Record it and they will watch

My friend Mark Ransby was a secondary school math teacher. After getting fed up with one of his year nine classes he spent the weekend recording his next lesson. Instead of fighting with the class to get them to settle down and pay attention he put on the video. The class sat in rapt silence watching the recorded version of Mark. The video was no better than anything Mark would have done live in class, in fact it was little more than an iPhone recording of marks hand writing out problems and working through the solution. Now I am not going to try and work out what made the class pay more attention to the virtual version of Mark as I don't have access to his class to ask.
What I want to ask is how much can teachers start to use per-prepared lessons produced by others instead of the lessons they produce themselves. Now I don't want to suggest that we turn teachers into baby sitters and have them sit idly by while the calls watch videos all day.  What I am suggesting is that they could them spend more time supporting the students while working through problems.  It students were also allowed to work at there own pace it would allow students who have grasped the topic quickly to move on,  while letting students who are struggling get more support.
 I remember my own school experiences where we sat down in anticipation whenever we saw the 16 mm projector being wheeled into the classroom. We knew then that we were going to be given a break from the teacher, and in retrospect get a richer introduction to the topic.
Creating a curriculum map of topics in GCSE maths and sciences, and mapping these to the specific exams boards with sample questions is a significant undertaking.  However, once completed it is then reusable and up-datable as better content, and supporting materials are produced.  The final question is who should do this.  Should it take investment from the Government or evolve from the content being put out on the web via youtube.

The end of the classroom teacher?

Change is occurring in teaching that will revolutionise the way education is delivered . Universities, schools and organisations like TEDed are giving access to the best teachers, content and curriculum available online and for free. Youtube has videos online on subjects from how to pick a lock to Financial Accounting. What is changing is the quality of the content and the quality of the courses.

When I was at school I was lucky because most of my science teachers were pretty good, however they were not great and probably a long way from being the amazing.  Now, how much would it cost to write, video, illustrate and edit "the best" science lesson on something like the structure of the atom. Great content is out there.  The BBC produced "Chemistry a Volatile History" which was brilliant,  and Adam Savage produced a wonderful piece for TEDed on the history of scientific discovery. The two works I cite are examples of professionally scripted, shot and edited videos which in my opinion set the bar in terms of quality.

However as I said all you need to do is a quick search on Youtube and you will find a video on just about any topic you could think of. I worked with a chap called Mark Ransby who quit working in IT to become a secondary school math teacher.  Mark told me a story about his year 9 math class who used to mess about and not settle into the lesson. This went on for months and months until Mark decided he would video a lesson at home on frequency distribution and post it on Youtube.  Next day he played the lesson in class to silence.  The class sat quietly and watched the video and paid attention. They would not settle to Mark in person but happily watched him on Youtube give exactly the same lesson he would have live. He ended up filming a whole series of lessons at home.  You have to ask-and Mark did,  why would the class pay attention to him on video and not live in person?

So,  how much would it cost to create not just the best single chemistry lesson but  how much would it cost to produce the best chemistry course. If we were to take the British GCSE or European Baccalaureate curriculum for Chemistry would it cost  1 million?10 million? 20 million?  Imagine getting the best most inspiring teachers, the best animators and illustrators out of  Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney, filmed and edited by professional cinematographers.

In part this has already started with the initiative by TEDed earlier this year.  What is missing from TED is  the structure of a course. The individual videos are inspiring and wonderfully made but they are currently only snapshots into single topics of much broader subjects.

How will this change the classroom? and how will it change teachers?  Will teachers continue to try and teach classes the way they have always done.  Should lesson plans be revised, Internet connections upgraded.  Will classroom teachers be needed? replaced with teaching assistants would make sure the kids show up and don't hurt themselves.  Or maybe we would need to reassess the entire role of the teacher. Instead of being responsible for the teaching they become responsible for the learning, able to spend more time checking that children have learned what they were supposed to or maybe learning something completely different because they were curious about it and they wanted to.