Michael Wesch is a forward thinking educator from Kansas State University, pushing the limits of what can be done in the classroom using the vast resources and knowledge of the internet that have been created mostly by individuals. The past decade has seen an incredible change in the way that people interact with the world, plugging into massive networks of information like Wikipedia, that are completely crowd-sourced. In the past the academics and institutions held complete control over the creation and spread of knowledge. But now people are coming to realize that information must be freed, and that we can all contribute to the greater knowledge-base of the world. Unfortunately our education system is still mired in the past, relying on methods and goals from a half-century ago. Students are taught through a very small lens of material that has been sanitized and boiled down to a few thousand facts that must be memorized in order to move on to the next topic. Of course this is not how the world works in the age of the internet, and students are not being prepared to live and work productively or efficiently in that world.
Students today are growing up ON the internet. It's part of their DNA. If we want to reach them we have to meet them there. This is how they will thrive. Teachers and the education system must figure out how to utilize these powerful new resources to ensure that our future citizens understand how to use them to solve real problems and to collaborate with others. They are constantly in touch with their network of friends, let's teach them how to plug into the massive network of knowledge that is growing exponentially every year.
Students today are growing up ON the internet. It's part of their DNA. If we want to reach them we have to meet them there. This is how they will thrive. Teachers and the education system must figure out how to utilize these powerful new resources to ensure that our future citizens understand how to use them to solve real problems and to collaborate with others. They are constantly in touch with their network of friends, let's teach them how to plug into the massive network of knowledge that is growing exponentially every year.