Re: [Phys-L] book versus video versus lecture

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 01/13/2014 04:53 PM, Philip Keller wrote:
> Is there (or could there be) a website where teachers can post
> lecture notes, powerpoints, lab experiments, problems sets,
> simulations, activities -- all the kinds of things we use in our
> teaching, organized by subject with room for reviews,  comments,
> suggestions for improvement, maybe even a "like" button.  A teacher
> posts something, people give it bad reviews, lots of criticism, I
> either fix it or take it down.  Or people give it great reviews, lots
> of "likes" and the next time someone is looking for a good powerpoint
> about, say, Carnot efficiency, they can search the site, find the
> activity they were interested in, see what others had to say, maybe
> try it themselves rather than re-invent the wheel.

There is very little of that available.

Now, suppose we look at the educational system as a /system/.
The fact that there is so little sharing and so much duplication
of effort indicates that the system is grossly mismanaged.

If this were any kind of an organized organization, the boss
would tell middle management it was their job to fix this
immediately, i.e. to create an incentive structure that
motivated people to share resources and eliminate wasteful
duplication of effort.

Any manager did not get the message would get slapped upside
the head with a wet fish, or whatever was necessary to get
their attention.

Anybody who still did not get the message would get demoted
to janitor, or worse.

=========

It must be emphasized that the goal is to collect a modest
amount of high-quality stuff.  Collecting a huge amount of
low-quality stuff is a waste of effort.

For more on this, see
  http://www.av8n.com/physics/teaching-ideas.htm