How did you teach it?

The idea of MTT2K began when a group of preservice teachers could not wait until the end of a Khan Academy video to voice their concerns about the quality of its content. (You can learn more here.) Once the movement to critique Khan Academy videos gathered some momentum, it was suggested that teachers do more than nitpick (although, as this post explains, nitpicking is important). Consequently, a group of bloggers set out to make 101 alternative lessons.

Nine alternatives were scheduled as of today - the day before the MTT2K prize deadline. While this is less than we hoped for, it is a start. The energy behind projects like the mathtwitterblogosphere demonstrates how we all benefit when teachers make their own lessons available for others to use and improve on.

The lesson I want to share comes from that same day when the preservice teachers watched the Khan Academy video. We were focusing on NCTM's Communication Standard that day, and I wanted to share examples of people communicating the ideas associated with integer multiplication and division. Many of the area schools use PowerPoints in their math classrooms, so I wanted to model how I might use this medium to communicate my thinking.

The think-aloud focused on my approach to trying to understand some integer rules I memorized years ago. I used "I language" to remind the learners that I am making my thinking visible, not telling them what to do. Afterward, we debriefed about what they saw and heard and how what I shared might support their ability to understand the concept for themselves. (The demonstration is split into two parts because Jing only allows for 5 minute recordings.)

Part One

Part Two

Having watched this demonstration, how would you respond to these points:

• What did I do?
• What did I say?
• What did I think?
• Develop a consolidated recount regarding multiplication and division of integers.

And how might you improve on this demonstration?

What's worse than two guys sarcastically watching a video?

Soon after we first posted Mystery Teacher Theater 2000 Episode 1 and it started getting attention, John and I began to consider, "Now what?" As we so often do, we tried to make this thinking visible by sharing it on Twitter.

In retrospect, I regret using "snarking" and "snark" in this discussion because, as I have written before, the original videos (yes videos, another one came out recently) were meant to be satire. Still, hopefully these tweets demonstrate that John and I try to take a meta perspective when it comes to education. 

Well, that's enough background. We hope the message of this version speaks for itself. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Meta Mystery Teacher Theatre 2000.

I hope you stuck around after the credits, there is a surprise waiting for those who persevered through the entire video.

Is it worth it?

The second episode of Mystery Teacher Theater 2000 came out last week.

My partner in MTT2K, John Golden, did an excellent summary of his perspective on Khan Academy here. In this post, I want to give a bit of background on how we came to use this video and expand on John's point that "at some level this is two guys goofing around to make a point about good use of resources."

I first saw Khan Academy's video, Introduction to matrices, while doing an observation of a student teacher. As a part of the lesson, the student teacher decided to show this nearly twelve minute presentation to a class of precalculus students. Throughout the video, the students paid very little attention to the screen and the student teacher ended up going over the basics again.

The idea of having over 3,000 videos on a variety of subjects available to anyone with an internet connection is appealing to me. If the quality of the videos is suspect, it is less attractive but it really is none of my business. When those videos are assigned to K-12 students to watch either in class or after class, then it is part of my responsibility as a teacher educator to question their use. In this case my question would be, "Is this video worth showing in class or could the time be better used?"

In other words, how is this video better than:

• the teacher providing this information through a more interactive lecture;
• the students reading the textbook section on matrices; or
• the class working on an "archeology project" where they try to discover the  basics of matrices using artifacts strategically "found" by the teacher?

Grant Wiggins talks about the juice needing to be worth the squeeze when it comes to assessments. I would say the same could be applied to other instructional decisions like the use of Khan Academy videos as a part of a school's curriculum. In the case of the student teacher, I would say it was definitely not worth the time it took to watch the video and get the students focused back on the lesson.

Perhaps the problem is that the videos were not intended for whole group instruction. A recent post from a Teach for America staff member explains how he used Khan Academy to help differentiate his instruction.

I could point my most advanced students towards videos instructing them on multiple application of a particular theory while I simultaneously walked students struggling with the same notion through a lesson explaining its fundamental premises. It helped me to be a better teacher who reached more of my students more effectively.

Several promotional videos from Khan Academy offer the same testimonial. Teachers assign Mr. Khan's videos to students to watch while the teachers work with smaller groups. Here are two teachers from Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, California talking about using Khan Academy in their classrooms.

