The implications of technology and instruction.

In the three YouTube videos we watched on schools killing creativity, a student’s vision of today, and the web 2.0 there was an underlying common theme among them all. All three videos alluded to the fact that our society holistically has grown yet our methods of learning have remained stagnant. Society is moving at such a rapid pace with technological marvel and yet the environment designed to foster and improve our learning ability has been given little attention.

In his speech, Sir Robinson focused on creativity and embracing it. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” This is what our educational system lacks in instructing our youth. Rather than embracing what makes us different we too often try and conform to a singular idea of what is right. Sir Robinson points to how growing up many instructional systems try and guide students away from creative things and more towards areas that are viewed as positives to make someone successful later in life. Technology is growing at an astounding pace and yet the inclusion of computers and this technology is lagging in most school classrooms. We have the potential to embrace and utilize these new technologies while also fostering our creative capacities.

Michael Wesch illustrated his findings in the life of a student’s day. His point being that we are educating students in a modern world using outdated means of instruction. Our colleges are emphasizing the importance of having an education yet their student’s views are finding little value in what they receive. Our society’s institutions focus our instructional methods on reading textbooks and writing papers. Yet in his research, Mr. Wesch found students often times were more interested in online activities such as social networks, web pages, and blogs. All areas designed to share and teach yet our educational system continues to abide by long standing and often outdated principles. We are being educated utilizing chalk boards and projectors. Technology is going to be vital in our futures in business and our personal lives. It makes sense to shift the focus to a digital form of instruction. Many universities are making this switch slowly in their transitions to online mediums of instruction as well as shifting. Schools are also beginning to find potential in digitizing catalogs of printed media such as newspapers and magazines. The benefit is space savings for the educational institutions while allowing students an easier way to access this knowledge through a computer.

Michael Wesch went on to illustrate the added benefits of web 2.0 technologies. Pointing attention to the fact that in a digital world connected through web 2.0, many of the original designs for the web were re-envisioned into a much grander scale. That through the use of web 2.0 technologies, no longer was text to be simply read. Instead, it could be used to direct and redirect people to topics of similar content. Through the use of links and hyperlinks people can move from one document to another without anything more than a mouse click. Mr. Wesch sees the potential of the web and how we can use it to better instruct and teach ourselves. We already have control of knowledge, it is how we chose to share it with others that matters. With this technology and the advancements, the web is learning how we move around in our digital spaces. With every post or click we make, we are potentially influencing someone else’s thoughts and opinions. As the web becomes a more integral part of our learning, we do have to rethink our approach to instruction in this modern era. It becomes easier to capture another’s ideas and make them our own. New ethical boundaries are going to have to be set as well as new means of “connecting” with others as we become more “plugged in.”

Our culture’s ideas of what is “the norm” is rapidly changing in how we communicate, interact, and teach others. Society is blazing ahead of the times with the corporate world’s backing leaving our educational systems struggling to keep up. The potential is here to right a wrong in trying to make our instructional methods less conforming. Technology holds great promise for today’s youth’s creativity. How we choose to focus our efforts at this crossroad is still to be decided. We have been given the tools. How do we proceed is the question.