I don’t have any experience with this method. I found it a little disturbing, though. It seems to boil down to little critical thinking and a great deal of just spouting back what the teacher says. In particular, it doesn’t seem appropriate for a college philosophy course.

I LOVE the 4th grade one–reading dramatically. I can see how retention will go up! I’m wondering how do I modify this for high school.

I can’t imagine doing this kind of stuff all the time. What strikes me about it is that they have such a quick response to the teacher’s call for attention.

Obviously some of it could be because the camera is there, but it also shows that there has been an immense amount of effort focused on behavioral management, as well as the very obvious enjoyment that the kids are experiencing.

Are there shortcomings with this approach? Sure there are. The same could be said about any kind of thing where we teach human beings. Us people are fallible, so any system we devise will be prone to inefficiency. But I keep going back to how much fun the students are having.

I’ve written about how important it is for me to play at work and I see these students and teachers having a lot of fun there.

Setting aside our “veteran blinders” for a second, can we see at least some merit in some of the techniques demonstrated in these videos?

Please consider submitting this to the Active Learning Blog Carnival. It is a great example of actively involving students in memorizing content, one of the key learning tasks. http://activelearningcarnival.blogspot.com/

I think it is a bit extreme at the older levels. I think there are things to be gleaned from the approach. I think we all know deep down that this is far better than the chaos that happens in many classrooms.

At the very least, this is a stepping stone and a beginning to getting and maintaining classroom control. When teachers finally get control over their classes, they begin to feel empowered, begin to relax more, and move into their own teaching style.