Steve Kinney

I’ve been thinking about the marketing / education metaphor that I’ve been playing around with lately. It has a fundamental flaw. Marketers aim to get their message through to a percentage of their percentage audience. If 30% of the people who see your ad buy your product you are in fantastic shape. That piece of the metaphor does not translate over to education. If only 30% of your students get your message, you need to seriously rethink your lesson.

But I don’t think that the metaphor falls apart. First, there are some fundamental differences between education and marketing that should not be ignored for the sake of a metaphor. As a teacher, you’re not abandoning your craft and emulating the marketer. You are not sending out newsletters to your students and hoping that they read your blog or participate on your social networking site. What I’m advocating is that we take a look at some of the tools that are being used to capture our students attention and fight fire with fire.

The second aspect to consider is that old way of teaching certainly wasn’t getting the method across or this discussion would not be taking place in the first place. We need to take the same thinking that we applied when we decided that it might be more effective dolly our instruction in 5-10 minute, digestible mini-lessons than in hour-long lectures and push a little deeper.

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