Over the past couple weeks, students in Ms. Angela Altomonte’s U. S. History class at Fordson have been working hard at preparing lessons to deliver to their peers on various topics. They learned valuable lessons about what it takes to be a teacher–and taught us a lesson about what students are really capable of when it comes to technology.
“Every day is filled with uncertainty. Learning prepares you to deal with uncertainty. ‘Education’ prepares you to deal with certainty. …There is no certainty.” -Dr. Sugata Mitra
The problem isn’t with videos. Sometimes the best way to learn about something is to watch a video about it. Sometimes a video is necessary to support other materials in learning about a particular topic. I tell people that half of what I’ve ever learned has been from YouTube. I’m kidding, of course, but it may not be that much of an overstatement. The problem, as always, is what students are doing with the video.
Just this morning, I received an email from Kahoot reminding its users that they can administer “homework that corrects itself”. As a teacher, this is intriguing to me for many reasons. Giving self-corrected homework helps me avoid a little of the mundane practice of...
…it’s an imperative. If you’ve paid even scant attention to any of the educational research conducted over the last 30 years, you are aware that giving students specific, timely, actionable feedback has the most significant impact on student learning of any strategy known to humankind.
It’s not a secret anymore. The answers are out there. Whether it’s a high-level writing prompt or a simple multiple-choice question from the publisher’s question bank, the reality is the same: if it’s been used at all before, the answers are likely posted somewhere on the internet.