"Gary Coffman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 02 Mar 2004 18:11:26 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
I hope without making a bigger deal of this, my experience is that
lectures
are nothing but books-on-tape. If it can be delivered in a big lecture,
there is no excuse for delivering it in a classroom at all. If it
requires
some visual aids, it could be done better on videotape. That isn't
teaching.
That's presenting.

I think that depends a lot on the lecturer. I wasn't fortunate enough to
attend one of Feynman's lectures, but I've talked to students who did,
and they say they were extraordinary. I do have first hand experience
with lectures by Milton Friedman, and they were extraordinary.

Perhaps videotape could convey the same experience, though I doubt
it. But if it could, what a great teaching tool it would be.

I had the interesting experience of being part of two such pioneering
programs, and they worked very well. As a 9-11 year-old I was a student in
Washington County, Maryland, which had a huge experimental video project
funded by the Ford Foundation. Almost all of our classes included a lecture
delivered by a superior teacher from a CATV studio in Hagerstown (this was
pre-videotape). It was excellent, and the presentation included some
advanced production that couldn't have been delivered in a classroom.

At Michigan State, starting in 1966, we had a pioneering videotaped lecture
program. My big, intro Economics class was taught by an excellent presenter
and economist (Al Mandlestam) to a class of around 350. All of the lectures
were taped and re-run throughout campus several times each week. We didn't
have to go to the lectures. We could watch them at off times, right in our
residence-hall dorms. The program was extended to virtually all classes with
big lectures.

I don't know what became of the Washington County program. At the time I
thought we were the wave of the future, and that all school systems would
have it eventually. But I've seen only a little of it around the country.


OTOH, I've suffered through way too many lectures where the teacher
merely recited a textbook. So I know what you mean about "talking books".
That's more than dull, especially since I can read far faster than a
person
can talk, while maintaining what is probably greater comprehension than
can be gotten from a bore droning along at 1/10th the information rate.

Particularly in public schools, the larger the class, the lower the
assumption of students' least-common denominator. They tend to be
slow-moving classes.

Ed Huntress