold lifeless statue, but with your mind still alive inside the statue, aware of everything that happens to you. I would put you in display in art museums so that everyone could admire your spectacular naked & petrified teen body, then I would put you on a pedestal in my apartment and admire you constantly, and climb up on the pedestal and make love to your stony form, getting my penis raw & red from the friction, and covering your beautiful hard marble skin with my spooge, my beloved naked-and-petrified queen.
(NOTE: This is just a fantasy; I would not actually do this.)
p.s. I like masturbating to your Blogspot picture