Sunday, February 7, 2010

What's Wrong with this Picture?

The George Lucas Foundation and Edutopia.org are great resources for educators. Watch this video before reading the rest of this post.








This kind of video is one of my pet peeves. While it is a wonderful snapshot of what schools should be, it is strictly a vision piece.

I'm sure many people who watch it are asking themselves, "Where are we going to find funds for this sort of technology? We can barely keep our students supplied with paper and pencils." But that's not the important question. The important question is, "How did the teachers arrive at the point of being able to provide this kind of education?"

Clearly, there is team teaching and cross curricular collaboration. There is problem based curriculum in action. There are teachers comfortable with technology. Where is the video that shows the steps that went into the making of this kind of educational institution.

I think we know what education should look like. We need to know how to make it so. Let's produce videos and articles that are blueprint and plans, not pretty finished products.

Post Script: When I copied the code to embed the video, Blogger pointed out an error in the code that lies behind the embedded video. I think it's ironic that I'm complaining about a video that doesn't show the behind the scenes action and the code behind the scenes has an error in it.

1 comment:

  1. I'm sorry you found the video lacking clear tools and strategies for success. Check out Edutopia's latest series, Schools That Work at http://www.edutopia.org/schools-that-work. This series not only highlights what works in education, it also provides the plans and resources needed to help teachers implement these new ways of teaching and learning.

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