20% actual content, 80% frustration

[miss_mimsy]

 I attended my first faculty meeting yesterday. The principal decided to present to us on the Pareto Principal. It is the 80/20 rule. The way she wanted us to apply it is that teachers should be doing 20% of the “teaching” while students used collaborative techniques for the other 80

Comments

[barnabas_truman]

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrg, what your principal claimed isn't the Pareto Principle at all and is in fact completely the opposite of it.

The Pareto Principle doesn't say "Things can be split into 80% and 20%." It says "20% of X accomplishes 80% of Y, and the other 80% of X only accomplishes 20% of Y."

The Pareto Principle in this case would state something like "20% of the people do 80% of the teaching, and the other 80% of the people only do 20% of the teaching"--if we must use the 80-20 thing; there's actually nothing special about those specific numbers. It would be more realistic to say something like "A few of the people do most of the teaching, and the rest of the people do very little teaching." This could easily be interpreted as "The few teachers do most of the teaching, and the many students do very little teaching." THAT's the Pareto Principle. If your principal is suggesting that the few teachers do little teaching and the many students do most of the teaching, that's the exact opposite of the Pareto Principle.

I'm right with you on most of that other stuff you just wrote, though, except for smartboards. I've seen very little on a smartboard that can't be done as well or better with an ordinary whiteboard and a digital projector (or even a transparency projector), and I'm getting sick of schools buying more and more tech while hiring fewer and fewer full-time teachers. More teachers is a far, far better investment.

Overall I think the education system has a lot of problems that need to be addressed, and they're not going to be solved by the quick-fix feel-good patches that administrators often try to apply.

[barnabas_truman]

Sorry if that came off as a little hostile--I tend to get grumpy when people (e.g. your principal) misuse misunderstood mathematical concepts to support their own agendas.

[rbus]

the first 90% of the time gets the first 90% of the work done.
the *other* 90% of the time gets the last 10% of the work done.

hey!
i know!

let's make a bar graph that mis-uses a point-spread trend line to show things are improving!

and then we can run a business. or maybe even government...

[barnabas_truman]

the first 90% of the time gets the first 90% of the work done.
the *other* 90% of the time gets the last 10% of the work done.

I remember the first time I read that principle... in an After Dark quote screensaver. :-D

[bdot]

there are teachers in my school that love smartboards.... i think they like the idea that the images can be captured and saved on the computer for later use. can a digital projector do that as well? in my room, i have a document camera with an LCD projector and it seems to work out just fine for me! but i have never looked to see if i can save images....

[barnabas_truman]

A digital projector is typically hooked up to a computer and simply projects whatever's on the screen, so yes, you can save whatever's showing on your computer.

I acknowledge that smartboards can do some pretty neat things--I'm quite fond of playing with a geometry program like Cabri or Geometer's Sketchpad on what is effectively a giant touchscreen--but I really don't think the technology is quite caught up yet. One of my big problems with the smartboards I've used is that they aren't fast enough to pick up what I'm writing, and what would be an elegant formula on a chalkboard or whiteboard becomes an illegible scribble on a smartboard.

I think my main problem is that it's so hyped up--and such a money suck--but it really doesn't deliver anything more than a standard whiteboard plus projector. I've also read of some studies suggesting that

• Although the newness of the technology was initially welcomed by pupils any boost in motivation seems short-lived.
• Sometimes teachers focused more on the new technology than on what pupils should be learning.
• The focus on interactivity as a technical process can lead to some relatively mundane activities being over-valued.

It also seems to encourage turning every lesson into a PowerPoint presentation, and that's never good.

Anyway: maybe with a lot more training, a lot more money, and five more years of technological development, smartboards might be the best thing. Until then, I'm sticking with whiteboards.

[bdot]

thanks for the input. what i know of them is hearsay since i have never actually used one. i am happy with my whiteboard + document camera + projector combo.

[miss_mimsy]

I am not surprised that an administrator got the principal wrong and it is just as likely, if not more likely that I took her out of context for the sake of my little rant. So no worry about coming on strong, it's your subject, I expect you to be passionate about it. :-)

As for Smart Boards, I think they are good when students need to take home what was on the board. I allow my students to brainstorm on the white board and they will take a pic of it with their phones, but it would be much cooler if they could just e-mail it to themselves.

And I have seen that possible with an attachment that costs about $100 on a standard whiteboard.

[barnabas_truman]

That sounds like a good use of it. My own personal issue with it is that with the current level of the technology it's actually worse for me than a standard whiteboard (too slow; can't project a document camera image and write on it at the same time), and, more broadly, the overemphasis of technology instead of good teaching--the high school I used to teach at recently spent a huge amount of money remodeling the entire building and equipping every classroom with the latest in smartboard technology, and I think that money would be much better spent in hiring a few more teachers