Eliot Massie passed along this video and it has served its purpose to evoke thought. Since this is the CIMIT 'Education' blog I thought it an appropriate place to let things spill out onto the pavement.
Putting my comments from experience in filmmaking aside, the video does raise interesting questions that most young people will… Well, scoff at. However, they may serve as an eye opening appeal to older generations. People in university or less than a decade out know these problems because we lived them everyday for years. We learned to cope and to us they are not problems as much as they are simply the way things are. Now, that does not mean it doesn't need to change. If things changed to be more adaptive and up to date with technology and the "multi-tasking" student education would be more productive for all sides. The fact is that students today do not fit in with the establishment around them. This new way of living, working and learning doesn't connect with the way old gray beards are teaching and the formats schools are providing.
Does it make sense that a student spends hundred of thousands of dollars on an education that only fits a small percentage of who they are, what they want and will hardly apply to their real world job skill? No. But this has always been a problem. This has always been the argument of naïve students who only want to focus on their interests and care not for a well rounded education. However, the argument is not against a well rounded education based in what is proven to work. It is that the current state of education forsakes almost all new improvements. What I'm sensing more and more is that students just out of college are being virtually destroyed by the real world. While the real world continues to keep pace with these new ways of living, education does not. To survive in the large institutions created by universities you have to play by their rules. And these rules are becoming more and more disconnected from the rest of the world and more disconnected from the jobs students want to attain. More disconnected from the lives that all students lead when not in the classroom.
Would a student come to class more often if the classroom fit their life? I don't know.
Students do not need computer labs and wireless Internet as much as they need curriculum that matches those tools. A computer is a tool and at first it was a great help in accomplishing the tasks originally set forth by education. Now, the computers ability and the users ability have far surpassed what they are being challenged with. And thus the computer has become a very expensive typewriter. Why does education not see that the opportunities opened by technology need content. An educator and an institution must be able to provide content, surrounds and serve as a guide for learning that match the tools and styles of a student. Currently, they fail.
A good friend of mine who is working on her PhD is forbidden to use the Internet in researching for her graduate classes. Is this because the Internet is unreliable? Because the professors want students to learn the old ways? Or is it simply because the professors are afraid to learn the new ways? What if instead of a twenty page paper a student turned in a very carefully researched, prepared, written and interesting twenty-hour podcast? With all the same sources, interviews, editing, selection of language and care taken? What if that twenty-hour podcast not only gave you everything you would get in a twenty page paper, but was also more interesting, thought provoking, mobile and useful to this generation?
Lynn brought up a great point of the video creating sides. The presumption that the conflict is The Students v. The Educators. What if we educated one another? Professors teach students the proven and time tested curriculum, formats and rituals while also being taught how they can be flexible and applied to a new technology.
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