Using videos in the classroom

When Lippi mentioned using videos to teach concepts and students learning on their own at home, I remembered The Khan Academy's website:

www.khanacademy.org

Their philosophy is that students can use the videos to learn at their own pace and then spend classroom time in one-on-one interaction with the teacher (i.e. what we would give now as homework questions are now done in class).

I understand people's fear of a) students not having the access to technology to view the videos, and b) students not being motivated (or not having the time, in many cases) to watch these videos on their own. The more I think about it though, it seems like if we are advocating for more inquiry-based tasks and that students can learn the mathematics by working on the activities, it would be better to spend what class time we have to work on group-worthy tasks and having that one-on-one time with students, helping them with questions individually...even if they didn't all have a chance to view the videos the night before, working through the class activities can often result in the students learning the material anyway.