The most interesting quote I found was that “the world and technology have sped up in a lot of ways, but education hasn’t.” I really believe this to be true.
For instance, one of the interviewees says, “kids aren’t as academically capable as they used to be before all these distractions”. In my opinion, we have the potential to be just as academically capable as students were before all of these distractions, but sometimes not in traditional academic settings. Technology isn’t bad, we just haven’t figured out how to use it properly yet. Schools like the ones shown in the program, and like Ursinus College, are at least probing in the right direction. We are not going to get it right the first time. But the answer isn’t to restrict use of technology to train our brains back to pre-information age ways of thinking. I don’t even think that’s possible. We have to use technology every day; we use it in our free time and for work. We have to learn to use it most efficiently, and shift our views on what academic work can be.
I find this quote to be the answer to the statement that we are not as academically capable: “People confuse the best ways of doing things once with the best ways of doing things forever. We don’t know if the book, which was the best way for people to get information for the last several hundred years, is the best way to get that information in the 21st century. When print replaced oral tradition, we lost things, primarily memory.” Just because one way of doing things used to be the best way doesn’t mean that it still is, now that we have all of these resources. So rather than have people write in essay format, have them make a video or write a blog. This has the benefits of making them more interested and engaged. It can also make people want to work harder so as not to appear foolish in front of their peers because of a poorly written blog (such as this one), as the work will not just be seen by their educators, but also their peers and anyone who has access to the internet.
Don’t get me wrong, people not reading books does concern me – When I was in London I had a good 3 hours of travel every day on public transportation, which was the perfect time to read a book. Now I read in little spurts before or after class, or when I’m working at the register in the c-store on campus. I just consider reading a luxury really, but one that actually does measurable good in the individual that does it. But I don’t think technology is directly responsible for the decline in reading because most students never really liked doing assigned reading anyways. This is at least true for me. Even if it is a subject I would be otherwise interested in, the fact that it is assigned and I can’t read it at my own pace frustrates me.
