Two high school teachers in Colorado have come up with a great new approach to teaching chemistry. Instead of lecturing during class time, they record their lectures and release them as video podcasts, which the students watch at home. During class time, the students and teachers do the “traditional” homework, trying out what they’ve learned in the vodcast and working one-on-one on the assignments. Essentially, they’ve flipped the conventional teaching method.
I just got off the phone with Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams and it’s really neat to hear them talk about their experiment. We’re going to interview them on Friday, and they’ll be featured on the first episode of Spark.
Students can download the vodcasts from the school website and watch them on the computer, iPod or smart phones. If they don’t have highspeed, they can download the lectures onto flash drives and transfer the files to the computer, or they can get DVDs made and watch on television
What do you think of this approach? Do you have questions for Jon and Aaron? Post your comments and questions below or send us an email.
I’m studying to hopefully be a professor soon, and I’m not sure about this approach. It sounds wonderful to use the classroom time for collaborative problem solving and real interaction with the teachers. In classes I’ve co-taught we have done this by using tutorials and even some class time slots to do practical work on lecture material. However, I’m not sure that all high schoolers what to spend their time at home watching a full day’s worth of lectures then coming in for another full day of classes, all in one day! Nowadays I would argue kids need more free time to explore, socialize, and have fun, not more time hooked to a computer. In my day to day life, I feel I’m almost always working — the line between work and home life has blurred to nonexistance for many professionals. Sure, students always had homework, but this seems like a creep towards starting the frantic “always on” lifestyle even before you get out of school. I’d be really curious to see what the folks at the STHLE have to say about this, perhaps I’ll post it for their opinion.
Teachers can have their class recorded and reuse them with slight alterations every semester. This means more time to work with students.
Great teachers could reach people globally. What if you apply this to the developing world, those with access to internet and video playback. People of all ages could self educate, go to a facility for national standardized testing and be able to get a high school diploma for free on their time.
No technology can replace the human qualities of a great teacher, but implemented ideas like this can solve a lot of problems.
Both really interesting perspectives, thanks!
@Christopher, I wonder if that might make a good item for the show, on the line between work and home life disappearing. It seems like only a few years ago that this was considered a problem for people in one particular type of office job, chained to their Crackberries, but now it seems to apply to way more of us.
I like everybody’s comments. Christopher: Our kids have actually netted more time. The podcasts take less time than doing the HW that they used to do. And when they are in the classroom, they have experts (the teacher) there to help them when they get stuck. It truly has been magical. Kids are learning better (we have seen scores raise), so this shows the advantage of this approach.
I envision a time where there are several gifted teachers that produce vodcasts that ware watched by students all over the world.
Now I am not saying that we will ever replace the teacher in the classroom. They are still needed–in fact maybe even more so than in the more traditional classroom.
Thanks everyone for commeting. It is good to see people thinking about what Aaron and I are doing.
The kids might as well start learning to balance their life, investing their most limited resource (time) in what matters to them. Having a great program like this should have a pre-requisite of “Introduction to Balancing My Life”.
I’ve had success with recording explanations to some of the more technical aspects of my class and putting those online for the students to review whenever they need them. I was planning to do more of that this fall.
We are the makers of the SnapKast software that Mr. Bergmann and Mr. Sams are using. We see great results with technology and innovative teaching methods. This only works with talented, well trained teachers. Their work is absolutely awesome. We invite you to visit our website to see actual samples and use cases.
http://snapkast.com
The other interesting thing is that students would be able to pause and rewind if this missed something.
Great Idea.
Thanks for the replies Nora & Jon… there were also some replies posted on the list for the Society for Teaching & Learning in Higher Education, mostly focusing on the creep toward an always-at-work life than the switch around of classroom and homework time. Sorry they didn’t post their replies here as I had suggested. I think the repercussions of the Crackberry life, as much as it is over-hyped in the media, would make a good Spark show because of what Spark would do with it.
Things are getting really crazy, and not just for the crack berry business people and politicians. Jon mentioned on the show a student watching a vodcast lecture on the way to soccer practice. I’m a computer science researcher and here at IBM we had a series of meetings this summer where we used IM, teleconferencing, and screen sharing of slides all at the same time, all while sitting at our own desks doing our own work too. It was very fragmented and frantic, but it seemed to work for most of us. Is this the future? Will we ever be able to pay attention to one thing at a time again? And does it matter? Will we want to? Sorry, this is off topic of what Jon and Aaron are doing.
I think The first show of the season was great, as usual. Welcome back, Spark!
Thanks for the well-wishes, Christopher!
If the dog ate it, you'd better train your dog