Leveraging incredible teachers through technology

By Simon On February 27, 2011 · 4 Comments

I am convinced we need to find ways new ways to ensure that more students can access the unique genius and abilities of our best teachers. No longer do students need to ‘be in the places’ that the best teachers teach. Rather they simply need access to high quality video of these lessons online.

itune U has allowed us to access some of the best lectures in the world for free on our ipods for a couple of years now. But what about high school students?

Dream Teachers is a great new initiative in the UK which aims to identify and capture how great teachers can make complicated ideas clear and engaging. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/dreamteachers

Another one of my favourites is the Khan Academy – now backed by the Gates Foundation Sal Khan is ensuring quality lessons are available to all students with a team of just a few people. http://www.khanacademy.org/

We need to innovate and find new, cost effective ways to deliver effective and engaging learning to every student. How can you leverage what you are creating to better serve all students looking to learn?

4 Responses to Leveraging incredible teachers through technology

Peter Monteith says:

February 27, 2011 at 9:31 pm

We in New Zealand are finding that the relationship between teacher/child and family is crucial to how students learn.How does this in this brave new e-world you postulate these relationships be built?
Simon says:

February 28, 2011 at 1:54 am

Thanks for your comment Peter. I could not agree more of the importance of building strong relationships. The question becomes – how do we create more time for teachers to engage with small groups and individual students in order to build deeper relationships? Teachers are very stretched and spend a great deal of their time either preparing lessons, or teaching through ‘direct instruction’ to get through the curriculum. Neither is conducive to building strong relationships with students inside or outside the classroom.

By recording the best lessons from the around the world for ‘direct instruction’ – students would be able to do much of their ‘direct instruction learning’ outside of the classroom. This would allow teachers to spend more time working through questions, supporting weaknesses and working collaboratively to explore the implications and applications of these concepts to the real world. I hold that this would provide substantial opportunity for the development of student/teacher relationships.
Aaron Tait says:

June 1, 2011 at 6:05 pm

Hi Simon,

Spoke alongside Nathan Murphy at a conference yesterday. Amazing guy – a twenty year old who was homeless and went through Oasis Refuge in Sydney. Has emerged with a great idea that fits nicely into what you were blogging about.

http://audiohighschool.com.au/

Keep up the great work.

Aaron Tait
Avnita Bir says:

November 29, 2011 at 2:13 am

I agree totally with Simon that a strong and deep relationship between the teacher and taught is built more during the informal conversations outside of the classrooms than during ‘direct instructional learning’ in class. I have always made a better connect with my students and felt their pulse while interacting with them over an event or a discussion or a collaborative task rather than while lecturing on different market forms and pricing for example.
Recently one of our very good teachers got relocated and not wanting our students to miss out on her expertise, we trained her on the use of Skype and now she takes Skype classes with her students. It has meant breaking mental stereotypes through this out-of-the box solution.