All over Twitter and on edblogs many educators have been busy dismissing the pedagogical value of lectures. Citing statistics such as students only learn 5 percent of what they hear in a lecture and declaring that the days of lecturing are or should be over, these same educators are likely to tweet their praise of tedtalks , sometimes even in their very next tweet. Such is the paradox pertaining to lecture in this age of 21st century learning. On one hand our current educational climate has raised the lecture to its highest heights in terms of the privileging of ted talks and the explosion of flipped classrooms and moocs. On the other hand we are constantly being told that “lecture doesn’t=learning”.  Yet these statistics and statements flummox me as I believe they are misleading. A good lecturer would never expect a student to master the material from lecture alone. A good teacher would never rely on lecture alone. Lecture is only one of the tools teachers, especially humanities teachers, use to paint a picture for our students and create a coherent narrative, one which our students participate actively in crafting though their readings, viewings, and writings.

There is a place for lecture in the 21st century. The best defense of the lecture I have read comes from Richard Gundererman in The Atlantic. In his Article: Is the Lecture Dead, Gunderman examines the trend of eliminating lectures from medical and nursing schools during the past five years. With many medical schools limiting significantly the percentage of time a professor can spend lecturing, Gunderman launches into a thoughtful argument and states “recalling the words of Mark Twain, widespread reports of the lecture’s demise are somewhat exaggerated.”

Lectures, according to Gunderman, still have value as long as they are excellent lectures because

The core purpose of a great lecturer is not primarily to transmit information. To this end, other techniques, such as assigning a reading in a textbook or distributing an electronic copy of the notes, can be equally effective. The real purpose of a lecture is to show the mind and heart of the lecturer at work, and to engage the minds and hearts of learners….

A great lecturer tells a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It poses problems that it proceeds to address, and it keeps learners in suspense, waiting to see how they can be worked out. Great lecturers often share responsibility for solving these problems with learners, working with them in real time to find a solution. Learners are not merely sitting and passively listening. Far from it, they are challenged and engaged, actively thinking and imagining right along with the lecturer as both struggle toward new insights.

I agree with Gunderman when he argues that not every teacher should lecture as not every teacher is a talented lecturer, and not even the most talented lecturer should lecture to the exclusion of all else, but the lecture is still a sound pedagogical tool with value in the high school classroom and beyond.

My own experience both as a student and a team teacher has taught me the value of the lecture. I still remember the excellent lectures I attended while an English major at UVA especially those of  Steven Cushman, Deborah McDowell, and Joseph Kett. Their lessons still inform my teaching today. I certainly learned more than 5% and have retained it for a decade and a half. I have also been privileged to team teach with some phenomenal and dynamic lecturers. In American Studies we spend sometime in each unit lecturing. While this isn’t my strong suit at all, I tend to be a better discussion leader and facilitator, we have found great utility in the lectures given by our most talented lecturer. Our lectures are successful because we don’t expect students to get the details and facts from the lecture. Instead our lectures help our students see the fuller picture, understand and be able to identify the story our curriculum is teaching. That isn’t to say that we are the only ones involved in creating a coherent story, and in fact our students spend a great deal of time learning how to craft their own arguments and narratives. Yet, through our lectures we are able to model the kind of factually based, interesting, well organized and executed stories we want our students to be able to recreate and retell in their pursuit of becoming educated scholars of American history and culture.

Although it isn’t the dominant form of instruction of our course,  at least in our classroom, and I hope in the classrooms of other teachers who are effective,  gifted, lecturers, the lecture is alive and well. ; and that is to the benefit our our students because they get to see what intellectual passion, command, and curiosity look like in action.  We get to model for them a skill that we hope they will leave our classroom with: the ability to sustain and tell a story that captivates, engages, informs and provokes an audience. That is definitely a skill not just for the 21st century, but for the ages.

For Further Reading:
In Defense of Lectures

Twenty Terrible Reasons For Lecturing (I obviously disagree with a few of these, but it is a well researched and written study presenting the opposite perspective.

So it has been quite a while since my last post. Unforeseen circumstances lead to my taking on an additional class, and the time to blog just got eaten up. There has been, however, a lot to blog about.

I attended my first edcamp and for those of you who haven’t had the experience, you really should consider it.  If you are looking for a personalized experience that empowers teachers and exposes you to some of the most dynamic educators in your area, edcamp is the professional development for you.

Our day began in the dining hall of the incredibly beautiful St. Christopher’s School in Richmond. We had plenty of time to network with teachers from other schools, both private and public, and we got started by pairing up and responding to prompts from The Daily Create which we then emailed to the blog on the Edcamprva website . Our prompt asked us to choose an image of a famous figure, fictional or otherwise, and then to find a quote from a related figure. Here is our contribution. This was a great exercise and a tool that I was not familiar with so I immediately was excited about what the day would bring.

The whole point of edcamp is that it is an unconference, meaning that you have not set plan and you do not know exactly what sessions will be offered. So after a lengthy period of networking and creating, we engaged in the creation of the board and posted sessions we either were interested in leading or attending. Here is a screen shot of the board we created:

I started in a session on ESL. After seeing that it was mostly public school teachers whose students had little in common with my own, I used the rule of “two feet” and moved on to “Collaborating with Colleagues”. I then ended up helping lead a session on blogging despite the fact that I am rather inexperienced and attending a session on Ipads and another one called “Things that Suck” which was far more positive than the title suggests.

In the “Ipaded” session, I heard about Nearpod a tool that allows teachers to create interactive presentations that students download onto their computer or other devices. You upload a pdf of a ppt or keynote presentation and then add quizzes, polls, or draw its and a report is generated with all of the students answers, scores, and drawings.  I tried my first presentation last week and the kids loved it. This was definitely a great take away from this conference.

While I definitely enjoyed meeting all of the wonderful people in the blogging session, I was hoping to be more of a listener than a leader. Nevertheless, it was great to talk to fellow educators interested in blogging both for their own development and with their students.

One misconception I had about edcamp was that it was all about technology. The other two sessions I attended had more to do with school culture than tech, and they were both great. In the first session, we discussed how we currently collaborate with colleagues and exchanged best practices and challenges. In the other session, “things that suck,” a title that I have to say threw me off initially, the facilitator threw out controversial issues and you were asked to move to a side to physically cast your vote as for or against. Some of the topic that came up included school uniforms and zero tolerance policies. We then moved to our side and were asked to state our position. We were only allowed 5 minutes per topic, so just when things got heated we moved on. This was a terrific exercise and one I could definitely see using in my classroom or in faculty meetings.

By far my biggest take away though was that the model of Edcamp is one that could and should be duplicated both at schools and in communities to provide teachers with personalized professional development. The ability to use your voice and ask for the kind of collaboration and information that you want and share your passions is essential to professional development in the 21st century, and I think that this model is exactly what we need. This model brings together public and private school teachers, techies and newbies, and administrators to share in a profoundly empowering and enlightening educational experience.  I am very interested helping to facilitate an edcamp in Charlottesville and hope that we will begin by exploring this format during one of professional development days in the coming year. Overall, Edcamprva was terrific and I was very grateful to Carey  Pohanka  and Suzanne Panter for all their incredible work organizing it.

For those interested the what other edcamps have done please visit:

Edcamp Chicago Google Doc

An Edcamp Waller Blogpost by attendee Todd Nesloney

Edcamp D.C.