Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [50]
So, while students may start out recording their teachers’ lectures, I suspect that the trend will be more and more toward viewing lectures of the truly great speakers rather than of whoever happens to be assigned to the subject in your local school. Furthermore, I expect the role of the lecture to gradually diminish. An MIT study compared students who prepared using Web-based materials and then heard a lecture with those who prepared using the same Web materials and who then applied a small portion of the material in small projects together with the faculty. The replacement of lectures with hands-on experience led to a 10.8 percent grade improvement.
Of course, whatever live interaction replaces lectures will also be recorded. Students in, say, a physics lab will record video of their pendulum experiment, take a picture of a diagram drawn by the teaching assistant, add some typed and spoken notes, and record the class discussion. The notes they take will also serve as time markers, allowing them to quickly jump to a desired point in the recording. For example, a student will select her note that says “Weight #2” to begin reviewing the part where she changed the weight on the pendulum.
Imagine you have just returned from a seventh-grade field trip. You had to take pictures of six different kinds of leaves/needles from trees and identify them. The teacher was giving out hints and information as the class walked through the forest. You recorded what you thought you were seeing as you took the pictures. This leaf is prickly. That one is smooth. This one smells like turpentine. You compared notes with your friends and figured out that a couple were wrong, so you added new audio recordings to the pictures, correctly identifying the trees. Back in class the teacher shows pictures the students have taken and the class has to guess the species. Audio is played back to indicate the correct answer. This memorable field trip sticks with you. Years later, when you are forty years old and find yourself telling your daughter about the scaly quality of a cedar, the sounds and sights from that old field trip are what come into your mind—and you bring them up to show your daughter.
I have often been struck by the amount of time students spend comparing notes—not about the class material, but about exactly what the assignments are. I know of one class where assignments were sometimes posted on a class Web site, other times were handed out on paper, and on occasion were even modified verbally. I would call this poor communication and management, but the teacher actually believed it was important for students to struggle through this inconsistency. I don’t suppose we will ever be entirely freed of such teachers (or their counterparts in businesses, religious communities, sports teams, and so on). So e-memories will be a big help in tracking what the plan is. Students will be replaying the end of the class to get the new due date for their term paper.
Today, a student may already be creating an education portfolio, that is, a collection of her work chosen to represent her interests and accomplishments. A portfolio may include essays, reports, presentations, videos, or any other sample of the student’s work. Hailed for aiding student self-awareness and motivation, in addition to tracking student development, portfolios have been receiving a lot of attention from educators, and e-portfolio offerings have multiplied.
Total Recall will uncover the nuances of each individual’s learning style. Some students are visual learners; they don’t really get it until