Student feedback for quality teaching

David Warlick of the blog 2 cents worth posted a very interesting thought a few weeks ago.

Disruption, or Demand to learn.

As teachers we are always using classroom management to battle the disruptions of life. The major ones at the moment being mobile phones and MP3 players, I tend not to think of iPods as a big problem if managed well. In fact, I've often found that students listening to music tend to be more on task, not to mention that you can use them as a teacher tool, it's only when you need to talk to the class as a whole that it can be a problem.

Mobile phones on the other hand can be a serious problem. Most especially when it comes to bullying, but even as something that can effect the efficient running of a lesson. There's nothing like a mobile ringing to throw you off your teaching flow.

David in his blog entry talked about how often the mobile phones are being use to complain about the quality of conferences, and I don't dispute that this kind of feedback is useful, I think it's a great thing if quality is raised because of the demand caused by feedback. At the convention he was attending, this is exactly what was happening, people were complaining about the quality of the lecturer via SMS messages. He was explaining that this was a new way for feedback to received.

I am skeptical however that this is indeed what is happening in high school classrooms. It seems to me that it's highly unlikely that teenagers are spending the majority of time in class texting about how good or bad the lesson is, rather than gossiping about Tina's new boyfriend who she's just going out with to prove she's over Geoff.

Perhaps what we should be taking out of this lesson is not that mobile phones are okay to use in the classroom (and of course they are for educational purposes), but that we need to get more feedback from our students to improve out teaching strategies, that self reflection and peer reflection are not enough. We need to take the time to hear our students and how they enjoy learning so then learning is more meaningful and we're more likely to create lifelong learners.

David Warlick's blog: http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

Photo from: www.apple.com/education