Encourage students to form study groups.

Test student understanding using clickers or classroom response systems or other formative assessment activities in class.

Offer supplemental instruction, tutoring.

Give students a test preparation checklist or self-assessment. Here's one example: http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder...

You can change the exam itself to help ensure that even if students do poorly, they'll better understand why they did poorly and not fall further and further behind on future exams. For example by using exam wrappers or two stage exams: https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/ex... https://blogs.ubc.ca/eoassei/two-stage-exams/

There are resources on using their instrument here: https://sites.google.com/site/uwbioedresgroup/res...

along with links to other teaching resources: https://sites.google.com/site/uwbioedresgroup/tea...

Direct Instruction was designed for teaching young kids. According to the Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences (IES), it doesn't work: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/interventionreport.asp...
According to several meta-analyses, including the one described below, active learning techniques are superior: http://news.sciencemag.org/education/2014/05/lect...

In online courses, there is also evidence that direct instruction techniques (such as watching videos) aren't that effective (for learning). Most people stop watching videos after the first few minutes, for example. And even when they do watch a video and like it, they may have learned nothing. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/201... http://pgbovine.net/edX-video-production-research... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8

That said, there is plenty of evidence that students like watching videos and screencasts and being lectured to. But I think we should also consider what they are learning, and not just short term rote learning like most researchers study, but conceptual learning, long-term learning, transfer, spatial learning, metacognitive skills, etc. And encouraging more participatory activities and using more participatory technologies can help with that - things like collaborative commenting on something using voicethread or google docs, interacting with a simulation or visual model of a complex system, creating and discussing their own videos, etc.

It's fashionable to say you do active learning, inquiry learning, and the like, but few actually apply it in their classroom.

See "What We Say Is Not What We Do: Effective Evaluation of Faculty Professional Development Programs Do” https://www.msu.edu/~ebertmay/WebsiteImages/Publi...

"Following PD [professional development], 89% of the respondents stated that they made changes in their courses that included active, learner-centered instruction. In contrast, observational data showed that participation in PD did not result in learner-centered teaching. The majority of faculty (75%) used lecture-based, teacher-centered pedagogy, showing a clear disconnect between faculty’s perceptions of their teaching and their actual practices."

We need to move beyond "feel good" faculty development and subjective evaluations and ratings.

This article shows how real classroom observations can help measure and improve actual teaching practices:

"Dissecting the Classroom" http://chronicle.com/article/Dissecting-the-Class...

There is actual research on teaching and learning and even lecturing (contexts where it is more or less effective for learning).
Check out books such as How People Learn or How Learning Works.

there are other advantages of using a rich text / html editor for programming, too, like different representations for different types (numbers, string, etc.), or embedding images and hyperlinks. You can also popup or embed specialized editors for different types (like a color picker). But one disadvantage from my perspective is accessibility. Editing by visually impaired users, or editing from a command line, etc. Most rich text editing is not availlable or doesn't work well on mobile/tablet platforms, either (contenteditable doesn't work). So it is nice to try to work out a plain text version, too like you are doing.

It's very easy to criticize - too easy. You are against technology in schools, although you never define the term and conflate computer technology and technology in general many times.

If you are against technology in schools, what are you for? The only implied alternatives are, like Larry Cuban, turn back the clock in schools to 1980 before computers, or perhaps you are more like Neil Postman and want to turn back the clock to the 17th century before textbooks.

You don't seem to object to reading and writing - that involves technology. You are for teachers lecturing in a classroom - a classroom is a designed technology. You are against "technology in schools", even though schools, too, are designed technologies. As I've even argued, teaching itself is a technology: http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/teachin...

I won't try to address the rest, but one thing I'd respond to: "Technology might amplify the impact of good teachers, but it won’t fix bad teaching."

Again, what is the alternative. The implied alternative is basically the proposals coming from Rhee and others - we just get rid of the bad teachers and everything will be fixed. Except how to identify bad teachers? No one knows. And is there any evidence for this strategy? No.

Teachers are human. Teaching is a human activity - and just saying we'll simply throw out the 'bad ones' sounds too much like you are treating them like, technology.