Thoughts on teaching & educational technology

I just read an interesting post about the struggle between freedom and uniformity in teaching. The author made the point that the best and worst teachers seem to want to same degree of freedom — for obvious reasons. Those in the middle, I’d assume, are happy with a lesser degree of freedom because its absence comes with some amount of pre-packaged (read: mindless) content, lessons, and outcomes.

If teaching inputs — that is, what teachers do and how — are a prime mover in determining student output (hopefully learning!), then this is an important issue, and alongside it the issue of teacher freedom in the age of hyper-accountability and top-down regulation.

What do you think? I don’t have time at this moment to add more, but I will within a day or two.

jdg