Great Video Production by Students Misses the Point

A recent post to the ISED list-serv by Matt Frattali who attended the Building Learning Communities 2006 conference sponsored by Alan November recommended that: "This video should be seen by every student and educator in the world." The video is indeed a great example of communicating ideas through the medium of digital video, and the students involved did a great job in using this medium; however, as I watched the video critique the pedagogy of teaching by lecture I got the sense that the students were missing the point. The students repeatedly suggest that lecture is a bad way to learn and instead they should be allowed to make movies or use technology in other creative ways to express themselves. <no argument there!> But what seems to be missing is an understanding that building thinking skills is hard work that involves dialog and grappling with ideas. The socratic method and lecture are a big part of this process. I have no idea how boring the lectures were that these students had to endure at their colleges, but I don't think the answer is necessarily to abandon the expertise of professors for the creativity of the media lab. No doubt the answer lies someplace in the middle, but expressing ideas and advancing arguments with writing is a skill that deserves these students' attention.