Slow teaching?

My focus this week is on balancing the structure of the Logic course (i.e., getting somewhere) with attempting to slow things down a little in order to experiment with facilitating deep learning in students.  The class is fifty minutes, which blows by like a bullet train.  Sometimes, students look like they may have been left on the platform, wondering where everyone is going, as the train whooshes by.  Having missed my share of trains, both literal and figurative, I know the feeling.

Slowing down in class has the benefit of allowing more time for reflection, questions, and applying what we're learning.  We workshop more exercises, look at more examples, and explore a tangent or two in discussion.  Ideally, students will gain deeper knowledge--ideas they are more likely to use because they stay with them over time.  As much as I enjoy Logic for its own sake, I really hope students learn to use it throughout their whole lives, which requires a deep connection with the material.  And maybe slow pedagogy, like food, is more likely to be organic, local, healthy, and delicious.

Here's a book (which I haven't found time to read) on all things slow, including education:  In Praise of Slowness.  You should read it and tell me about it.  Along the same lines, this piece just appeared in the New York Times on whether students can have too much tech (does that qualify as fast?).

Today, we spent most of our time looking at video examples of cognitive vs. emotive meaning (well, we spent all of our time looking at the ills of emotive meaning, which is more fun).  It was a good discussion, and maybe students will be more watchful in their consumption of advertising, politics, news, and social media.  We also had more time to process examples by moving a little more slowly.  I don't mean that we did less or lowered expectations.  Rather, I was asking for greater focus, depth, and appreciation.  Maybe by stopping a little longer to see the local sights (sites?), everyone had time to get on board and enjoy the trip.