The short film airing at that time was called, "Did You Know?" and it was a simple video that featured facts about Earth's population and growth, as well as many facts about the exponential growth of technology. The video can be viewed on the MiNDtv website here:
http://mindtv.org/cgi-bin/display_asset.fcg?member_id=1776;ordinal=1182;file=vodind-new.ttml;style=mind
Naturally, there has been a huge emphasis on technology in education recently, but this video forced me to face how important this really is. The truth is, no matter how memorable certain lessons and experiences were from my own education, some of these approaches are just not practical anymore. By schooling a child, we should not only be preparing them with the academic skills and knowledge that they will need, but also a steady footing in the technology that is available today.
My education was not very long ago and we had a full lab of computers with internet access, databases for research and other tools. But technology has changed significantly since I was in school, and it will change even more in the period between these students' education and their adulthood. There is no way to prepare them for the technology of tomorrow other than increasing their fluency with the technology of today.
The original video has been updated several times to reflect new statistical research about the changing world of technology. The updates are aptly titled 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0. They are all embedded below.
I heard Carl Fisch, the person credited with the original "Did you know" video speak several years ago (here's his blog: http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/). Since then I've heard people question some of the statements in the video (and I've never seen a list of sources of these statistics), but the point the a lot of things have changed in a relatively short time in hard to argue with.
ReplyDeleteThe world is different than it was 25, 10, even a few years ago. Technology has brought about changes in the way people interact with each other, in both good and bad ways. I hear a lot of people complain about that, but I don't see much sense in wishing students grew up in a different age. It's more important to accept the world we live in, appreciate the amazing opportunities it provides us, and deal as best we can with the challenges the modern world presents us.
You may also be interested in Ian Jukes. He is best known for his description of "digital kids", talking about how the world our students are growing up in has shaped the way they learn (among other things). He writes blog post and has a lot of useful things on the "links" part of his web page: http://www.committedsardine.com/