Something that is very interesting is that through our growing digital communication technologies and access to knowledge, this is competing with and weakening the value of the original institutions of knowledge -- universities, libraries, governments, churches, etc. Also, with this easier access and wider distribution of knowledge, this "cultivates inattention." With all of the opportunities for hyperlinks within a text, the ability to flip through different channels on TV, and so on, this almost trains people to be inattentive to the actual source of information. This also relates to when Plato argued that writing things down was not beneficial because it would lead to a loss of memory, since people could just record thoughts instead of remembering them.
Then, one of the coolest things EVER happened! Mr. Tinham told us we'd be watching a video made by some university in the U.S. and guessed that it was the University of Texas... as he pulled up the link I saw "posted by mwesch"... I literally threw my hands up in the air and yelled "That's my university!!" It was so exciting! We watched "A Vision of Students Today" by Michael Wesch, from whom I took a Cultural Anthropology course at K-State this past semester. The video basically explores the way that students aren't taking an active hold on their education -- they may show up to class, but Facebook during it. It was absolutely amazing to me that I experienced something so close to me in England on a Fulbright program. I am in awe :) I'm so proud to be a K-Stater and I feel so lucky to have been able to take that class and have such a different and stimulating classroom experience.
[Here is the video by Michael Wesch, "A Vision of Students Today."]
From this video, we addressed the questions: in a complex world, how do we prepare students for jobs that don't yet exist? To use technologies that have not yet been invented? To solve problems we don't know are problems yet?
We even considered Wikipedia as a source of knowledge. It began in 2001 and now contains over 3,000,000 articles, which is 6 times as many as Encyclopedia Britannica. However, it's not written by an authority... so can we classify the wisdom of the masses and reliable? Overall, Mr. Woodman, one of our lecturers, made an argument of: Wikipedia values participation over competence and democracy over truth. On the other hand, Mr. Tinham offered a different viewpoint. Wouldn't it be anti-intellectual to ignore Wikipedia as it has a plethora of articles and a wealth of information organized?
To make our classroom experience a little more participatory, our lecturers handed out "TurningPoint Response Card Remotes" so that we could anonymously add our vote to a question. We explored the following questions:
* As they are currently organized, universities are outmoded sources of information.
-> 1 agreed, 6 disagreed, 2 were unsure
* Wikipedia values participation over competence and democracy over truth.
-> 1 agreed, 5 disagreed, 3 were unsure
We even took a British citizenship test to see if we had the knowledge to "be British." I definitely only got 11/25... not knowing key information that British people would know about their history, Parliament, Church of England, etc. It was an eye-opener! I wonder how well I would do on an American citizenship quiz...
After scarfing down some lunch, we headed back to the classroom to work on some things, jam out to Taio Cruz's "Dynamite," and marvel over a news story of 2 London black parents giving birth to a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white baby! Pretty darn cool!
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3060907/Black-parents-give-birth-to-white-baby.html
Our very, very final discussion (sad!) focused on the question: "What are the big issues with citizenship today?" We went around in a circle and shared our ideas of the most important issues, while reflecting on all of the lessons we've had so far. We came up with the following:
*How does one become an active citizen?
*Lack of civic engagement -- why is this happening?
*How can the government work to help people feel like their voices are being heard more? Should there be other, more personalized avenues for people to voice their opinions besides voting?
*How do we help educate everyone and get people to care about the issues?
*How is the "Big Society" going to work in Britain with giving more "people power?" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10680062)
*How do we increase a sense of national identity and patriotism?
For a split second, my mind spaced out to memories of arguing amongst ourselves whether the word tour is pronounced like "torr" or "too-er"... then I thought about tourism in Kansas and how silly that sounded. I then stumbled upon the Kansas tourism site (travelks.com) and found out that one of the attractions Kansas offers is the largest ball of twine. I completely lost it. While discussing important citizenship and politically-related topics I busted out giggling. It got even worse when I saw a picture of this infamous ball of twine. Maybe I'm just sleepy, but I could not stop laughing! Eventually I had to step out of the room as to not distract from the discussion!
(from kansastravel.org)After filling out an evaluation, and a quick meeting with Dave to make sure our video is headed in the right direction, we all headed back to Bede to finish up our essays and catch up on our academic work! This week is definitely going to be intense -- our videos are due Friday and they need to be GOOD. I'm saying goodbye to the idea of sleeping now!
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