Some of the ideas of using technology in order to subvert the mass industrial education (propaganda) ‘lock-step’ model are finally filtering through to the mainstream press. So, there’s been extensive reporting of TED-Ed‘s initiative to enable teachers to create their own lessons using YouTube videos.

The ‘Flip this Video’ idea takes an earlier suggestion by ?, that teachers should invert the traditional model where they deliver the class and then send students home to do homework based on it. Instead (the suggestion goes) teachers could upload a video of the class they would have delivered which students watch at home and then use class time to do the work based on those materials. The result is less passive learning and more active doing with the teacher supporting, guiding, etc. Because it often involved using a Flip camera to make that initial video, the moniker has stayed.

Here’s what it looks like:

 

In many ways it’s a great initiative. We’ve all been using YouTube videos for a while now, collecting them together in various playlists and channels and embedding them in materials that exploit their contents in pedagogically rich ways. So, TEDEd is providing another way to use content and save it in a way that makes it easily accessible. The downside is the rather pedagogically poor ways in which this is currently offered: watch-quiz-watch or read something else. It’s a bit passive and reinforces the idea that students often have, that you can learn by absorbing what you see. You can’t. You learn by doing something.