Education in the Digital Age: MIE and the Flipped Classroom
Minimally invasive education or MIE is going to be the new face of education in a world of technology. MIE enables and allows students to work independently to better themselves for the classroom; it should be noted that it’s not meant to replace it.
*You can read about my additional opinions (and I have many) on American public education in my article, Relearning to Reteach. *
As AI comes to the forefront of every industry as a new and improved technology, we’re asking ourselves a lot of questions about who’s going to stay, and who’s going to go. Now I’m a firm believer that humans are capable of things that machines will never grasp; however, today I want to speak about the advantages of technology in education.
I’m far from being against technology in the classroom. I think throwing out phones and projectors and computers is a mistake and even a disservice to modern day students in this digital age. These technologies aren’t going anywhere and we need to get on top of the literacy needs of students. As someone who grew up hearing commercials say, “Ask your parents’ permission before going online,” to now being the one helping my mother use Instagram, I’ve seen with my own eyes how fast technology changes! And how fast kids themselves adapt along with it.
I’d like to first point to the work of Sugata Mitra and “the hole in the wall.” This was an experiment in psychology and education conducted across India in the early 2000s where computers were placed in literal holes in walls near schools in both the most urban slums and the most remote villages. The point was to prove that children could teach themselves a new technology without any outside influence — many of them having never seen such a machine; it would go on to prove much more. Children as young as four or five years old were learning everything from basic computer skills to microbiology…oh yeah, and they were doing it all in a language many of them didn’t speak!
Get Brielle Jobe’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Left to their own devices (literally), children in Mitra’s experiments crowded around kiosks in rain or blistering shine to play games, learn new topics, and navigate the internet. The craziest part? They learned everything independent of instructions or instructors. They learned to use the computer purely through intuition, trial and error, and collaboration.
Now the question is, how do we weave this educational culture into the modern day classroom?
The answer is developing a classroom environment that best utilizes Minimally Invasive Education (MIE): the flipped classroom.
The flipped classroom is one where the “lecture” happens at home with the synthesis being the focus of the instructional period. Currently, the popular classroom model goes something like this: the teacher teaches and walks students through concepts, the students do in-class assignments that provide examples with the teacher still there to help, then take-home assignments are meant as extra practice to really solidify the concept for the student. In a flipped classroom, the students come already prepared to discuss a topic; they’ve read the chapter or watched the video at home in order to think about it for themselves first, before being able to ask a teacher. This forces an initial synthesis on the part of the students. They follow up in class and through discussion with their peers and supervision of an instructor, they continue nurturing their initial thoughts and reactions.
This challenges one of the fundamental skills that has been lost in recent iterations of public school curriculums: original thought. So much of today is teaching a student the things he needs to memorize for the test he’ll take tomorrow and forget next week. Rote memorization and one off regurgitation. But by giving the students access to the material ahead of any instruction, allows them to look at the subject matter with their own, fresh eyes and develop a perspective and opinion all their own.
Having students take their first look at home also frees up classroom time for things that can’t be done independently, like asking questions and group discussions. Now teachers won’t have to waste time reading texts or watching videos — they can actually teach. Teachers aren’t babysitters, they’re professionals in education acquisition in one or more fields of expertise. Students can read chapters and watch documentaries on their own. In a flipped classroom, students must practice discipline and responsibility, for if they haven’t looked at the material before class, the content in the classroom will make no sense. This is often seen as the major drawback of the flipped classroom and an argument against MIE: kids won’t do anything on their own without an adult hounding them over their shoulder.
But I believe that children are curious; they want to learn. Mitra’s experiments proved this! It’s the job of the teacher not to pass students through exams but to teach them new material in an exciting and engaging way. In this age of encyclopedias at their fingertips, students should be able to appropriately and effectively use technology to their advantage; preparing and priming themselves for deep, meaningful discussions in the classroom.
