Musings 1

Culture? How do you explain culture? Hoping for some help, I went to Google on Monday night and began searching for videos on culture. The old adage “a picture speaks a thousand words” is truer than ever in our digital age… in fact, it might help the students to remember better. I felt a short video might make a great teaching aid — if I could find something appropriate.

Then I stumbled upon this video of Mike Wesch’s talk (lecture?). I’ve been thinking about ICT and education ever since.

Wesch said some very pertinent things:

• Students are bored in the classroom
• They feel whatever they learn in the classroom is irrelevant to their lives
• They just want to do whatever they need to get the grades they need, and get out of there

Why?

• Because the classroom sends the message that information is scarce and hard to find
• That the teacher is the one with the information
• That you must listen and follow and only trust the information from the authoritative source (the teacher)

Whereas…

“While we are quizzing these students on their multiple-choice exams, the reality is that they could just pull out their phones and find any answer that’s on that exam.”

This reminds me of what a friend of mine said: if you are doing a degree in IT, by the time you graduate, whatever you have studied is already obsolete. The thought is echoed in a message from one of Wesch’s students in this other video, saying, “When I graduate I will probably have a job that doesn’t exist today.”

I think the concept of education will change significantly in my lifetime. I don’t know how but I do know that we as educators — and the education system itself — will have to evolve or risk becoming obsolete too. If, with the Internet at his fingertips, a student can instantly learn whatever he needs to learn, why would he need a teacher?