2013年3月11日 星期一

The Professors’ Big Stage By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN




專欄作者

教育的未來在互聯網

托馬斯·弗里德曼 2013年03月09日

過去的兩天里，我參加了由麻省理工學院(MIT)和哈佛大學(Harvard)召開的一 次大會，主題是“在線學習和居家教育的未來”， 這個主題也可以這麼解讀：“如果我的孩子能從大規模在線公開課程完全免費地學到知識，大學為什麼還要收取每年5萬美元（約合31萬元人民幣）的學費？”
你可能認為，公開課革命是一種炒作，不過，在波士頓給我開車的司機不這麼認為。我的老朋友邁克爾·桑德爾(Michael Sandel)開車到洛根機場去接我，他在哈佛大學教授著名的蘇格拉底式的正義論，有1000名學生上課。這門課是MIT與哈佛大學聯手推出的在線學習平 台edX提供的第一門人文課程，它將於3月12日上線。當我和桑德爾在機場會面時，我看見他穿着一雙色彩非常鮮艷的運動鞋。
“你從哪兒弄的這雙鞋？”我問道。桑德爾解釋說，他最近去了韓國，在那裡，他的正義課程已經被翻譯成了韓語，在國家電視台播出。這門課讓他在當地成 了一個如此知名的人物， 以至於韓國人請他在一場職業棒球賽上投出儀式性的第一球，除此之外，他們還送了他這雙鮮艷的鞋。是的，一位哈佛的哲學教授被邀請在韓國棒球賽上投第一球， 因為許多人喜歡他啟發學生思考重大道德難題的方式。
桑德爾剛剛在首爾的一個露天劇場給1.4萬名聽眾授課，現場聽眾可以參與課程互動。他的在線正義講座配有中文字幕，在中文網站上的瀏覽量已經達到了 2000萬次以上，引起了《中國日報》(China Daily)的關注，說“桑德爾在中國受歡迎的程度，往往只有好萊塢電影明星和美國職業籃球聯賽(NBA)球員才能比得上。”
好吧，不是每位教授都能風靡全球受到熱捧，然而，在線公開課革命已經來臨，它是真實存在的，儘管它將經歷許多成長的陣痛。以下是我從這次大會上獲得的主要心得：
正如歷史學家沃爾特·拉塞爾·米德(Walter Russell Mead)所說，高等教育機構必須行動起來轉變模式，從注重花了多少時間學習轉變為注重實際學到了什麼。這是因為，這個世界越來越不在乎你知道什麼。所有 的知識都可以通過谷歌(Google)找到。這個世界只在乎你能利用自己的知識做什麼，而且只有這個是有價值的。所以，這個世界不會為你的化學得了C+而 給你報酬，因為那只能說明你的州立學院認為你化學及格了，並願意給你頒發一個文憑說明這一點。我們在向著一個更加註重能力的世界邁進，這個世界對你如何獲 取能力不那麼感興趣——不管你是通過在線課程、通過四年大學學習、或者是通過公司管理的課程獲取這種能力都無所謂——這個世界更多地要求你能證明，你掌握 了這些能力。
因此，我們必須超越當前的信息傳授模式——教授是“講台上的聖人”，學生做筆記，然後再進行膚淺的評估——進入另外一種制度，要求學生、並且賦予他 們能力在網上按自己的步伐掌握更多基礎知識，而教室則成了和教授討論的地方，對所學知識的運用，也可以通過實驗室里的實驗得到磨練。現在好像有一種強烈的 共識，認為這種將在線課程和以老師為主導的教室教學結合起來的“混合模式”是最理想的。去年秋天，聖何塞州立大學(San Jose State)使用了MIT電路與電子學的入門網絡課程和互動練習。學生在家裡觀看MIT的課程並完成作業，然後再來上課。課堂上，開始15分鐘用來向聖何 塞州立大學的教授提問，教授做出解答，剩下45分鐘用來解決問題，進行討論。初步數據顯示，這門課考試及格的學生人數比例從近60%增加到了大約90%。 而且，因為這門課是取得理工科學位的第一步，這就意味着，更多學生可能會繼續學習，將來取得該領域的學位，從事該領域的職業。
我們要求水管工和幼兒園教師取得相應的資質，但卻沒要求大學教師應該知道如何教書。現在不一樣了。在線公開課正在製造一種競爭，這種競爭將迫使每位教授改善自己的教學方法，否則便會在網上遇到競爭者。
說到底，住宿式學院和它所帶來的教師與學生、學生與學生互動的經歷仍然有巨大的價值。但為了今後的成功，大學必須在鼓勵更多這種獨特的學習經歷的同 時，結合科技手段，用更低的成本，以可衡量的方式提高教學的效果。什麼教育方式有效，我們還要有更多的研究，但原地不動不是出路。
哈佛大學商學院教授、顛覆性革新的專家克萊頓·克里斯汀森(Clayton M. Christensen)曾做過一個很有說服力的講座，說如今的傳統大學就像上世紀60年代的通用汽車公司(General Motors)。就在那之後，豐田(Toyota)利用技術上的突破性進步，由一個名不見經傳的企業，變成了超越通用汽車的行業巨頭。克里斯汀森指出，哈 佛大學商學院已經不再教會計入門知識了，因為楊百翰大學(Brigham Young University)一位教授的在線會計課程“非常好”，連哈佛大學的學生都聽那個課程。當傑出的東西變得可以輕易獲得，平淡無奇的東西就沒市場了。
翻譯：張薇、陳亦亭



