Video is a
powerful educational tool. With internet distribution and storage, a world class video
can easily be shared globally. Salman
Khan of the Khan Academy has been making short videos that teach
specific technical skills to students from elementary school to
graduate level. These are available
for free on the web.
One of the challenges of
internet based video education is that students aren’t really
learning, they just feel like they are learning, let’s call that
couch potato syndrome. That’s a small, easily addressed
problem. The larger problem is presenters faxing in their performance while
standing at the front of a classroom.
Sebastian
Thrun, who knows something about education, puts it this way,
“You don’t lose weight by watching someone else exercise,” he
says. “You don’t learn by watching someone else solve problems.
It became clear to me that the only way to do online learning
effectively is to have students solve problems.”
A major change in learning is information is available anywhere. In the old days,
students went to University to learn the Canon of Western
Civilization, all three books, because there was a good chance that
when they went back home, they weren’t going to see another book
again. Scholars were walking
search engines. They weren’t expected to work, they were
expected to provide answers and educate the baron’s whelps in their
downtime.
There are still people who
think their job is to have an opinion and opine. Nice work if you
can get it.
For most of us, job one is
to turn that knowledge into something valuable, on demand.
The purpose of video
education is to provide the knowledge. Education comes from using it
to make something useful.
Another value of video
education is modeling behavior. Kipling provided Victorian behavior
modeling through his writing, and The
Man Who Would Be King shows heroic
behavior, like High
Noon, and even Leroy
Jethro Gibbs or Frank
Reagan.
Let’s take the best
parts of video and work it like a rented mule in the interests of
better education.
