{"id":360,"date":"2020-04-30T21:05:43","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T01:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/?p=360"},"modified":"2020-04-30T21:05:43","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T01:05:43","slug":"teaching-the-medium-is-the-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/teaching-the-medium-is-the-message\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching: The Medium is the Message"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Is teaching online just as good as teaching in class? Is it better? Will the students want to come back to class next year, or will they just want to stay online? Is online teaching the same as classroom teaching – just in a different format? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll get back to these questions in a moment, but first I want to talk about a book I am re-reading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know it\u2019s good to keep up with current \u201cteacher\u201d books. I am currently reading Jeff Wilhelm\u2019s new book (written with Rachel Bear and Adam Fachler), Planning Powerful Instruction (Grades 6 – 12)<\/em>. I have others on my stack of books I brought home from school. But I am also finding myself drawn to re-read some of the older teacher books that have made me the teacher I am today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll be writing about a number of these books later, but for now I\u2019d like to touch on one that was first published when I was two, in 1969: Teaching as a Subversive Activity<\/em> by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. Just re-reading the first couple of chapters has made me realize how much the ideas in this book have become part of the DNA of my teaching.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second chapter, \u201cThe Medium is the Message, Of Course,\u201d refers to Marshall McLuhan\u2019s idea that a message will be influenced by the medium used to transmit that message. (Postman has written a whole book on just that subject called Amusing Ourselves to Death<\/em>, a title that seems particularly apt right now.)  If you read a news story in a newspaper and watch a television news story about the same piece of news, the actual medium, print or TV, will influence how you experience and think about the story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicholas Carr has updated this idea in his Atlantic article \u201cIs Google Making Us Stupid?\u201d and book The Shallows<\/em>, and cites research indicating that we read \u201cdeep\u201d in print and shallow on screens. The ethos of the internet is one of surface reading, skimming and skipping from link to link to link. You might be about to do it now reading this on your screen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Teaching as a Subversive Activity<\/em>, the authors make the case that in teaching, the medium is the message as well. They argue that schools of education, and schools, view the content of the class and the method used to teach the content as completely different things. I would argue that this view has not changed in the 51 years since the book was published. We tend to view that content is just information to be downloaded, and how we do it doesn\u2019t matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But delivery method matters. Telling students to answer questions instead of ask them sends a message. Telling students to regurgitate what they read rather than think and respond to it sends a message. Telling students to follow rote writing formulas sends a message. Over-reliance on rubrics that spell out exactly what to do to get a grade sends a message. Focusing on points and grades sends a message. Constantly focusing on individual standards rather than synthesizing skills into a coherent whole sends a message. Content may dictate form, but form also influences content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which leads me back to my questions at the start of this post. Will the students want to come back to class next year, or will they just want to stay online? Is online teaching the same as classroom teaching – just in a different format? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve heard teachers on social media and in digital meetings say that many students prefer this model of learning because it\u2019s self-paced. Two of my classes – my \u201cregular classes\u201d are on a nearly automated education platform where they watch little videos, answer multiple choice questions (which are automatically graded), and short answer questions which they self-check against a key. I need to look at their writing, though an algorithm gives them a \u201csuggested\u201d score. I\u2019ve asked my students if they like this platform, and some do. When I ask them why they like it, they say something along the lines of, \u201cI can get it over with sooner.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The medium is the message. This medium, which the ed tech industry touts as \u201cpersonalized learning,\u201d is essentially sending this message: education is about getting through a bunch of tasks as quickly as possible. Granted, this message is sometimes what gets transmitted in classes as well, when teachers teach like Mrs. Paquetts with her never ending piles of packets, but it doesn\u2019t have to be like that. A digital platform really sends several messages through its medium, questions that should sound familiar: <\/p>\n\n\n\n