The Professors’ Big Stage

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN March 09, 2013
 
I just spent the last two days at a great conference convened by M.I.T. and Harvard on “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” — a k a “How can colleges charge $50,000 a year if my kid can learn it all free from massive open online courses?”
You may think this MOOCs revolution is hyped, but my driver in Boston disagrees. You see, I was picked up at Logan Airport by my old friend Michael Sandel, who teaches the famous Socratic, 1,000-student “Justice” course at Harvard, which is launching March 12 as the first humanities offering on the M.I.T.-Harvard edX online learning platform. When he met me at the airport I saw he was wearing some very colorful sneakers.

“Where did you get those?” I asked. Well, Sandel explained, he had recently been in South Korea, where his Justice course has been translated into Korean and shown on national television. It has made him such a popular figure there that the Koreans asked him to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a professional baseball game — and gave him the colored shoes to boot! Yes, a Harvard philosopher was asked to throw out the first pitch in Korea because so many fans enjoy the way he helps them think through big moral dilemmas.
Sandel had just lectured in Seoul in an outdoor amphitheater to 14,000 people, with audience participation. His online Justice lectures, with Chinese subtitles, have already had more than 20 million views on Chinese Web sites, which prompted The China Daily to note that “Sandel has the kind of popularity in China usually reserved for Hollywood movie stars and N.B.A. players.”
O.K., not every professor will develop a global following, but the MOOCs revolution, which will go through many growing pains, is here and is real. These were my key take-aways from the conference:
¶Institutions of higher learning must move, as the historian Walter Russell Mead puts it, from a model of “time served” to a model of “stuff learned.” Because increasingly the world does not care what you know. Everything is on Google. The world only cares, and will only pay for, what you can do with what you know. And therefore it will not pay for a C+ in chemistry, just because your state college considers that a passing grade and was willing to give you a diploma that says so. We’re moving to a more competency-based world where there will be less interest in how you acquired the competency — in an online course, at a four-year-college or in a company-administered class — and more demand to prove that you mastered the competency.
¶Therefore, we have to get beyond the current system of information and delivery — the professorial “sage on the stage” and students taking notes, followed by a superficial assessment, to one in which students are asked and empowered to master more basic material online at their own pace, and the classroom becomes a place where the application of that knowledge can be honed through lab experiments and discussions with the professor. There seemed to be a strong consensus that this “blended model” combining online lectures with a teacher-led classroom experience was the ideal. Last fall, San Jose State used the online lectures and interactive exercises of M.I.T.’s introductory online Circuits and Electronics course. Students would watch the M.I.T. lectures and do the exercises at home, and then come to class, where the first 15 minutes were reserved for questions and answers with the San Jose State professor, and the last 45 were devoted to problem solving and discussion. Preliminary numbers indicate that those passing the class went from nearly 60 percent to about 90 percent. And since this course was the first step to a degree in science and technology, it meant that many more students potentially moved on toward a degree and career in that field.
¶We demand that plumbers and kindergarten teachers be certified to do what they do, but there is no requirement that college professors know how to teach. No more. The world of MOOCs is creating a competition that will force every professor to improve his or her pedagogy or face an online competitor.
¶Bottom line: There is still huge value in the residential college experience and the teacher-student and student-student interactions it facilitates. But to thrive, universities will have to nurture even more of those unique experiences while blending in technology to improve education outcomes in measurable ways at lower costs. We still need more research on what works, but standing still is not an option.
Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor and expert on disruptive innovation, gave a compelling talk about how much today’s traditional university has in common with General Motors of the 1960s, just before Toyota used a technology breakthrough to come from nowhere and topple G.M. Christensen noted that Harvard Business School doesn’t teach entry-level accounting anymore, because there is a professor out at Brigham Young University whose online accounting course “is just so good” that Harvard students use that instead. When outstanding becomes so easily available, average is over.
 
