Kevin Houston

In a previous post on the Khan Academy I said in an aside

I think that video’s threat to teaching jobs is greatly exaggerated. When the printing press was invented people probably said “No more need for teachers, you can learn from a book”. Every new technology is predicted to revolutionize teaching and to cause the disappearance of the bulk of teaching jobs. People said it about radio, they said it about film, they said it about TV. They now say it about YouTube videos and laptops.

I was asked for evidence for the “They said it about film” part. Given that when I was school we watched educational films projected on the wall at least someone was eager to use the medium in education so someone must have said it.

However, the quote comes from an interesting source: Thomas Edison.

I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.
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.

Thomas Edison (1922) quoted in Larry Cuban, Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920.

Whilst researching this quote I came across Quote Investigator which discusses the history of the quote. This led to an interesting article using the quote to comment on the current Let’s-give-all-the-kids-laptops/iPads movement. Of course, I could have easily found a dozen such articles.

And when was television the answer to all educational ills? Well, recently I found a University of Leeds prospectus from 1968 which highlighted the university’s use of television as a teaching method. The hope was that the lecturer would be unnecessary as students could just watch pre-recorded programmes, or at the very least one lecturer could broadcast to many students. In fact, until the major refurbishments following the introduction of student fees, in many teaching rooms here you could see the old sockets used for the coaxial TV cables.

I think the point is that in most situations the best type of teaching comes from real people. Yes, books are good, videos are good, etc, but there is no better to way to learn than to have a teacher there interacting with you. People know this and will pay good money for it whether employing a personal trainer for exercise or attending a educational institution with good access to staff.

Probably, like me, your most inspirational learning experiences came from teachers and not books. Am I right?

Fake quote?
Whilst researching this post I came across a quote spookily similar to the Edison quote above but it seems to be made up. The alleged quote is attriduted to BF Skinner, the famous behaviourist who studied pigeons and rats. He invented a “teaching machine” (which he patented!) that was going to solve the education problem. (Aside: I can remember a children’s educational book about the “World of the Future” that featured the machine. What I remember is that it had a little roll of paper and a small window. A question could be asked, the student would be able to write the answer on the paper, the paper would advance behind the window so the student’s answer could not be changed while the true answer was given. I like the way Skinner had taken into account that students might try to cheat but had not taken into account that we’d communicate with machines via a TV screen.)

Anyhow, according to the source, Skinner viewed the machine as a solution to our education problems (compare with the Edison quote):

I believe that teaching machines are destined to revolutionize our education system and that in a few years they will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of teachers.

This was referenced with Skinner, 1968, p1. See here.

Well, I’ve checked the works by Skinner in 1968 and can’t find it. (The obvious publication in that year is his major book The Technology of Teaching.) Also, it seems unlikely that Skinner would plagiarize a comment so badly!

What’s funny is that the quote has been repeated many times in other places. Why have those authors not checked their sources. Or am I missing something here?

Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about producing more videos. I’ve certainly fallen behind my planned schedule of producing them – too many other tasks get in the way! Anyhow, I have to produce some so that my school can complete a project for HE-STEM. As part of this I’ve had to consider what makes a good video and for me one of the most interesting debates about videos in education has been triggered by the huge success of Salman Khan’s video series. You can see him explain the history and the philosophy behind it in the following TED video:

Looks good doesn’t it? However, his videos have been strongly criticized. This is not surprising, educators were always going to object to an ex-hedge fund manager – backed by Bill Gates and with no educational training – coming in and saying “This is how you do it”. Nonetheless, many of their criticisms have foundation. I’m particularly against the “gamification” of education. Whilst games can be a useful tool in education when you wrap all learning in a game, then students lose sight of the importance of education; they see it just as collecting points for their scorecard.

Audrey Watters gives a good explanation of the arguments against Khan and various links in her post The Wrath Against Khan which arose as in response to an article in Wired on the Khan Academy.

(Aside: I think that video’s threat to teaching jobs is greatly exaggerated. When the printing press was invented people probably said “No more need for teachers, you can learn from a book”. Every new technology is predicted to revolutionize teaching and to cause the disappearance of the bulk of teaching jobs. People said it about radio, they said it about film, they said it about TV. They now say it about YouTube videos and laptops. (Aside to aside: Currently, the main threat to jobs is funding. Teachers are losing their jobs because governments are cutting budgets. But that’s a different story.))

