It’s almost 2 years ago that this video was uploaded on YouTube by Michael Wesch but reading the book Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World
inspired me to blog about it. It amazed me that nothing has been changed since I left school same issues different teachers different students. The good thing for this generation is they have the internet so probably with their statement new ways of eduction become viable were internet and technology will become an important factor.
First a comment from Don Tapscott while he was interviewed at authors@google. Here is what education is: I am a prof, I have knowledge you are a student an empty vessel and you don’t. Get ready here it comes. Your goal is take data into short term active memory and through practice and repetition built deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test you. Another issue where Don Tapscott is absolutely right and what I can recall from my school time was the process of lecture in which notes of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the brain of either. When I went to university I started enjoying learning and I became a life time learner. Before University I thought: School is a hobby when you don’t have to work or are not occupied with other obligations such as sports or friends. I was further amazed that what you did at university in a month took you nearly a year at secondary school. So it’s absolute clear why so many students are bored, not challenged, not engaged and eventually dropout.
Watch the video it’s pretty fast so I wrote the full text for down for you.
If these walls could talk
What would they say
If students learn, What they do…..
What are they learning sitting here
On the blackboard: The information is up here
Follow along
Of course walls and desk cannot talk
But students can
200 students made 367 edits to this document
And surveyed themselves
to bring you the following message
My class size is 115
18% of my teachers know my name
I complete 49% of the readings assigned to me
Only 26% relevant to my life
I buy $100 text books I never open
My neighbor paid for class but never comes
I will read eight books this year,
2,300 Web pages, and 1281 Facebook profiles
I will write 42 pages for class this semester and over 500 pages of emails
I will get 7 hours of sleep each night
I spend 1.5 hours watching tv each night
I spend 3.5 hours a day online
I listen to music 2.5 hours a day
I spend ….. 2 hours on my cellphone
Spend 3 hours in class
2 hours eating
I work 2 hours everyday
3 hours studying
Thats a total of 26.5 hours a day
I am a multi-tasker I have to be
I will be 20,000 $ in debt after graduation
I am one of the lucky ones
Over 1 billion people make less than 1 $ a day
This laptop cost more than some people make in a year
When I graduate I probably will have a job that doesn’t exit today
Student shows multiple choice test form: Filling this out won’t get me there or deal with:
Students showing all together various important themes such as WAR, Ethnic conflict
I did not create the problems
But they are my problems
Some has suggested that technology can save us
I Facebook through most of my classes
I am bringing my laptop through class but I am not working on class stuff
The inventor of the system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind (Josiah F. Bumstead The year 1841)
The part of 7,5 hours sleep doesn’t make a lot of sense in the beginning but as the other hours are showed by the students all adds up to 26.5 hours, so the average student is now a 2.5 hour multi-tasker per day. Don Tapscott calls multi-tasking also switching ability according to the study 3 out of 4 Net Gen Students are doing it. I can see this often on the work floor in the office some colleagues can only concentrate on one task while the younger more computer literate are doing more tasks at the same time. At the end of the day everyone has done his work and I don’t believe that there is any difference in quality or efficiency.
I learned from the book to better understand my children about how they need to be engaged to the school program to have fun. Also I learned from the book why I never liked school. So an absolute must read if your children aren’t liking school it enables you to prevent them from dropping out.
