Modern school education, part 4

After a long break after the publication of the first three parts ( 1 , 2 , 3 ), the present fourth part, which, in fact, is a continuation of the first. In this article I want to show my vision of the task for online education.

I took the same task that was discussed in the first article: How often does Venus pass through the disk of the Sun? The beauty of this problem is that with the help of two or three numbers you can get an unobvious answer that this phenomenon is observed at intervals of 105.5, 8, 121.5 and 8 years.

So, let's begin. Impatient right here:
kaurov.org/school/p1 ( mirror )

Further points:
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Introduction

It's boring to solve a problem in the absence of context. If the task is taken from life, then you can at least say who decided it for the first time and what benefits it brought to humanity.

Suppose I was too lazy to write it in this problem, but it is never too late to copy the text from Wikipedia.

Condition

As I wrote in the first part of the article, the complexity of the task is one of the most sensitive places, especially in the light of the rainbow educational reforms.

Here I brought three levels. The first is for people with a competitive spirit who are ready to sit and think for an hour. They are given a minimum of data. However, suggested tips that guide the course of the decision. You can also look at them to check your train of thought.

Second for the average student. The task is divided into a number of subtasks, each of which is solved in one action. It looks like a standard school problem from a textbook.

The third for people far from the topic. Who do not want to go deep, but should have a general idea. They are invited to immediately look at the solution of the problem, and then answer a couple of questions. Humanitarians should at least see how the answer is made up of numbers and formulas, and that there is no magic in it.

Blueprints

For tasks in physics, geometry, mathematics, and computer science also needs beautiful drawings, diagrams of what is happening. Triple better when they are interactive. I wondered if there are programs that create interactive web applications with graphs, drawings, and so on.

The leader among such programs I would call http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ . There is everything you can think of. But two minuses all cross out:
1. The client must download their plugin weighing> 100 MB, but it can still be experienced.
2. To create a Mathematica is required, which is paid.

Therefore, I have chosen for myself GeoGebra (http://www.geogebra.org/cms/), which does everything in Java and allows the client not only to watch other people's drawings in the browser window, but also to modify them. It is also translated into Russian, which is important. She loses in front of Wolfram the lack of the ability to build graphics, but there are other free packages.

The drawing available to the student is used in the video solution. That is, he can twist it himself and realize that he did not understand.

Decision

Next, I give a solution of the problem, designed in the form of a video. What I did only schematically and does not claim any quality or completeness. It would also be necessary to provide a written summary of the decision, for which I no longer had the strength. As I see, the solution should also be for different categories of people. If desired, the student can skip parts of the solution, and then for him the video will have an overview character and he will be able, for example, to go through the easiest level of complexity. Interested will be able to see all the material, which is twice as much. I tried to do it based on the built-in functions of YouTube, but it turned out to be crooked, so I advise you just to look at this picture:



If you do not repeat the Western experience, and look at a step forward , then the same GeoGebra engine allows you to insert audio files with a slight twisting. Thus, the analysis of the problem (as a lecture itself) can be done not with videos, but completely interactive. However, it is much more expensive due to the need for detailed thinking through each lesson and programming interfaces.

In addition, engines like GeoGebra potentially provide an opportunity to interrupt a lecture when asked by a student. This is already a proven scheme on many platforms, but everywhere these questions are limited to tests or short text questions. Here we can ask the student to draw on the current drawing the support reaction force or mark an obtuse angle on the triangle, these are actions that can be easily monitored at the program level. But again, we need programmers.

The main technological ideas that I wanted to mention:
1. Use beautiful videos and pictures.
2. The ability to skip part of the solution, if it does not cause questions, or is simply not interesting.
3. Interrupting the video for short questions to keep the student focused.

Additional questions and materials

A few questions to think about and without answers. It seems to me that one should always leave a feeling of ignorance in a person. This motivates strong learners, and indifferently weak. Therefore, it will not be worse.

There should also be a link for those who want to dig deeper.

Discussion

It all depends on the audience. From a recent lecture on TED from the creator of Coursera, you can draw on the idea of ​​creating virtual “classes” based on common interests / age / level of training and provide them with the opportunity to communicate with each other on the topic of tasks. Alternatively, provide each group with a mentor who has already successfully completed this course.

And now let's try to take off.

In the comments, I would like to ask you in addition to the discussion and criticisms regarding the structure of the analysis of the task also to answer the following questions:
1. How much, in your opinion, is the creation of one such lesson task when ordering, say, a course of 10-20 tasks?
2. How much would you buy such content for your child?

With this post I wanted to show that all the technologies already exist. But even companies specializing in online education do not use them. There are two reasons for this, I think. The first is that it is morally difficult to break away from the concept of a chalkboard teacher. The second - the creation of something new requires investment and a period of trial and error. I think that small companies do not have the means, and big ones are afraid to experiment.

Crowdsourcing & crowdfunding

I do not believe in business education for exactly the same reason as I do not believe in paid medicine. Therefore, the question arises where to get the resources (not even money, but resources - man-hours). For example, is it possible in Russian realities to offer students to check homework from each other (again, like Coursera)? Or to collect donations like Kickstarter? Ideal - money patron, but then dreams.