Tuesday 12 October 2010

Classroom patterns and online teaching: one teacher per class?

I was thinking about the interview I did with Scott the other day. When we think of amplifying our teaching online, why do we think of one teacher talking to class or one teacher talking to camera? Is it because our face-to-face practice has led us to think of the 'efficiency' of teaching as being one-teacher-per-class? But online, this really doesn't make sense, since the scale of what might be achieved through teaching online is much greater than face-to-face.

So why don't we capture groups of teachers engaged in their own activities around the subject? This may have a number of benefits:
1. it might be less boring than a single teacher talking (although no guarantees here!!)
2. individual teachers might feel less self-conscious about doing online videoed activities if they are not alone
3. it spreads teaching practice and subject knowledge amongst the group
4. it models practices of 'activity engagement' (i.e. 'having a discussion') which can then be replicated by the students
5. it provides opportunities for different kinds of student interaction with the teacher group.

It may be worth a try. But it requires jettisoning the educational conditioning of face-to-face education...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here's an interesting example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_the_Actors_Studio

Key quote: "In Mr. Lipton's guest chair, actors cease being stars for a while and become artists and teachers."

(The older ones are the best in my opinion, e.g.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egWPgB5S_V8

)