I have seen the future of teaching and it scares the bejeezus out of me
I like to think of myself as a pretty good teacher. I’ve been doing this for more than 15 years, and while I’ve dabbled in the fancier technologies, I’ve concluded that the meat and potatoes of podium, lectern, chalk, and blackboard have worked the best. At last week’s International Studies Association meetings, however, I participated in a ...
I like to think of myself as a pretty good teacher. I've been doing this for more than 15 years, and while I've dabbled in the fancier technologies, I've concluded that the meat and potatoes of podium, lectern, chalk, and blackboard have worked the best.
I like to think of myself as a pretty good teacher. I’ve been doing this for more than 15 years, and while I’ve dabbled in the fancier technologies, I’ve concluded that the meat and potatoes of podium, lectern, chalk, and blackboard have worked the best.
At last week’s International Studies Association meetings, however, I participated in a panel on "Transnational Politics and Information Technology," in which Charli Carpenter delivered the following presentation:
Now, I’m clearly pretty comfortable with Web 2.0 technologies, and some of the themes Carpenter touches on in this presentation echoes points I’ve made on this blog and… co-authoring with Carpenter. To be blunt, however, if this is the standard to which future international relations teaching pedagogy will be held… then the future is going to kick my ass.
Seriously, watch the whole thing.
UPDATE: Over at Duck of Minerva, Carpenter discusses her video at greater length. One key point:
It’s true that short video mash-ups can make good teaching tools (especially if you can’t be present but you want students to absorb the material anyway). But the amount of prep-time to do presentations like this well on a day by day basis would be prohibitive and unnecessary, even counter-productive. Classrooms work best when profs throw out provocative material and allow students to react, then facilitate discussion.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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