Schoolhouse Consulting – Independent Thinking – Sound Ideas – Better Schools

Schoolhouse Consulting – Independent Thinking – Sound Ideas – Better Schools

For a change of pace, I started looking for blogs about education in Canada in general, rather than classroom blogs, and I came across this amazing blog. The blog has been running since 2009, so I picked out my favourite recent post to share and review with you. 

On January 14^th, Paul (the author of this blog) posted about Salman Kahn. His opening line, “Salman Khan, found of Khan Academy, is a genuine big thinker” caught my interest from the get go. Kahn is an ex hedge fund analyst who has set out to shake up and change the education system to the benefit of students – but unfortunately, many teachers don’t see it that way. The basis of Khan Academy is a series of YouTube videos that set out to “actually ‘teach’ something rather than to ‘facilitate’ interaction with others.” This goes against the “student-centered” teaching that is the bottom of the North American curriculum today, and teachers seem to generally be against using Kahn, his videos, and his teaching in their classroom. As Kahn says, “It’d piss me off too, if I had been teaching for 30 years and suddenly this ex-hedge-fund guy is hailed as the world’s teacher.” However, this brings me back to the idea of begging, borrowing, and stealing. I had not heard of Kahn before reading this blog post, but it seems that using this is frowned upon in the classroom, though Paul encourages teachers to have students watch the videos as homework to promote deeper understanding and discussion in the classroom. If this is something that can enrich student learning, why put a stop to it? This could help reinvent teaching and classrooms, and at the very least, engage those students who would rather spend time on YouTube than writing a report on something they don’t fully understand. If it can help you out as a teacher and teach your students something, than why not? This post really got me thinking, and I would love to know other people’s opinions. 

This was just one thought provoking post of many. Check this blog out here to learn new things and get you thinking about the education system in Canada.