Blog#1: Grassroots Video & McLuhan

The Horizon Report (2008) was both exciting and intimidating at the same time. I was instinctively proud (which admittedly felt a bit strange!) when I realized that I incorporate grassroots video in my classroom, without previously knowing the technical name “grassroots video”. I use Teacher Tube, a downloadable educational video site that offers video lessons, groups, and teacher blogs. It is a good resource to use if a student has been absent for several days and needs to hear and see a particular mathematics lesson in progress, instead of copying and reading notes in order to catch up with the class again. The videos are also useful for a substitute teacher to play for the class on a large screen. In general, I am not a proponent of showing videos when I am absent. However, it is very difficult to find substitutes for math classes, and showing a short math lesson video and following up with a check for understanding activity may increase the likelihood of the substitute returning to a math classroom and increase student knowledge using a different teacher resource.
In my opinion, Marshall McLuhan would argue that grassroots video, in this capacity, extends the mathematics teacher. Instead of instructing one-hundred and fifty students in one classroom each school day, these online videos allow the teacher to reach thousands or even millions of learners across the world. Learners experience the lesson in real-time and follow along as if they were members of the actual classroom. However, McLuhan states that each extension mitigates another component. I believe he would contend that grassroots video has the ability to make teachers and physical classrooms obsolete – a frightening prospect.
As a result of grassroots video, learners retrieve a sense of control over their pace of education, traditionally dictated by the classroom teacher and/or district curricula. A learner could potentially complete Algebra I in one week, instead of an entire school year! If overextended though, McLuhan may hypothesize that grassroots video would negatively impact communication and collaboration skills of the learners. Since the videos are one-way (not interactive), learners lose the ability to ask questions to remediate or enrich the lesson. In addition, learners would not have the opportunity to be grouped homogenously or heterogeneously to supplement learning and to gain the important skills and benefits associated with group work.
The Horizon Report (2008) validates the importance of staying current with technology trends, both personally and professionally. The report left me wondering what is possibly out there for future technologists to design. We must proceed with caution, however. As a Japanese proverb states, "Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher."