Learning Digitally

I am embarrassed at how long it has been between posts; blame it on writer’s block. So instead I caught up on my blog reading. Hurray for Google Reader! Now my head is spinning with discussion, lesson ideas, ideas for PD, and ways to move our classrooms closer to a 21st century model. Where to begin? I think by adding in my own opinion on the video the students of Prof. Michael Wesch at Kansas State produced for their Digital Ethnography class. If you haven’t seen it yet how here it is.

As I read down through my blog list I kept finding this video mentioned:
David Warlick (”amazing”), Vicki Davis, with 20 questions teachers should ask themselves after watching the video, Wesley Fryer who lists it as a “must-see”, and Steve Haragan, who points to the amazing collaboration by the students to collect the data that is the essence of the video.

I did a quick Google search and “A Vision of Students Today” brought back 243,000 hits. The K-State Library (Prof. Wesch’s university) blog lists the number of hits for this video and Prof. Wesch’s other two videos (Information R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us) at 3,730,000.

Agree or not, it seems that Prof. Wesch’s video has hit a nerve and is generating discussions such as:

• Do today’s classrooms meet both the intellectual needs and the learning style of students who are present?
• Does it really matter if the student shows up each day if they are not engaged in the discussion?
• Does it really matter if their homework done if what they are learning will not serve them in the workplace they will enter years later?
• Are his student’s complaining or asking for change so that the dollars and time spent in the lecture hall will bring a return on their investment that will help them become economically independent before their 40?

As far as the last point is concerned I’m voting for the later. Wesch’s student’s aren’t complaining, they are asking for a deeper, richer, more challenging classroom, one that leaves them prepared for a changing workplace.

You may not agree with me, and actually that’s the point of this blog. I’m sure Gary Stager doesn’t and I’m very sure Samuel Freedman disagrees. It’s better to disagree, discuss, and debate the message behind the video, than to ignore it and to continue to teach all classes at all levels of learning the same way we were teaching 20, 10, or even 5 years ago. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the middle; perhaps from agreement and disagreement we can find some middle ground.

Just my thoughts…