 
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2013年3月4日 星期一

Gym Class Isn’t Just Fun and Games Anymore體育課不再只是有趣與遊戲

我們建築系的學妹現在在高雄某科技大學主持通識課程，她提出大家都忽略的: "體育"作為博雅之基礎，這也是相 當好的。

體育課不再只是快樂遊戲

MOTOKO RICH 報道 2013年02月26日
Angel Valentin for The New York Times
在大沼澤小學三年級學生的體育課上，將樂高積木分類也是一項教學內容。

佛羅里達州西棕櫚灘——不久前的一天下午，莎倫·帕特爾斯基(Sharon Patelsky)老師教的三年級學生複習了諸如“首字母縮略詞”、 “順時針方向”和“降序”之類的詞彙以及一些數學概念，如大於、小於和位值。
而這些都是在體育課上學到的。
帕特爾斯基是當地大沼澤小學(Everglades Elementary School)的一名體育老師。在熱身運動中，她讓學生做肘膝觸碰練習時按4的倍數報數。跑到印有數學符號的圓墊前，學生們要先計算兩隻骰子的點數之和。 做俯卧撐時，他們用一隻手臂支撐身體，用另一隻手將標有“個”、“十”和“百”的大號樂高積木堆成柱形（“交換[Alternate]！”帕特爾斯基發出 口令，“這個詞你們也要學會！”）。
“我的工作不在於教會學生遊戲和放鬆”， 帕特爾斯基女士說。對於這種打破學校常規的另類教學方式，她解釋說：“首先，我是一名教師。”
由於數學和英語成績越發受到重視，也為了在教學中傳遞更多有關健康和體育鍛煉的信息，越來越多的學校要求體育老師不僅要教授足球、腳下棒球和網球， 還要把讀、寫和算術納入其中。美國45個州以及哥倫比亞特區的英語和數學教學新標準都要求各科老師將識字教學及說明文閱讀納入授課過程。許多州都將體育課 納入新標準的範圍之內，它們提出指導意見，設計相應課程，以便各地區的老師將識字技能和說明文閱讀納入體育教學之中。
然而，一些家長表示，他們反對這種讓考試充斥校園生活各個角落的教學方法。一些教育人士也擔心，摻雜其他教學活動會讓體育課失去原本的目的。
書獃子型的學生可能會很歡迎將數學和閱讀納入體育課，玩躲避球遊戲的時候，他們總是沒人要。但是，這種教學安排同樣也是體育教育部門謀求生存的結果。
由於預算下降，校方不得不在各個學科中做出取捨。埃里克·斯特恩(Eric Stern)是棕櫚灘郡（美國第11大學區）負責學校體育教育的行政官員，他說：“這只是為了提高體育老師對學校的價值，讓他們能和”語文、數學和科學等 核心科目的老師“平起平坐罷了。我們正在摒棄傳統的體育教學模式。”
現在，遍及美國各地的體育老師都開始把詞彙表貼在體育館的牆壁上。他們會讓學生在擲球時檢驗牛頓運動定律，還會進行與骨骼結構或食品種類有關的小測驗。
在弗吉尼亞州切薩皮克的迪普克里克小學(Deep Creek Elementary School)，學生們在體育課上做熱身運動時會用不同的語言數數，或在字母墊上單足跳來拼寫詞彙。
西雅圖羅克斯希爾小學(Roxhill Elementary)體育老師雪莉·拉斐特(Chellie LaFayette)用聯邦政府撥款購買的iPad向學生們展示艾迪塔羅德狗拉雪橇比賽的圖片和山脈地圖，她還把山脈的名字寫在攀岩牆上。
