MIT Students Demonstrate Mastery By Teaching

I love this on so many levels.

MIT has launched an initiative with Khan Academy to have MIT students produce videos on a variety of science and engineering topics for the purpose of teaching K-12 students. I just don’t see a downside to it. Let me go over why this is a fabulous idea.

1. The highest form of mastery of a topic is to teach it. Making these videos will help the MIT students master these ideas.
2. The MIT students will be able to better relate to the K-12 generation since they were recently in that category themselves.
3. It’s free on YouTube.
4. There is a mechanism built in where the K-12 students can communicate their questions to the MIT student teachers so it’s not just a video.
5. I have been theorizing that in order for online learning to take off, there will need to be vastly more content available. This shows how even students can teach.
6. This is peer to peer learning (just about) which is a disaggregated learning model. There will be a lot more of this.

Overall MIT has been really on a tear lately. I’m impressed.

Bonus questions: How many students will graduate from MIT, decide they like teaching, and create the next Khan Academy? Could MIT might be sowing the seeds of their own disruption?

• MIT launches student-produced educational video initiative | KurzweilAI

  Student produced learning videos

  tags: education students videos opensource youtube MIT khan nell

  • MIT has launched an initiative in collaboration with Khan Academy founder Salman Khan called MIT+K12 that encourages its students to produce short videos teaching basic concepts in science and engineering.

  • The videos — aimed at students in grades from kindergarten through high school — will be accessible through a dedicated MIT website and YouTube channel.

    Some of the videos will also be available on Khan Academy, a popular not-for-profit educational site

  • Under MIT+K12, MIT students produce videos that are five to 10 minutes long on topics of their choosing; they can also develop video concepts requested by teachers, K-12 students, and other users. In the three dozen MIT+K12 videos posted so far, students have focused on topics ranging from flying robots to basic chemistry to Earth’s rotation.
  • The videos appear to be striking a chord with younger students: In a survey of 300 K-12 students who viewed some of the initial MIT+K12 videos, 73 percent indicated that the videos “showed me that science and engineering could be cool.”
  • After receiving approval for a video on a given topic, MIT students can qualify for financial support, the use of equipment, some training and professional editing services. So far, MIT students have generated approximately 75 videos for MIT+K12, half of which have already been made public through the program’s YouTube channel.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.