Quote from: Phidippides on Yesterday at 09:36:03 PMIt devolves into this:QuoteInspired by popular video games like World of Warcraft, an Indiana University professor is applying game design principles such as clear, well-defined goals and gradual, incremental rewards to his college classes. A hit with students, the approach has some employers showing interest, too.University class swaps grades for experience pointsUgh!  Is this what we've come to?Apparently.  A friend of mine who still teachers tells me that over the past 35 years he has gone fromteacher to instructor to lecturer to professor to entertainer and not by choice!I concur having been present at the birth of the POWER POINT PRESENTATION.  It used to be that theinstructor stood at the front of the class imparting information through his voice and body language.Sometime in the 80's ( a wretched decade) we began to see the erosion of this method and theemergence of the power point presentation.  Now the imparter of knowledge stood at the back of the class--a disembodied voice and the center of attention was the screen, splendid in its myriad colors,thrilling the audience with pie charts, graphs, witty epigrams and cartoons.  The class was beinginformed and entertained.  At first the novelty was amusing, but then the horrid realization set in--this was the future and perhaps a necessary future.  We no longer had the patience to sit through a lectureor we no longer had lecturers of sufficient skill to do it without mechanical visual aides.  In order to getthrough the thickening skull and into the shrinking brain matter all senses had to be assaulted--thus theterm audio-visual where power point was the latest and best example.  By the time I retired allmanagers and supervisors had been trained in the use of the power point process which many liked asit was all scripted and required no thought in presentation.  My point is that we now have a generationthat expects learning to be entertaining and perhaps even fun.  How this is possible in organic chemistry, mastering a language or literary criticism has yet to be explained to me.  If the biologists are correct, and I believe they are, we are descended from apes who love novelty, color and diversion .We betray our origins, but seem to be declining rather than advancing.  Would Darwin object if we said that evolution can descend as well as ascend?  Perhaps the future fit who survive will find power pointskills to be of some advantage for survival although I am at a loss to suggest just what these might be.History only:A final note.  Why not just scrap the schools and the instructors and just show movies of historical periods. You would have a happier student body (most), save money as the same films could be run year after year and the History professors could be assigned useful work.  The fact that the films are historically inaccurate is of little consequence--so were many of the lectures.  Orwell said it best:IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

It devolves into this:

Inspired by popular video games like World of Warcraft....

Ugh!  Is this what we've come to?

Apparently.  A friend of mine who still teachers tells me that over the past 35 years he has gone fromteacher to instructor to lecturer to professor to entertainer and not by choice!I concur having been present at the birth of the POWER POINT PRESENTATION.

My condolences; PP was a greand idea that got entirely out of hand. As spice it's nice as the main course the behind of a horse.

A computerised slide presentation... the intermediate step being the laser disk with a barcode scanner.  ::)

I'd vote for devolution here... part of the history standards in my state are calling for the students to be able to create and present a PP. Our HS required it in several classes as it helps get the school accreditied. The down side isn't that knowing how to do this is bad on the face but that it reduces the material to bullet points; that is all the students want... the bullets that will be asked about on the exam and the standardized tests in the spring. No one cares about the whys that the lecture can flesh out to assure understanding rather than just recall of the factoids that were the bullet points.

At least one of the teachers that replaced me at the HS (when I moved to the middle school was running in this mode... didn't seem to go over that well but he's till doing it. I had several films that I used with some degree of regularity, based on their historical value (and that I liked them didn't hurt either  😉 ).While Orwell did say it well; the bumper sticker one of the sharper students from my last group of 10th graders gifted me with after they went on a field trip to the big city with the English teachers said it best... "Ignorance is Pi$$." [note: it didn't have dollars signs  :o]

I agree willy, my best profs were that type. One would spend about an hour (before class) drawing detailed diagrams of the geologic formations and such that were the subject of the lesson… during class he referred to them in an offhand way and explained what they meant… fleshing out the things that had made us curious. A marvel… I spent years trying to be a weak approximation of that level that level.Most of the crits I got were that I didn't use cooperative learning techniques (good students work in groups with kids less able and help them to learn... teacher being facilitator) which was flavor of the month for a time. Flaw was the good kids did all the work and the others rode their wake. Not very productive but as such a good demo of how communism works.As far as keeping the students awake by not being boring: many have a short attention span and very little cultural literacy; I needed out because there were fewer each year that understood the jokes.  8)