在一些地區，新型體育課程成了家庭作業和考試內容之一。去年，哥倫比亞特區在年底標準化考試中增加了50道與健康和體育課有關的試題。
並非所有家長都對這些變化感到滿意。凱瑟琳·奧羅佩薩(Kathleen Oropeza)是佛羅里達州非營利性公共教育宣傳機構Fund Education Now的創始人之一，她說：“我覺得這樣做有點兒過頭了。如果孩子們享受當優秀守門員的過程，或者想成為球隊的一員，那為什麼要讓他們籠罩在嚴格而且高標 準的測試之下呢？”
在兒童肥胖和休息時間減少等問題日益嚴重的情況下，一些教育工作者希望體育鍛煉得到重視。布魯克林新學校(Brooklyn New School)沒有把其他教學活動納入體育課程。該小學校長安娜·艾倫布魯克(Anna Allanbrook)說：“我更擔心的是體育課時間不足。”
有家長和學生反對這樣做，他們認為這是額外的家庭作業。有些人說，體育課作業加重了學生的課業負擔。16歲的安妮·貝葉-查菲茨(Annie Beyer-Chafets)是紐約韋斯切斯特郡的高二學生。去年老師曾要求她和同學們就家中一位親人對終生運動項目的選擇寫一篇作文，她說：“我從未真 的從這些作業中學到任何東西。”
體育老師表示，他們並不是簡單地把體育變成又一門為考試做準備的課程。
相反，他們認為體育能幫助學生學到終身運動的習慣，並了解原先只在健康課上教授的知識。通過學習肌肉和呼吸系統，學生就知道如何使用計步器以及如何計算最佳心率。
聖迭哥郡教育局健康和體育教育協調員佩奇·梅斯(Paige Metz)說：“我們想讓學生動起來，但我們希望確保他們做有意義的運動。”
但有時候，意義似乎已經超越了運動。在佛羅里達州萊克沃思印度松樹小學(Indian Pines Elementary School)克里斯蒂娜·羅傑斯(Kristina Rodgers)老師的體育課上，為了讓西蘭花圖片或奶酪塊和食物圖上的相應區域對號入座，學生們用于思考的時間和進行單足跳或跑步練習的時間一樣多。
羅傑斯表示，體育課有30分鐘，學生很難保持一刻不停的運動。因此她將認知教學穿插在快節奏的身體鍛煉中。
在她設計的另一項活動中，學生們要跳、踢，然後跑到一堆小圓錐體前，儘快把它們壘好。
“這很有趣，”9歲的凱莉·卡斯特隆(Keyli Castellon)在奔跑之後喘個不停，“因為我們要做各種不同的動作，這就是學習。”
越來越多的研究表明，體育活動有助於提高認知能力。
“和坐在教室里相比，更多的運動能讓有些孩子學得更好，” 棕櫚灘郡首席學術官詹妮思·安德魯斯(Janis Andrews)說：“對他們來說，學到知識的時刻不是在教室里，而是在室外。”
在萊克沃思海牛小學(Manatee Elementary School)的室外場地中，體育老師肖恩·羅尼(Shawn Roney)在向五年級的學生展示怎麼用兒童專用高爾夫球杆進行切削擊球。他把球杆顛倒過來，用手沿着桿頭划出去，然後問道，“小數學家們，這是什麼？” 幾名學生大聲說了他想要的答案：角度。
有些家長表示，考慮到學生們每天都要在有限的時間裡學很多東西，把其他知識納入體育課未嘗不可。勒妮·凱萊赫(Renee Kelleher)是四個孩子的母親，她的雙胞胎兒子在海牛小學讀四年級。她說：“這樣他們就能在課餘時間出去玩了。體育課也是課。”
本文最初發表於2013年2月19日。
翻譯：Charlie

