In 1922, Thomas Edison said this:
“I should say that on average we get about two percent efficiency out of schoolbooks as they are written today. The education of the future, as I see it, will be conducted through the medium of the motion picture…where it should be possible to obtain one hundred percent efficiency.” (Teaching Machines, Audrey Watters, p. 66)
The tl;dr on this: Hype about edtech has been around for at least 100 years. And, it turns out, where there is smoke there isn’t necessarily fire. Be ever vigilant when listening to claims about a new technology, especially regarding its universal effectiveness.
A few other thoughts:
- Over the past 18+ months we, as a nation, have had to push the use of video to an extreme. I think we can all safely, and unobjectionably, conclude that video is not a universal teaching medium (much to Edison’s chagrin).
- Anyone who knows me will not be surprised by this statement: I enjoy learning from, am more engaged by, and learn more from reading than from watching a video. A video has to be short, very focused, and be intensely visual for it to engage my attention. Otherwise, my mind wanders. It’s hard to be universal when people are so different.
- It turns out that creating such videos is very (very!) expensive, well beyond the budget of most teachers or schools. What does get created, in many instances, are “talking head” videos, the antithesis of a highly engaging video.
- Also, it is extremely difficult to present a careful, nuanced argument on video in the same way that one can do in writing. (Remember McLuhan.) Note that I didn’t say impossible. It’s just hard. It’s hard to do it in writing, but it’s also cheaper to work with the printed word than with a highly produced video.
I’ll have more to say about efficiency tomorrow.