If Khan Academy helped these middle school teachers to break out of the mindset of simply giving notes to students, then I really do owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Khan. However, because valuable school time is being used to watch these videos I must push these teachers to think about what comes next. Repackaging the lecture as a video is not a re-imagining of education nor is it true differentiation of learning.

The way they are using the videos sounds more like addressing a classroom management issue than truly facilitating learning. If these teachers are looking for something productive for other students to do while they work with small groups, then I would encourage them to talk to their colleagues who teach reading and writing and manage small groups regularly without assigning videos. I can think of at least a half-a-dozen things that are more worthwhile to do in class than watching a video like the one I sat through during that precalculus lesson. 

I will write another post about alternative activities (if there's any interest) but this post is getting long and I want to give those teachers who assign Khan Academy videos to their classes a chance to respond to the question, "Is it worth it?" Please post your comments below with the understanding that any off-topic comments will be deleted - I would not want you to waste your time.

Why did you do it? Part II

In a prior post, I explained why John Golden and I used satire to critique a Khan Academy video for MTT2K. As Audrey Watters points out in the Tweet on the right and a post at Hacker Education, the approach has worked and started a serious conversation on Khan Academy's role in education reform. (You can add an article on Huffington Post Education and blog posts from Rhett Allain at Wired, Robert Talbert at The Chronicle, and Keith Devlin to the ongoing discussion.) But starting a conversation was only part of what I hoped to accomplish with the MTT2K parody. My primary reason for this project is revealed here.

A few people have attributed MTT2K to my not being a fan of Mr. Khan. This is only partially true. I am a big fan of his idea of moving K-12 education forward into the 21st Century. Anyone who wants to help teachers and students improve learning is someone I would consider an ally. Mr. Khan is not alone in this endeavor to provide online lectures, nor is he the first, but he has an incredible story and over 3,000 videos across several different disciplines.

While I love the idea of Khan Academy, I am not a fan of its implementation. Mr. Khan's videos are reminiscent of the lectures many of us experienced in math class, but they are lacking in some essential elements. As is the case with many people in the U.S. who think they understand education and what is wrong with it, Mr. Khan has a one-sided view of teaching. That side is from behind a student's desk, and because most teachers do not make visible all the work that goes on behind the scene before, during, and after the lesson this picture is incomplete.

As teacher educators, we share the Teaching-Learning Cycle with our preservice teachers in an effort to introduce them to the entire picture of what it takes to be a teacher. The work of assessment, evaluation, and planning often go on unnoticed to the casual observer, so people can be excused for not being aware of them. But in order to foster learning, a teacher needs to not only be aware of these parts of the Cycle, they need to know how to implement them effectively.

Much like the preservice teachers just entering our program, Mr. Khan seems unaware of the importance of each aspect of the Teaching-Learning Cycle. For example, in this Wired piece from last year, he seems to suggest that before his dashboard system, teachers usually "fly blind." This demonstrates a lack of awareness of the multitude of formative assessments that teachers use for evaluation which go far beyond counting video views and the number of right answers.

Furthermore, many of the math videos I have watched from Khan Academy suggest a lack of planning on the part of Mr. Khan. This is confirmed in a recent Time article:

He doesn't use a script. In fact, he admits, "I don't know what I'm going to say half the time."

There is something to be said for a teacher exposing students to an authentic learning experience and expert teachers can make this look easy. But it is not easy. As Mr. Khan showed in the video we critiqued and novice teachers find out on a regular basis, lack of planning can have disastrous results. Teachers who do not know the vocabulary used in the lesson or think the numbers used in the examples can come out of thin air risk fostering misconceptions rather than learning. Novice teachers who make and catch these kinds of mistakes have opportunities to quickly set things back on the correct path. It is unclear how Khan Academy handles this as the video we critiqued was more than a couple years old.

So this is what I hoped people would get out of the video. Yes, Mr. Khan has a good idea - let's improve education by allowing teachers to work more directly with students. He is not a world-class teacher, however. In fact, his videos demonstrate that he suffers from many of the same mistakes that preservice teachers make because they do not understand the complexities of the Teaching-Learning Cycle.

