There’s been a conversation on the SI-ALL listserv recently about whether or not we actually ‘need’ teachers and classrooms. After all, video recordings of world experts speaking about their particular field are ever-more available. The TED format has been especially successful at making them approachable – I love listening to them. But TED generally presents us with a single individual talking passionately about a concise topic in somewhere less than 25 minutes. None build into a series, where you get accustomed to the same person teaching at an ever deeper level on the same topic. iTunes U, Khan Academy, any of various YouTube series… why don’t we all confidently sit down and take in these readily prepared video lessons for our own betterment? I want to be better at economics, why don’t I load up a queue of intermediate and advanced economics podcasts and work my way through them?
We don’t learn very well in a vacuum. I’ve done the first part – the podcasts are all there, subscribed to, ready to be absorbed. I just never seem to get around to it. Why? As with every exercise program, every diet change, every thing I want to learn independently, every musical instrument I’ve declared I’m going to learn, it’s hard to do something without support. It’s hard to devote the time without a social structure (“CLASS from 2PM to 4PM”) that protects that activity. If I can move an activity around in my schedule easily, then it becomes very easy to nix it altogether – I’ll do it tomorrow! Or the day after that! No big deal. And then suddenly, having started with the best of intentions, I’m not doing it at all. The rigidity of formal learning schedules is really, really important.
The other crucial element is people, people who expect you to be somewhere, who are working on the same task as you, who can sympathize when you hit a difficult problem or a stubborn plateau, who can really enjoy the great moments with you because they’re aiming for the same high point. A friend telling me that he runs about the same amount that I do and really respected the work I was doing meant so much more to me than another friend who runs marathons telling me I did a good job. Why? Because I felt like the first friend was truly a peer and he understood how difficult it was. I find the things on my to do list that involve other people to be the highest items on my list – I’m doing them for someone, I’m responsible for something, I have a job.
Independent learning is important, and we need to figure out how to motivate people to do it more and to do it better. I personally am really excited to build remote learning technology that will do exactly that, not because I want to replace the classroom and the teacher, but because I’m all too aware of situations where we don’t have enough good teachers to populate those classrooms. This is the driving need behind remote learning – giving people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity (financially, physically, emotionally, and even time-wise) the access to these resources. This is what I’m excited about. The teacher and the classroom are here to stay for a very long time, but let’s see what we can do to help share the excitement we discover in the best classrooms with a much larger audience, shall we?
