In this post I will reflect upon the popular Youtube video I mentioned in my previous post, This will Revolutionize Education by Veritasium.

You can find the Veritasium video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c&t=4s

The video starts by charting the history of technology in education and how previous generations assumed that the technologies of their time will revolutionize education. Examples provided in the video were: the motion picture machine, radio, computers, and compact discs. In our own time, we are seeing increasing use of smart boards, smartphones, tablets, and M.O.O.C.S. (massive open online courses). The question posed in the video is if we can see technology revolutionizing other aspects of our lives, why not education? Perhaps we can blame a large bureaucracy with invested interests in maintaining the status quo? Veritasium pointed to research that showed how the mediums we use to teach – how we engage our students – does not indicate that student learning is improving. What this showed, was that teachers are not limited by the experiences we can give to students. What limits learning is what happens in student minds. This means that no technology is superior to another. The wax tablets used to learn in the Middle Ages were just as effective and revolutionary to education as the tablets we use today. I personally found one key flaw with his analysis, namely, that new technologies, unlike past technologies, have made education and learning more accessible than ever before. People’s oppprtunity to learn is inhibited less today than it was fifty years ago. However this flaw wasn’t taken into consideration in presenting Veritasium’s views, because they are focusing on the experience of learning as a mental process as opposed to receiving information.

So the key question is, how can we use technology to promote meaningful thought processes? In other words, what experiences promote the kind of thinking that is required for learning? My personal conversation with teachers have shown me that key to critical thinking in Social Studies and English classes is that we must train students to ask the kinds of questions that cannot be easily searched on Google. In order to do that, we must first train ourselves to ask higher order questions so that we can pass on this skill to our students. But, argues Veritasium, if you think that the primary role of a teacher is to transmit information, then you would be right to believe that we have outlived our purpose. This, however, is not the case. The real purpose of our being as professionals, is to guide the social process of learning.

This was the part that made sense to me. They were the words on the tip of my tongue which I could not find, because I did not think to look at what was right in front of me. What do you remember about your classroom experiences? For me, it was the student/teacher interactions every day. What mattered was knowing my teachers cared about my learning and that I was surrounded by a community of learners. I can’t remember the content I learned, because it was the experiences themselves that made me who I am today as an educator. I remembered being inspired, challenged, and excited by my teachers and I almost forgot that this was precisely why I became a teacher myself.

A key worry of mine, was whether or not my career as a classroom teacher was on the chopping block. If factory workers could lose their jobs to automation, I thought, why couldn’t teachers lose their jobs to a Digital Aristotle for Everyone? Simply put, it’s because we are nurturing the next generation of humanity. If humans are to develop as intelligent and socially responsible citizens, what better environment to learn than in a classroom of learners, guided by a caring teacher?

Until next time,
Alex M.