A Vision of Students Today: A Review

The original video, "A Vision of Students Today" was created by a cultural anthropology class at Kansas State University. I absolutely loved this video. It encompasses the lives of students today and how inadequate the system is in meeting their needs and I personally viewed a lot of my own feelings and characteristics in these students. Main points the students recognized in their educational careers were irrelevance of subject matter to daily lives, lack of teacher contact or creative teaching methods, and difficulties in juggling responsibilities of student life while being financially stable. 

In class we designed our ideal high school following a critical pedagogy approach to education and during our discussion, increased utilization of technology was one of our main goals. I feel like this video is an excellent example of how using technology can be a very effective way of connecting with students and relating the material to their lives. As seen in the video, students today spend a huge amount of time using various technologies such as the internet, ipods, cellphones, etc. The amount of time spent on these activities is substantially greater than time spent reading out of a textbook, which they feel has no connection to their lives. There is emphasis on the future job market, and that they will likely be employed in jobs that have not even been created yet, in which they will use their knowledge of technology more than textbook facts. 

I really connected this video to our class in that our professor does a great job incorporating technology into the course by using email, pdf slideshows, allowing project options such as blogs or podcasts, and incorporating photography into our class assignments. The assignment that this video was created for, encourages critical thinking of the students and relation of course materials to their own experiences. Most students absorb the underlying message of course material better if they view its usefulness in their own lives or are able to connect with it. Technology is all around us and teachers and students would both benefit from an education that embraces the future and prepares them for a world in which these skills are valued and even essential. 

This video was then altered and called "A Vision of K-12 Students Today" to encompass the needs of these students. Again there is a heavy emphasis on the absence of technology in their learning and serves to inspire teachers to incorporate these methods into their teaching and school boards to provide their teachers with the tools to do so. I feel it is even more important to educate young people with technology than university students as by the time they are in the workforce, technology will have expanded to a degree that they will require as much training as they can in these areas. Children also need to be encouraged by their teachers to be creative in whatever ways they are interested in, including the use of technology.

These videos focus on the inadequacies of the current school system to educate students in the ways that are currently necessary for the workforce and to capture their interest. It is obvious that most students are interested in, or use technology every single day. Why not teach them in ways that are interactive and relevant to their lives?