Given this line from the Time article, my greatest concern is that Mr. Khan is satisfied with his current understanding of teaching which perpetuates the idea that teaching is easy:

I think there is an advantage to being an outsider - I'm not colored by the dogma of the Establishment.

Which brings me back to the power of satire. The Time article was done prior to MTT2K hitting the scene. Let's see if it does anything to push Khan Academy to  improve its implementation. There are expert teachers willing to help. All Mr. Khan has to do is ask.

Why did you do it? Part I

When John Golden and I made the Mystery Teacher Theatre 2000 (MTT2K) video we thought 100 or so people might see it. Maybe some of our followers on Twitter would click on the link and others interested in education might find it through a hashtag. We were also prepared for a few of the people that seem so dedicated to Khan Academy to turn up and comment. No big deal.

But then Dan Meyer posted the video on his blog and things got interesting. Khan Academy took down the video we critiqued and replaced it with two new videos (here and here). Justin Reich found out about our parody and wrote a post on his EdTech Researcher blog at Education Week. Justin and Dan even sponsored a contest for teachers to make their own versions of #MTT2K. Then, it got surreal as Slate and The Chronicle of Higher Education picked up the story.

Once the video got some attention, people began asking questions on Twitter and in the comments of the various posts about our approach and what we hoped to accomplish. These questions deserve to be answered. As John points out in his post, I was the instigator, so I will try to address both of these issues. The answers are not simple, however, so I will break this into two posts – addressing the approach now and what we hoped to accomplish in a later post.

This all started on February 1^st of this year in my class on teaching and learning math in the middle grades. The focus of the first workshop of the class that day was the NCTM’s Communication Standard:

Instructional programs from prekindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to--

• Organize and consolidate their mathematical thinking through communication;

• Communicate their mathematical thinking coherently and clearly to peers, teachers, and others;

• Analyze and evaluate the mathematical thinking and strategies of others;

• Use the language of mathematics to express mathematical ideas precisely.

The plan was to watch two online videos about multiplying and dividing integers using the above bullet points as a framework and then consider how well each video met the Standard. Integer computation was the topic simply because it was the next section of the syllabus. In other words, the topic led me to the videos, not the other way around.

In preparation for the workshop I previewed a video from Khan Academy and a video from Mathtrain.TV. These sites were selected because they represent resources teachers are currently using across the country and I wanted the preservice teachers to be aware of their existence. I was a bit surprised by the number of issues in the Khan Academy video but it was a perfect assessment of my students’ ability to apply the Communication Standard to another person’s mathematical discourse.

Again, the plan was to watch the video and then debrief, but once the Khan Academy video got started it was as if my students could not contain themselves. They quickly identified issues related to consolidation, coherence, and precision and it seemed that they could not wait until the end to share what they noticed. Afterward, I told John it was like an episode of Mystery Science Theater, and that I might write a blog post about it. For a variety of reasons I never did – mostly revolving around a desire to remain above the fray typically associated with Khan Academy critiques.

In March, I listened to the audiobook for Tina Fey’s Bossypants and I was intrigued by the idea of improvisation and how it might apply to education. John listened to the book, as well, and when he was finished I asked if he was interested in participating in a bit of educational improv. He was game but we struggled to come up with a scenario that made sense. The Mystery Science Theater idea came up, and we both liked it but again it remained only an idea.

For me, a USA Today article on Sal Khan helped me to get serious about this project. It was the latest piece praising Mr. Khan and the Khan Academy while basically ignoring (or worse) the concerns of educators over some videos’ inaccuracies and pedagogical issues. I called John and told him I thought the time had come to do some Mystery Science Theater improv.

This part is important! We were concerned that some people would see our satire as mean-spirited and immature. Still, being fans of satirists like Mark Twain and Jon Stewart we recognized that there are times when this approach is necessary. This is especially true when there is a need to break through a person or group's seemingly impenetrable veneer. Given the results, I would say we were correct in our concerns and successful in our use of satire.

I trust this explains the evolution of our approach and how we came to use satire in our video.  As for my motivation, this is already a long post, so what we hoped to accomplish will have to wait until a later post. Please stay tuned.