A vision of students today?
I enjoyed reading the Chronicle article Cathy posted yesterday, and agree wholeheartedly that there is great value in “spending time socializing students to the type of interaction that the technology can facilitate”. I also wonder how we might better design interactions that align more closely with some of the ways of knowing and doing that the Net Gen brings to the academe. Doesn’t socialization go both ways?
Just what do the students of today look like? In Spring 2007, Dr. Michael Wesch, in collaboration with his 200 students enrolled in an Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course at Kansas State University, created a
short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.
Check out what they have to say in A Vision of Students Today. If Penn students were to complete a similar project, how do you think their findings might differ? How might they be similar?
If you’re interested in learning more about Wesch’s projects, check out his blog. What do you think about his reflections on this project? Post a comment!
… we can stop denying the fact that we are enveloped in a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where the nature and dynamics of knowledge have shifted. We can acknowledge that most of our students have powerful devices on them that give them instant and constant access to this cloud (including almost any answer to almost any multiple choice question you can imagine). We can welcome laptops, cell phones, and iPods into our classrooms, not as distractions, but as powerful learning technologies. We can use them in ways that empower and engage students in real world problems and activities, leveraging the enormous potentials of the digital media environment that now surrounds us. In the process, we allow students to develop much-needed skills in navigating and harnessing this new media environment, including the wisdom to know when to turn it off. When students are engaged in projects that are meaningful and important to them, and that make them feel meaningful and important, they will enthusiastically turn off their cellphones and laptops to grapple with the most difficult texts and take on the most rigorous tasks.
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