Distance Education courses are increasingly effective and use technologies like podcasting with impressive effects. Why tie oneself to the drawbacks of traditional classrooms when they are unnecessary? If you find that your students are skipping the lectures — perhaps you should re-evaluate the content and format of the lectures? If your students don't feel compelled to attend, perhaps it's the arrow and not the indian?
to validate this sort of a system — Advanced Class
scheduled August 25, 2005 from 8:00 PM to 9:40 PM
Location: Princeton
Unprepared
Party Scrabble; 65,000 is a small price to pay for a child's life and it's not likely to be the last.
Just because a person writes fantastic code, are they going to be even a decent Project Manager? So why would the world's greatest mathematician be thought to be any good as a teacher? Being a teacher is not simply knowing the material, but being able to communicate it to the student in such a way that they are receptive to it. One who can maintain that motivation and who is not so eager to blame the student for not understanding, but rather to re-examine their own efforts and perhaps try alternative approaches.
And many different approaches, applied appropriately and with variety, are desireable. If half the class doesn't understand, it's most likely not their problem they aren't being engaged. Present them with realistic situations or games. The less contrived, the better and make it a game if at all possible. This isn't just for kids, but adult learners as well. The more they are able to forget they are learning, the more they will learn.
Every student has their own strengths and weaknesses and if one student doesn't understand your presentation, perhaps they are just not strong in that area. Does this mean you should spend a huge amount of time on getting them up to speed there and taking away from the rest of the class? Or should you forget them and just move on with the rest of the class?
Or is there another option? Why can't the educational world match the real world a bit more and allow for group work? Some people are better at managing a group than at the labour aspects, but that's a valuable skill, as is assembling a team, interacting socially and assessing strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps, rather than fighting 'copying' and 'cheating' (which are really pretty unavoidable), use economics ('you can work in groups if you want, but there's only one 100% for this assignment and it goes to the first person' or some such).
As an English teacher, I find I'm much more concerned with fluency than with accuracy because I feel accuracy will come with experimentation, but experimentation doesn't occur without the confidence of fluency. The reading aspect should go a ways towards increasing vocabulary and I think the interactivity would also be engaging.
Even if the grammar is not keyword based and not real world, I think this is OK.
What about using the old, pre-graphical MMORPGs, text based (BBS?) games? Then it could be opened up to learners all around the world, eh? Has anyone played with that?
Slashdot Mirror
Distance Education courses are increasingly effective and use technologies like podcasting with impressive effects. Why tie oneself to the drawbacks of traditional classrooms when they are unnecessary? If you find that your students are skipping the lectures — perhaps you should re-evaluate the content and format of the lectures? If your students don't feel compelled to attend, perhaps it's the arrow and not the indian?
to validate this sort of a system — Advanced Class scheduled August 25, 2005 from 8:00 PM to 9:40 PM Location: Princeton Unprepared Party Scrabble; 65,000 is a small price to pay for a child's life and it's not likely to be the last.
If you read the related article, you would find that it wasn't a Korean man or even a man in Korea, but rather a Chinese man in China.
Just because a person writes fantastic code, are they going to be even a decent Project Manager? So why would the world's greatest mathematician be thought to be any good as a teacher? Being a teacher is not simply knowing the material, but being able to communicate it to the student in such a way that they are receptive to it. One who can maintain that motivation and who is not so eager to blame the student for not understanding, but rather to re-examine their own efforts and perhaps try alternative approaches.
And many different approaches, applied appropriately and with variety, are desireable. If half the class doesn't understand, it's most likely not their problem they aren't being engaged. Present them with realistic situations or games. The less contrived, the better and make it a game if at all possible. This isn't just for kids, but adult learners as well. The more they are able to forget they are learning, the more they will learn.
Every student has their own strengths and weaknesses and if one student doesn't understand your presentation, perhaps they are just not strong in that area. Does this mean you should spend a huge amount of time on getting them up to speed there and taking away from the rest of the class? Or should you forget them and just move on with the rest of the class?
Or is there another option? Why can't the educational world match the real world a bit more and allow for group work? Some people are better at managing a group than at the labour aspects, but that's a valuable skill, as is assembling a team, interacting socially and assessing strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps, rather than fighting 'copying' and 'cheating' (which are really pretty unavoidable), use economics ('you can work in groups if you want, but there's only one 100% for this assignment and it goes to the first person' or some such).As an English teacher, I find I'm much more concerned with fluency than with accuracy because I feel accuracy will come with experimentation, but experimentation doesn't occur without the confidence of fluency. The reading aspect should go a ways towards increasing vocabulary and I think the interactivity would also be engaging. Even if the grammar is not keyword based and not real world, I think this is OK. What about using the old, pre-graphical MMORPGs, text based (BBS?) games? Then it could be opened up to learners all around the world, eh? Has anyone played with that?
Has anyone out there ever tried to use Interactive Fiction to teach English as a foreign language? If so, how did you do it and did it work?