that one. In 1922, it was Thomas Edison who declared that, “The motion picture is destined

to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years, it will supplant largely,

if not entirely, the use of textbooks.” Yeah. And you know how that worked out? By

the 1930s it was radio. The idea was you could beam experts directly into classrooms, improving

the quality of education for more students at lower cost. And that would mean you require

fewer skilled teachers, a theme common to all of the proposed education revolutions,

like that of educational television in the 1950s and 60s. Studies were conducted to determine

whether students preferred watching a lecture live, or sitting in an adjacent room where

the same lecture was broadcast via closed circuit TV. What would you prefer?

In the 80s there was no debating. Computers were the revolutionary solution to our education

woes. They were audiovisual, interactive, and could be programmed to do almost anything

you like. Well at the time, they could run Oregon Trail. But their potential was obvious.

Researches suspected that if they could teach kids to program, say how to move a turtle

around a screen, then their procedural reasoning skills would also improve. So how did it go?

Well the students got better at programming the turtle, but their reasoning skills were

unaffected. Even by the 1990s we had not learned from the failure of our past predictions and

I quote, “The use of videodiscs in classroom instruction is increasing every year and promises

to revolutionize what will happen in the classroom of tomorrow.” Videodiscs? Yeah, those giant

oversized CD things. Remember when they revolutionized education?

Nowadays plenty of things are poised to revolutionize education like, smartboards, smartphones,

tables, and M.O.O.C.s. Those are massive open online courses. And some belief we’re getting

close to universal teaching machine, a computer so quick and well-programmed that it’s basically

like having your own personal tutor in a machine. A student could work through well-structured

lessons at their own pace receiving immediate and personally-tailored feedback, and all

without the interference of a meddlesome and expensive teacher. Do these claims sound familiar?

Over the past 100 years, a lot of areas of life have been revolutionized, but education

is not one of them. By in large, students are still taught in groups by a single teacher.

And that is not what a revolution looks like. Some might blame this state of affairs on

the inertia of our educational institutions. It’s just too hard to get a huge bureaucracy

to change. But I think the reason technology hasn’t revolutionized education is something

else, something that goes to the very heart of what education is.

Let’s consider the process of learning. Say you want to teach someone how a human

heart pumps blood. Which learning aid do you think would be more effective, this animation

with narration or this set of static picture with text? Obviously the animation is better.

I mean for one thing it shows exactly what the heart does. For decades, educational research

focused on questions like this. Does a video promote learning better than a book? Are live

lectures more effective than televised lectures? Is animation better than static graphics?

In all well-controlled studies, the result is no significant difference. That is, so

long as the content is equivalent between the two treatments, the learning outcomes

are the same with all different media. How is this possible? How can something which

seems so powerful, like animation, be no more effective than static graphics? Well for one

thing, animations are fleeting and so you might miss something as they go by. Plus,

since the parts are animated for you, you don’t have to mentally envision how the

parts are moving. And so you don’t have to invest as much mental effort which would

make it more memorable. In fact, sometimes static graphics perform better than animations.

And I think this points to a really fundamental aspect of education which is, it doesn’t

matter what happens around the learner. We are not limited by the experiences we can

give to students. What limits learning is what can happen inside the student’s head.

That is where the important part of learning takes place. No technology is inherently superior

to any other. Researchers spent so much time investigating whether one medium or technology

was more effective than another that they failed to investigate exactly how to use the

technology to promote meaningful thought processes. So the question really is what experiences

promote the kind of thinking that is required for learning? Recently, that research is being

conducted and we’re finding out some pretty important stuff. I mean it may seem obvious,

but it turns out learning with words and pictures together, whether they’re animation and

narration or static pictures and text, works better than words alone. Also, we see that

anything which is extraneous needs to be eliminated from a lesson. For example, on-screen text

competes with visuals, so learners perform better when it is omitted than when it is

present.

Now that we know how best to make educational videos, and any experience can be simulated

in the video setting, YouTube must be the platform that will revolutionize education.

I mean the number of educational videos on YouTube is increasing every day. So why do

we need teachers? Well, if you think that the fundamental job of a teacher is to transmit

information from their head to their students’, then you’re right, they are obsolete. I

mean, you probably imagine a classroom where this teacher is spewing out facts at a pace

which is appropriate for one student, too fast for half, and too slow for the rest.

Luckily the fundamental role of a teachers is not to deliver information. It is to guide

the social process of learning. The job of a teacher is to inspire, to challenge, to

excite their students to want to learn. Yes, they also do explain and demonstrate and show

things, but fundamentally that is beside the point. The most important thing a teacher

does is make every student feel like they are important, to make them feel accountable

for doing the work of learning.

All of this is not to say technology has had no impact on education. Students and teachers

work and communicate via computers. And videos are used both inside and outside of classrooms.

But all of this is best characterized as an evolution, not a revolution. The foundation

of education is still based on the social interaction between teachers and students.

For as transformative as each new technology seems to be, like motion pictures or computer

or smartboards, what really matters is what happens inside the learner’s head. And making

a learner think seems best achieved in a social environment with other learners and a caring

teacher.