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Marisa Hammond Olivares

Educator - English Language Arts/ESL,

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Is Salman Khan's idea of incorporating video in education the key to solving existing budget cuts? Is it learner friendly? Differentiated?

Many states are dealing with budget cuts in education. What would the cost be to incorporate video education or online course work? What would the teacher-student ratios be in the classroom? What about student mastery and assistance? What about struggling students? Is it time to change our curriculum format? What grade levels could we target?

Perhaps a healthy blend of video, live lecture and modeling followed by hands on activities would be best.

Also, in business we can return bad products due to our own quality assurance standards. In public education you cannot. Students are diverse in their own prior knowledge and abilities.

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  • Jesse Spevack

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    Mar 16 2011: At the NYC iSchool, a public high school in Manhattan, NY, we overcome budget constraints by allowing students to video conference into classrooms all over the city.

    New York 1 covered the story here:
    http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/education/135531/city-students-take-part-in-virtual-lessons/

    I'm really excited by the concept of flipping mini-lesson and out of class work. Lately, in my own class (www.tinyurl.com/ischool-gapminder), I've used screencasts in lieu of an introduction lesson. I found several key benefits over the last two weeks of this experiment. First, the screencasts constrain the timing of my mini lesson. That means that more of my class time is spent one-on-one with students in a workshop instead of in front of the room. Second, I no longer have to stand in the front of the room to deliver whole-class instruction. Since I just play the screencast of the skill, I don't have to write on the board. I can position myself strategically throughout the classroom. Finally, and Kahn talks about this in his presentation, students can watch the videos on their own and multiple times. They can pause and rewind.

    I'm so excited by Kahn's talk. I am on board with the vision of leveraging technology in every classroom to individualize learning for all students.
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      Marisa Hammond Olivares

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      Mar 23 2011: Jesse, I'm right there with you. Although, the actual production of videos and power points are time consuming I GAIN ten fold in the classroom. My students know that they can log in and watch the videos again and again at their own leasure. Many would be surprised to find that they actually do log back in and review and/or comment. Students are eagerly begging to help me create video lessons - I LOVE it!! I'm going to go ahead and allow them to create a lesson. I'll provide the potential "skills" that they can choose from. I have a large MAC in my classroom as well as access to a mobile cart of 30 mac laptops. Imovie and photo booth are VERY user friendly. I can't wait to see what they come up with.

      Also, our district is very supportive of technology in the classrooms. Aside from the general campus based "Teacher of the Year" they have now added "Technology Teacher of the Year". The winner of course gets the usual honors and recognition, but is also awarded the new IPad - how cool is that?

      I join you in the excitement of Kahn's talk. I look forward to the continued development of technology in the classroom. HOWEVER, it must be a healthy combination of curriculum based timelines and expectations. The goal should not be "to save money" but to develop the growth of our students in the competitive world of academia and technology. Videos alone will not suffice. Best wishes to you, Marisa

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