You cannot ignore this. You cannot ignore us. The revolution has begun and we have tasted the power.
In contrast to the consumer generations before us, my generation is growing up a generation of producers. We are the YouTube/LiveJournal/Facebook generation. Mass media which has long been a one-to-many institution, allowing only the big and wealthy to transmit their messages, is turning into the many-to-many world of the internet and cheep consumer devices.
Whether it is posting videos taken on cell phones to youtube or photos taken on pocket-sized cameras to facebook. our generation expects to be able to broadcast their messages. We expect to be able to create and to share.
And, it is this expectation that makes our generation different. We are no longer content to be consumers of information. That is, we are no longer content to consume an education. To connect with today’s students, you must not only teach them, but encourage them to teach back.
It requires a flat classroom, one where students are first class citizens and are engaged in the activity of learning, not simply an audience.
Project-based learning, one-to-one programs, insert education buzzword of the month here, aren’t enough. The change has to be deeper.
Failure to innovate around this new structure will cause education to take an increasingly marginalized role in the lives of our students.
But, I don’t need to explain this to you, you already know it. So, what’s the wait?
Godspeed.
We are not ready to replace what is missing with robots. There’s going to be a point that will feel like when you’re expecting another step but all you find is air... and I’m predicting that it’s going to revolutionize the cushioned way of life that a lot of people are living.
By the way, does anybody see a sort of global pattern? Where education prevails, development falters. Europe and, more recently, America are perfect examples of this. On the other hand you’ve got places of abject poverty and blossoming populations. China, India. I don’t know if its because they’ve got a further way to go to reach international standards, or if it is their immense workforce and drive to move forwards.
Sort of like the Olympics - inevitably, the nation with the largest population is bound to trump the others (eventually)
Also wondering what your thoughts might be for educators who sense the changes that are afoot, but might lack the guidance and community needed to support the innovations you describe?
I’ve often thought that if someone is disciplined enough they could actually teach themselves virtually any trade or subject just by gathering quality content online. Engaging and working with others to learn can especially solidify this process. Though you learn in college, I feel almost any Tom, Dick or Harry can get a degree and graduate with virtually no knowledge or talent. However in today’s society it is necessary to have that stamp of credibility and “Your Deemed Competent by Society Sticker” aka a diploma (Which I recently have obtained)
Anyways...on the note of students helping students check out http://GroupTable.com it’s a site I co-founded to help fellow students form online study groups, manage group projects and other groups. It’s free and we’ve gotten a great response from people so far.
Given that, my question to Anthony is Where’s the Beef? .
Show me a Student 2.0.
George Hotz is one, he hacked the iPhone as a summer project. It got him all the “certification” he could have hoped for from a university degree. Where are the others?
If Student 2.0 is needing some help getting started, beyond twittering and naval gazing in a blog, then let me suggest some ideas:
The UN has a mechanism for people to ask for or become volunteers on projects. Joan Oviawe used it to start the Grace Foundation.
MIT’s ThinkCycle Project (currently offline Oct 8/08) is described here in the context of how the idea might play out in a land grant university.
Or you can find your own problem and build a community around it as Margo Tamez demonstrates in her work on the US-Mexican border.
Want help thinking this through? Ask. We’d like to see more Students 2.0.
I also appreciated your comment against passive acceptance of information from the media, though I will say that the generation before yours is who began the pushback and currently enable it.
I am interested in your description of teaching back and wonder if you could comment more on how you think that could happen.
When I look at the median-aged/experienced teacher, those of us with about 15 years or so under our belts, I can honestly say that most of my colleagues in that category are working hard on a daily basis to find ways to teach better, doing anything to make learning happen. We care, and that is more important than anything else in my book.
In Ecclesiastes, a book from somewhere in the middle of the Bible, written by King Solomon, he write that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Solomon did not use a pencil to write those words. He may not have even written them by his own hand, but by dictation to a scribe. In any case, Solomon was putting out his thoughts, and I can read them today, even online! The medium is not as important as the act of movement toward learning itself, which requires instruction and learning. Hop from scribes to the innovative, world-changing printing press, to radio, to film, to television and so on, I will give sworn testimony, to the best of my estimation, that innovation does occur in regard to the medium and the content. The process, though, remains relatively unchanged. I can guarantee that I could find a way to bore my students with loads of web 2.0, and that even the best technologically sound teaching practices will leave some students still feeling lost.
Perhaps the saying, “Publish or Perish” from which you may have derived your post title is moving toward obsolete, but I’m old enough to rethink the “Innovate or Die” mentality. It really takes a village. I would want to live in one that has wireless access, of course, but still....
If you take as much responsibility for your learning as you require of your teachers, you will be a success in anything you aspire to. It takes a lot of tries over a lot of time to gain mastery of anything. I look forward to seeing you in about 10 years! I think your prospects are looking good.