Plus ça change

by | Monday, January 12, 2009

Leigh Wolf forwarded me a link to a video commercial with the subject line saying “this is a very intriguing commercial.” Of course I took a look at it right away and it was an ad for Kaplan U (on their website) … and according to Smita it has been receiving TV time as well. The original (whatever that means in a digital world) can be found here or see the Youtube version below:

[youtube width=”425″ height=”355″]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e50YBu14j3U[/youtube]

Now I watched the video and I was impressed. I have thought similar things often, and sometimes have even said them (maybe even on this very blog). Moreover, this is a well made video, impressive production values, a very nice voice, beautiful people set to nice mood music… but by the time I reached the end of the commercial, something just didn’t feel right.

It struck me that it was somewhat ironic ironic that for all the talk about different ways of learning, the only example of learning/teaching that was shown in the video involved listening to an older man give a lecture. (Not that I have anything against older men, particularly since I seem to be increasingly playing the part.) Of course, the lecture being delivered shifted from being received face to face to running on ipods and laptops, it moved from a physical classroom to a personal space (which could be a train station with perfect lighting, or a messy, though in a cute kind of way, kitchen table).

All these changes in venue and tools apart, one thing didn’t change. The mode of instruction was still a lecture!

As Alphonse Karr famously said, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, or in other words, The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It seems to me that as long as we keep thinking of technologies as merely supporting existing pedagogies we will not be able to enjoy their true benefit, these technologies will not be able to live up to their true potential.

Topics related to this post: Learning | Online Learning | Teaching | Technology | TPACK | Worth Reading

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Neuroscience & Creativity: New article

Neuroscience & Creativity: New article

The next article in our series Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century for the journal TechTrends was just published.This article features an interview with Dr. Arne Dietrich, professor of neuroscience at the American University...

Designing learning in a transformed world: Keynote

Designing learning in a transformed world: Keynote

I was recently invited to present virtually at The Heart of Innovation Summer Summit, organized by the Heartland Area Education Agency in Iowa. The video of my talk can be seen below. Maybe my first serious keynote talk about generative AI and education. Enjoy...

Orissa Folklore

Just got an email from a fellow Mishra (no relationship, at least I don't know of any), Dr. Mahendra Mishra who works as the state tribal education coordinator in my home state of Orissa as a part of it's Primary Education Program (more at www.opepa.in). Mahendra He...

Arizona in black & white

Arizona in black & white

Over the past two years in Arizona I have had the opportunity to indulge in my love for photography. Recently I felt the need to play with Adobe Sparks - and what better way to learn a new tool than to use it to create a photo album. Enjoy.

The futility of existence

I stumbled across this little machine that shuts itself off once it has been switched on! How cool is that. I don't have an clue whom to credit it to and would appreciate a heads up on that. I was reminded of the myth of Sisyphus which led to a great piece of...

Goodbye 2016, Welcome 2017

Goodbye 2016, Welcome 2017

Since 2009, our family has made short videos to welcome the new year. These videos are great fun to create, often requiring days of discussion, planning, construction, shooting and editing. They are always typographical in nature, often with a visual twist...

ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of the web

ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of the web

Ted Chiang is one of the greatest, insightful writers working today. I had written previously about one his short stories in a post titled: Truth of fact and feeling: Unpacking McLuhan (2/3) about his short story The truth of fact and the truth of feeling. (If you...

Koehler & Mishra (2005)

One of the important papers in the TPACK sequence is Koehler & Mishra (2005). In this paper we developed and administered a survey to measure the evolution of TPACK as people engaged in a design task. This research complements our previous empirical work (Koehler,...

E-Leadership & Teacher Development: New article

Mishra, P., Henriksen, D., Boltz, L. O., Richardson, C. (2015). E-Leadership and Teacher Development Using ICT. In R. Huang; Kinshuk; J. K. Price (Eds.). ICT in Education in Global Context: Comparative Reports of Innovations in K-12 Education. Berlin: Springer. pp....

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *