Sunday, January 16, 2011

The flip side of teaching

The standard teaching method when I started was very definitely the "sage on the stage" approach. The teacher was the fountain of knowledge and most lessons consisted of the teacher providing the input that the pupils/students would then work on at home. Classroom time was mostly spent listening and taking notes. But in many schools and universities the sage on the stage is turning into the guide on the side according to a post on The Daily Riff, Teachers "Doing The Flip" To Help Students Become Learners.

More and more teachers are putting the input element on the web or referring to open educational recources and asking students to go through the material at home. Class time is then spent on group work, discussion and investigation rather than note-taking. By switching the input to homework the classroom time will become more of a learning experience with the teacher as a guide/facilitator/inspiration. The following video shows how one teacher has changed the way his classes work with very positive results.



This ties in well with Dr Sugata Mitra's ideas on how schools should shift the focus from teaching to learning and that the goal should be that pupils/students should actually look forward to going to school each day. Here's a new film where Dr Mitra presents his vision of a school day of the future in slightl less than 3 minutes.


MindShift's "School Day of the Future": Dr. Sugata Mitra from MindShift on Vimeo

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