Another critique, by Frank Noschese, in a post punningly entitled
You Khan’t Ignore How Students Learn contains a great quote:

Khan (along with most of the general public, in my opinion) has this naive notion that teaching is really just explaining. And that the way to be a better teacher is to improve your explanations. Not so! Teaching is really about creating experiences that allow students to construct meaning.

Actually, I doubt Khan believes that teaching is just explaining – although it’s true many of his videos are just explaining – I think the difficulty is that his courses do not do enough to construct the meaning mentioned in the second half of the quote.

I’m a fan of Dan Meyer. He recently blogged about an article on the Khan Academy featured on the TV programme 60 Minutes. Meyer’s post is here but maybe you should watch the report first. (It has a couple of annoying adverts near the beginning but it is worth persevering.)

There is also a follow up video in which the reporter makes a Khan Academy video with Khan. (See it here. One interesting thing to note is how well Sal Khan presents himself. He seems genuinely likeable and self-effacing (see the “My mum wishes I was you” comment). Since the videos I am preparing are about mostly about how to give a presentation it would be a good idea to use him as an example of how important likeability is. I’m guessing that if Kahn was a grumpy man who railed against the world his videos would not be so popular.)

One of the best videos I have seen explaining why Khan’s videos are problematical whilst praising their use in certain situations is by Derek Muller who has a good collection of YouTube videos.

The video relates to science education generally rather than mathematics but I think the point for mathematics is clear too. For example, one can apply the idea of showing common errors when introducing the rigorous definition of limit. This is a subject students think they know when they come to university so don’t pay attention to the correct definition. When asked to define a limit in an exam they write “it’s the thing that gets closer and closer to a number but never actually reaches it”. (Aside: A common complaint I hear from students is that before we taught them limits they understood the concept and afterwards they don’t! Ditto for integrals and Riemann integration.)

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to go and create some online video materials. No, seriously, I have to…

I haven’t posted a link to a video so here’s a remedy for that situation. Charles Seife is the author of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea which really is a book about nothing. His latest book is Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception. I haven’t read it yet (usually I wait for the paperback version of a book so that my house doesn’t get totally overtaken by books).

Here’s a video of a lecture he gave for Google.

Maths Faculty Website graphic

Back in the summer I, along with a number of other colleagues, recorded some video podcasts for themathsfaculty.org. These videos are designed for A-Level students and I gave two lectures: one on induction and one on trigonometric identities. (I was supposed to give a third on the Millenium Prizes but didn’t due to a back injury. The material I created for this will appear elsewhere – stay tuned!). The recorded videos can now be seen on the Maths Faculty website:

Here’s induction and here’s trig identities.
Look out for the great domino toppling sequence at about 1:56 in the induction video.

We did have problems recording as we did not have any tele-prompters and so I was always glancing at my notes rather than looking at the camera. If there is a next time I might just give the lecture without referring to notes. Makes it more natural.

Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

In recent years I have become interested in the history of mathematics. What is interesting is that a lot of what I learned about the history of maths, usually through asides from my lecturers, is actually wrong. And often what I hear on the radio and TV makes me cringe as it is usually innaccurate.

One area I am developing expertise in is ancient Greek mathematics. (The name is misleading – most of the important maths happened outside of what we think of Greece although it was certainly influenced by Hellenistic culture.) Following my interest my favourite mathematical theorem is Archimedes Quadrature of the Parabola. Also, there are many great stories – see for example the Antikythera Mechanism. Another interesting story to emerge in recent years is that of a copy of work by Archimedes discovered written in a medieval prayer book. In the 12th century books were rare, precious and difficult to make so people would disassemble old books, scrape off the ink and write something new on the cleaned paper. This fate befell a text book on the work of Archimedes which was turned into a prayer book.

Fortunately, some of the mathematical writing was still visible and the scholar Heiberg found it in a religious establishment, publishing a translation of some of it in around 1906. The book then mysteriously disappeared, resurfacing in the 90s in an auction where it was sold for $2 million. The project to find more secrets in the book was detailed in Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz and William Noel. (Be warned the book is told in the first person by two people so can be a bit confusing!). The following video of the first author tells the story and discusses the work of Archimedes: