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University of Alabama opens Super Teaching
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Learning at the speed of thought
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
By BUDD MCLAUGHLIN
Times Staff Writer budd.mclaughlin@htimes.com
Tony Robbins, UAH chief unveil new teaching tools
If the most recognizable motivator in the country and the president of the University of Alabama in Huntsville have their way, the classroom we are all familiar with will become a thing of the past.
Entrepreneur, author and performance strategist Tony Robbins joined UAH President Dr. David Williams Monday to unveil a system they say will help students more easily concentrate in the classroom, which would, in turn, increase their learning.
"It is designed to assist students at any age," Williams said. "It makes any teacher exciting."
The system - SuperTeaching - uses three screens, a software program, cameras and, of course, teachers to help improve classroom instruction and boost students' academic performance.
"The challenge is kids are being stimulated from so many angles," Robbins said. "They enter a classroom that was designed centuries ago.
"Our format has to change. It has to be multisensory." The SuperTeaching system - dubbed "Learning at the speed of thought" - was conceived by B.J. Dohrmann, president of International Learning Trust.
"Teachers are doing a wonderful job," Robbins said. "It's just that the classroom hasn't basically changed since Rome."
Bobbi Jo Rissman, UAH's director of instructional technology and academic computing, said the system has three fundamentals: immersion, active processing and creative learning. She led a demonstration of the system with the three screens behind her, alternately showing her as the instructor, the audience, lessons, and relaxing scenes of nature. Rissman said there will be a study to determine how well the system works. Local public and private schools are invited to come to the SuperTeaching Living Laboratory in UAH's Louis Salmon Library and deliver classes. "There is no change in the curriculum," she said. "They will simply teach with the tools we'll make available to them. "This is the start of a long experiment and, perhaps, the start of a change in education."
Robbins, who has long supported improving the education process worldwide and who uses a three-screen format in his self-help seminars, said he came to UAH through a 30-year relationship with Dohrmann. He said the SuperTeaching system is a good fit with the school.
"It gives me hope to see an institution focused on space to be focused on space between the ears," he said. "With this, learning can be powerful."