Gym Class Isn’t Just Fun and Games Anymore

By MOTOKO RICH February 26, 2013
Angel Valentin for The New York Times
Sorting Lego blocks is part of the gym curriculum for third graders at Everglades Elementary.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — On a recent afternoon, the third graders in Sharon Patelsky’s class reviewed words like “acronym,” “clockwise” and “descending,” as well as math concepts like greater than, less than and place values.
During gym class.
Ms. Patelsky, the physical education teacher at Everglades Elementary School here, instructed the students to count by fours as they touched their elbows to their knees during a warm-up. They added up dots on pairs of dice before sprinting to round mats imprinted with mathematical symbols. And while in push-up position, they balanced on one arm and used the other (“Alternate!” Ms. Patelsky urged. “That’s one of your vocabulary words”) to stack oversize Lego blocks in columns labeled “ones,” “tens” and “hundreds.”
“I don’t work for Parks and Recreation,” said Ms. Patelsky, explaining the unorthodox approach to what has traditionally been one of the few breaks from the academic routine during the school day. “I am a teacher first.”
Spurred by an intensifying focus on student test scores in math and English as well as a desire to incorporate more health and fitness information, more school districts are pushing physical education teachers to move beyond soccer, kickball and tennis to include reading, writing and arithmetic as well. New standards for English and math that have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia recommend that teachers in a wide variety of subjects incorporate literacy instruction and bring more “informational text” into the curriculum. Many states have interpreted these standards to include physical education and have developed recommendations and curriculum for districts and teachers to incorporate literacy skills and informational text into gym classes.
But some parents say they object to the way testing is creeping into every corner of school life. And some educators worry that pushing academics into P.E. class could defeat its primary purpose.
While generations of bookish but clumsy children who feared being the last pick for the dodge ball team may welcome the injection of math and reading into gym class, the push is also motivated by a simple fight for survival by physical education departments.
As budget cuts force school officials to make choices between subjects, “it’s just a way to make P.E. teachers more of an asset to schools and seem as important” as teachers in core subjects like language arts, math and science, said Eric Stern, the administrator in charge of physical education for the Palm Beach County schools, the country’s 11th-largest school district. “We are taking away the typical stereotype of what P.E. used to be like.”
Across the country, P.E. teachers now post vocabulary lists on gym walls, ask students to test Newton’s Laws of Motion as they toss balls, and give quizzes on parts of the skeleton or food groups.
At Deep Creek Elementary School in Chesapeake, Va., children count in different languages during warm-up exercises and hop on letter mats to spell out words during gym class.
Chellie LaFayette, the physical education teacher at Roxhill Elementary in Seattle, used an iPad purchased with a federal grant to show her students pictures of the Iditarod sled dog race and maps of mountain ranges for which she had named routes on a climbing wall.
In some cases, homework and testing have accompanied the new gym content. Last year, the District of Columbia added 50 questions about health and physical education to its end-of-year standardized tests.
Not all parents are pleased with the changes. “I think there is such a thing as taking something too far,” said Kathleen Oropeza, co-founder of Fund Education Now, a nonprofit public education advocacy group in Florida. “If you’ve got children who are learning the joy of being a good goalie or learning that they want to participate as part of the team, why does that have to be overshadowed by the hard, high-stakes test environment?”
And at a time of increasing childhood obesity and diminishing recess time, some educators want to keep the focus on physical activity. “I’m more concerned that we don’t have enough time to be in the gym,” said Anna Allanbrook, principal of the Brooklyn New School, an elementary school that does not incorporate academics into gym time.
With parents and students rebelling against what they see as an excess of homework, some say that gym class assignments add to the busywork. “I never really learned anything from doing those papers,” said Annie Beyer-Chafets, 16, a sophomore in Westchester County, N.Y., who recalls being asked to write an essay about a relative’s lifetime sport choices last year.
Physical education teachers say they are not simply transforming gym class into another period of test preparation.
Instead, they say, P.E. helps students learn about lifetime fitness habits and other subjects previously taught in health classes. Students study the muscular and respiratory systems, learn to use pedometers and calculate optimum heart rates.
“We want to get kids moving,” said Paige Metz, coordinator for health and physical education at the San Diego County Office of Education. “But we want to make sure there is meaning to the movement.”
At times, the meaning seems to overtake the movement. In Kristina Rodgers’s gym class at Indian Pines Elementary School in Lake Worth, Fla., students spent as much time pondering pictures of broccoli and blocks of cheese to stick into pockets on a food chart as they did hopping or running.
Ms. Rodgers said that during a 30-minute class, it would be difficult for the children to keep moving constantly, so she interspersed cognitive tasks with fast-paced drills.
At another station she had set up, students jumped, kicked and ran to a pile of small cones that they stacked as quickly as possible.
“It’s fun,” said Keyli Castellon, 9, breathing hard after sprinting. “Because you get to do different moves, and it’s learning.”
A growing body of research shows that physical activity can help improve cognitive function.
“Some children just learn better through more movement than they do sitting at a desk,” said Janis Andrews, chief academic officer in Palm Beach. “Some kids are going to have that ‘aha’ moment not in the classroom, but the light bulb is going to finally go on outside.”
At an outdoor pavilion at Manatee Elementary School in Lake Worth, Shawn Roney, a gym teacher, showed fifth graders how to make chip shots with child-size golf clubs. Then he turned a club upside down and moved his palm across the club head. “Math majors, what is this?” he asked. Several children piped up with the answer he sought: an angle.
Some parents say that given how much students need to learn in a limited time during the day, sprinkling a few academic lessons into gym class makes sense. “They get the opportunity to play during recess,” said Renee Kelleher, a mother of four whose twin boys are in fourth grade at Manatee. “This is still class.”
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