Two speakers at TEDxPatagonia touched on this crucial question (this is my 3rd and last post on this fabulous event).

While working as an analyst at a hedge fund in New York, Salman Khan started making videos to tutor his cousins in math.  They basically went viral on YouTube, and his cousins admitted that they preferred the videos over in-person tutoring.  He realized that he was creating something of social value (apparently not common on the hedge fund scene).

He spoke about how some teachers had started assigning students to watch his videos as homework (with the option to pause and rewind as many times as needed) and then used class time to help students to work through the problems.

Salman Khan said that student-teacher ratio shouldn’t be the most important metric in educational policy. What matters more is the ratio of student time to valuable human interaction.  And he found that, paradoxically, YouTube videos could be a good way to achieve this.  He also said that his videos had shown to be a good tool for adult learners who wanted to learn or review certain topics.  Well, I made it through a lot of years of formal education without getting a good handle on geometry. Hmmmm….

After this Ian Gilbert spoke, in person (and in English!)  Here are my hand-scribbled notes from the beginning of his talk:

Ian emphasized that the teacher’s job isn’t to teach.  It’s that the students learn. This accountability is the most important issue in education.

But what does accountability mean in this day and age?  “Why do I need a teacher when I’ve got Google?” he asked us all.

I believe that the most important skill is to be able to think critically about all the information surrounding us, and make good decisions about what to do with it.

What do you think is the most important role for a teacher in the age of Google?