Convincing a Friend to Create His ED Channel
August 2, 2010
Jim,
The book arrived! Received it a couple of days ago. Thank you for the gift, it is much appreciated. I will try to read it the upcoming days. I greatly enjoyed an interview to John Taylor Gatto that was available on youtube.com. His success as a teacher is impressive.
I, myself have been looking at the parallels between critical pedagogy and web 2.0 recently and the growth of online open education such as OpenCourseWare. Plans for free creative commons textbooks and free education material on the internet is on the rise. ITunes U and YouTube EDU are only two examples.
Jim, I am interested in free online education and its promise for developing countries. My opinion is that technology should not replace the teacher but rather serve as another medium by which to instruct children and complement traditional education program.
With this in mind, I felt, what else can be done to improve online education and what are the implications for developing countries? Thinking of current developments in technology and education, I am interested in uploading educational material to the internet, and hoping that in the future, students can, through a basic search, find a number of instructors teaching a certain course available freely on the internet. Perhaps students will be able to choose from 20 or more different Spanish one classes to follow and find a teacher that suits their learning style. This free online diversity would be another tool aside from libraries, that would be available free of charge to everyone. In a way, it would be an education video web Wikipedia.
Thinking about this as a development project, I believe in the future, as access to the internet increases, the availability of a diversity of free education lectures and teaching videos taught in languages of developing countries would help diminish the information and education gap between developed and developing countries. Following this project, my mom will record a university class of organic chemistry taught in Spanish this upcoming semester. I am currently arranging which programs, software, and hardware to use. But once the material is online it will be permanently free of charge to complement traditional education and offer an alternative to distance education. After this, we will try to convince other retired university professors to record their classes and also upload them on the internet free of charge. The objective is that like a wiki, it will snow ball.
Currently universities such as MIT have applied this model through their OpenCourseWare material. Some Spanish universities are part of the consortium, but there is no concerted effort. Helping in any way to bridge the north / south education divisions is worthwhile. It is also another way, aside from remittances, by which Latin American migrants can help improve their country’s education
Regarding your class, while it is in English, I am very interested in recording your lessons and also looking at your pedagogy and the methods you utilize to reach your students. Perhaps similar to Gatto, you developed strong connections with your students. For me, your teaching methods were incredible effective. I remember vividly many lessons from your class. From the carpenter chef, to your friend and role model the bird?, to your tales of visiting France, teaching us about paintings and realism, Muhammad Ali – When we were Kings, Snitch, diary writing exercises, speaking at the school board, self-teaching lessons, among others, including public speaking, and how to drink cognac. More so than other teachers, you not only taught individuals and these subjects, but more importantly you taught us to question authority, to find ourselves, and a countless number of lifelong lessons. Though placing your videos on the internet, I hope other students will have the privilege of attending the sanctuary.
I believe, overtime, this will happen and a number of students will take advantage of your videos. Like you previously mentioned, a student should not simply pick subjects to study but pick passionate teachers who enjoy teaching their subject, because if they have an interest and love for what they teach, you will enjoy it and more likely remember it.
You have a lot to teach Owens, you lived a life of travel, and you have been teaching about your experiences for over a decade. Recording it, will allow your current and previous students to rewind and revisit your class as an online journal, and perhaps even you could reach future generations and allow them to take part in and enjoy your class. Technology has become and will continue to become cheaper. At the moment 10 minute clips can be placed on the internet, and I, or someone else, would have to divide the clips into 10 minute pieces, but it is likely that soon, that will no longer be a limitation, as technology advances and decreases in price. This project would allow a class of yours to be frozen in time, and it is, in my opinion, a worthwhile experiment.
Recording your class could allow other teachers to observe your pedagogy methods, and perhaps bring insight into what is a successful teacher. Student teachers could also use the videos to reinforce their philosophy and find that yourpedagogy may be best suited for their audience and personality. Practicing teachers will be able to use them to find ideas. While right now there is not a collection of teacher classes freely accessible online, it is my opinion that this will eventually happen and that the information will be properly categorized and easy to access.
I am not sure if your methodology is transferable to online education, but it’s worth exploring. There is a chance, whether we like it or not, that over time, more and more classes will be recorded and students may be able to pick a particular teacher, due to his teaching style through online videos, or perhaps other teachers will be able to look at their colleagues online and learn which techniques are more effective.
If you decide to record your classes, what should we record? It depends. We could start by placing part of your class online (we could have a sanctuary channel), or perhaps even the whole class could be recorded, or maybe you prefer to pick and chose, that would be up to you. All could be recorded at first and then edited.
In addition, the project could also expand horizontally if you wanted to. We could expand your class to an interactive online learning audience – with Nings, Edu 2.0, YouTube Edu, Podcasts, Grouply among others, it can be exported into different online class based internet sites. The newest one which appears promising, and has the support of various Ivy League colleges, is Nixty.com. These places use blogs, etc. You do not use homework as a tool which would make it easier to set up, but the sites allow for homework and quizzes if needed..
Also new development will come along, and the material can be transported to a better engine in the future. Once the material is recorded, it is available for potentially endless number of uses. As students become more wired, I thought I would be good to see how best to utilize some of these technologies. Using your class as an experiment could serve as another example of how education is being transformed, what can be transformed, and what should not be changed.
As you have mentioned before, there are intrinsic benefits in secluding yourself from technology such as a reduction in distractions. Yet, technology has also brought interesting changes and possibilities. Today, most famous books from the Middle Ages and before, and most other classics are now open source and available to everyone with a kindle, iTunes, or basic internet access.
Perhaps this year we could record just a couple of lessons and go from there. The lessons you feel most comfortable having on video and perhaps placing some of it online, whatever you consider prudent. Also, it would be great if we could record Parks as well. The costs are minimal, practically zero, if there are two cameras available and the data is stored in a cloud manner. (Uploading the videos on a regular basis as to prevent the files from filling to much space on the hard drives). I am working on the logistic at the moment, and there may be some limitations.
Anyway, I hope you consider this idea. We could start small. It is usually best. But particularly if a couple of students can get on board, it may not be too complicated. I am looking at video compression, video hosting sites, and video editing tools, to have a better grip on the logistics. I know ways in which to do it now and I have explored the options before, but there are some recent start ups that may offer better options.
Thank you again for the book Jim. I truly appreciate it,
Alfonso
