Teacherless Classrooms: Can We?

"Today the dream has returned, [we have] systems through which chunks of teaching can be 'scaled up' and beamed to hundreds of thousands worldwide.” in Campus Technology magazine, Trant Batson calls this "the FedEx or UPS view of learning; knowledge disconnected from the knower; knowledge with no social or cultural context; knowledge ripped from the conversation, its conversational threads torn and dangling; knowledge as a commodity. How far adrift have we gone that the idea of beaming 'chunks of teaching' to hundreds of thousands worldwide could be called a 'dream? I thought we tried that with television, didn’t we?" Then he makes this twist: A large lecture hall is not the answer, nor is sending lectures out through iTunes, or other media channels. Knowledge is not a commodity. And learning is not performance. Learning is conversation. So, then, the question becomes: How do we extend the conversation to more people and how can that conversation be authentic and lead to active and experiential learning?"