In a move they will surely regret, The Austin Dionysium has invited me to be on their team. I wasted no time wielding my newfound power like a colossus and strong-arming Dr. $hiraz into being a presenter. She was blown away by the sheer number of actual, interested questions both during the Q & A and after the show. “Best presentation ever!” she exclaimed happily afterward.
Imagine your classroom looked like this... (Note: not our audience, but *an* Drafthouse audience, captured at {link:http://www.slackerwood.com/alamo_blogathon.html}Slackerwoood{/link}
I know the feeling; when I presented it was a revelation to have a totally voluntary audience. No “will this be on the test?” and that means you can just pick the best stories and let the audience remember them as oral history.
That’s edutainment.
It’s what everyone thinks education should be: a free exchange of interesting ideas. Highly unlikely in a classroom, though, given the obsession with quantitative metrics and legions of students who feel they are hostages of the institution.
As the edutainer, you don’t have to deal with that. The audience willingly puts their butts in the seats, and you aim only to “put a dent in [their] universe” for a little while. (No, even I am not immune from a gratuitous Steve Jobs quote this week). You take no responsibility f0r whether they study more after the show. It’s awesome.
The edutained have no expectation of being rewarded with a grade, or a badge, or whatever external trinket of motivation we’re supposed to be using right now, unless you count going to the bar afterward to drink and chat more about the topic at hand — granted, this pedagogy is not available to K-12.
There’s only one “official” class experience that has compared, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. AKA classes for oldsters – and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, I loved my Osher students. They wanted to be there. There was no grade-grubbing — hell, no grading — because there were no grades. They just showed up, and I got to tell them fun stuff. They’d even contribute their own info, from the octogenarian arguing with me about my interpretation of the rom-com (“I met my wife an knew instantly I was going to marry her, and we’ve been married for sixty-odd years!”) to the guy showing me a picture of himself and Sophie Tucker. It made my “real” classes seem downright funereal.
A pic of my Osher students enjoying class.
I find it highly amusing that my Facebook page is labeled “Entertainer”, while the Dionysium’s is under “Education.” I think we’re both right, but when forced to choose I had no problem targeting my own allegiances. Still, I’m really hoping Facebook will get on board with this thing soon.
Great moments in edutainment -- can you name that game?
oregon trail!
Right on! I’d give you a prize, but I really have nothing to offer. Still I saw this graphic and spazzed out happily for about five minutes, so I thought I’d share the experience.
Without Oregon Trail, I would never have learned…
1. what scurvy or dysentery is, and that you can die from them.
2. not to set off on an incredibly long road trip without some form of antibiotic.
3. that it is impossible to fit 2,000 pounds of freshly-killed meat into a wagon.
Most of these are useful facts that I have occasion to use during my day-to-day life. Honestly, I probably learned more from Oregon Trail than I did from my high school algebra class.
I learned something about scurvy at the last Dionysium, namely that you needed to drink rum drinks to keep it at bay. And I just had a MAJOR flashback when you wrote that 2000 pounds thing, waaaah!
Good old Oregon Trail. Congrats on your Edutaining! I had to chime in that one of the best teaching experiences was with senior citizens as well, at the Dickens Universe in Santa Cruz. They read the material. They actually cared. My mind was blown!
I know, right? It’s such a nice change…but then again, what does that say about the everyday reality of teaching?!
We always liked Amazon Trail better than Oregon Trail. Which I actually think might be when “Amazon” meant “the rainforest” and not “online shopping.” *feels old*
And honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of your students liked your classes but were just too stressed about grades and jobs to be able to enjoy them properly. I mean, obviously I didn’t go to Vanderbilt, but I feel like the demographics were probably fairly similar…
That *is* old, welcome to the club
I think I did a good job entertaining the students — even the ones who didn’t want to be there. But that factor (the “I don’t want to be here at all”) is such a huge barrier, once you’ve gotten them to pay attention there’s no energy left to actually get to anything deeper. Because, yep, they were waaaaay overscheduled and stressed out.
Sounds like you had a great time! I’ve always found that if I enjoyed the class I remembered much more of it. But I also do think that the best profs are the ones that have an element of entertainment in their lectures.
I agree, you can actually remember a lot of entertaining info…on the one hand, people do seem to understand that there’s an entertainment element to teaching, but on the other they seem very suspicious if it’s too fun. Very odd.
There are some topics that are more applicable to edutainment than others. Or at least I haven’t figured out how to make them edutainmentative – should I copyright that word?
But for the last week – talking about gender in organizations – its been terrific. Lots of stuff – videos, real life personal stories, exercises – connecting all this stuff to the various ways gender plays out at work. It was great!
Sometimes I think I have to use “jazz hands” and it feels forced. Not the last couple of classes. They have been smooth like silk I can just tell that people are learning. Love these kinds of days.
It’s true, edutainment doesn’t work for everything, and can be wearisome when the students come to expect that class is always going to be a fun circus ride. But when it works, it’s great.
Yes we are in the age of edutainment. Yes students are overworked and overstressed. So, provided it doesn’t feel contrived, I wholeheartedly embrace making learning entertaining. Really it’s about making your subject matter relevant to your students lives. That’s entertainment enough. And if you can crack a few jokes along the way all the better. But ya gotta relax your expectations of student performance as it is traditionally gauged, e.g.through tests and busywork homework. Shit, I hate to paint a picture of learning and have fun as mutually exclusive because they’re not. But I have this popular culture class, and we have so much fun engaging one another in colorful and at times cerebral conversations, yet I just can’t find a way to translate that experience into a multiple choice test. And with sixty of them, there’s no way I’m giving essay exams. perhaps there’s a more advanced stage of edutainment that I have yet to attain, but for me the form of mass produced state school higher Ed seems to mitigate against the possibility of true edutainment. But that won’t stop me from keepin on tryin’
I agree, the main problem with edutainment in an institutional setting is the necessity (?) of tests; while I think the students can get something genuine (excitement, say) I don’t think they can actually learn in depth unless they do their own research. In general, though, I think genuine dialogue and critical thinking won’t ever translate into multiple-guess tests – but, on the other hand, as I’ve mentioned before, if you don’t want me to minimize my own effort, you’d damned well better be paying me what I’m worth and not asking me to do a whole nother job.