[...]Talking with Sal Khan about YouTube tutoring as guerilla public service « Jon Udell[...]…

Wow, what a wonderful thing when school administrators manage to stifle learning with their overzealous attempts to disallow anything that could be used unproductively.

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=5633

That package — the in-class video, the follow-on self-debriefing, and the ensuing commentary and discussion — is extraordinary.

The progression of charts, and the rationale for leading students through it in the way that he does, is brilliant.

Is it necessarily interactive? Perhaps. That is the essence of the Socratic method. In which case, what Dan does can’t scale out the way what Sal does can.

But I don’t think we’ve seen the whole story yet. Someone may emerge with a talent for producing compelling and viral videos that kids want to watch and pass around, and that evoke in the viewer the feeling of engagement that was evoked in that classroom.

> “But [Sal] does suggest, and I violently agree, that teachers can and should become curators of online assets like the ones Sal is creating…”

There are some teachers who blog about the care they put in to careful curation of media assets for their class lessons. Check out the “Most influential blog post” section of http://edublogawards.com/2009/ , where some of them appear.
One I read religiously is math teacher Dan Meyer (http://blog.mrmeyer.com). Meyer is against needless post-production that adds nothing (spinning 3D bar charts, etc). However, one difference between him and Sal is that Sal’s students are probably self-motivated or have highly-involved parents. Meyer’s students are typical American students who have turned off to math years ago. He also has only one hour a day with them, and in that hour he has to advance all of those students toward meeting many state curriculum requirements. If he has only one hour this year to devote to a certain sub-topic, he wants to grab their interest and get them invested before the hour starts to fall apart.
So while he doesn’t add needless glitz, Meyer does put in tremendous amounts of time selecting and editing his in-class media, including the stuff he shoots and post-produces himself. He’s got a popular series now called “WWYDWT?”, or What Would You Do With This? Take an interesting photo, or TV clip. Find an *interesting* question about it, and Socratically guide the students toward discovery. It’s much more engaging than textbook word problems, which lay out the logic of the problem and only ask you to plug in numbers. The key is finding interesting material, and presenting only what is really necessary to get the discussion going.
Could Meyer’s lesson be just as good if he doodled a sketch on the projector, compared to the carefully picked, professional-looking photo? Logically, yes, but it is not as “real” to his teenage students, and not as engaging. Making math real to them is a big part of his challenge.