Blog Post #13

A Vision of Students Today

A Vision of Students Today is a YouTube video about the feelings of students from their perspectives of the progression of education in a college setting. After watching this video from the stand point of a fellow student, I would have to say that I can definitely relate to the video. Some of the things in the video made me question how important it really is to have a traditional classroom setting? I mean is purchasing a $300 textbook and never breaking the seal really worth the debt? Is sitting in a classroom and listening to a professor lecture about something that at the end of class makes you even more confused really what college is about? It makes me wonder if all professors want to migrate from the traditional classroom setting or do they really enjoy the "Charlie Brown" methods that have created a complacent pattern within the art of teaching? As a student it bothers me that there are YouTube videos, teacher evaluations, as well as so many other forms of complaints about the methods of teaching, yet nothing has been done to improve them.

As a future educator, I look at this video as an outcry from students. Students want to see a transformation into the 21st century classrooms. Classrooms that don't involve chalk boards and discouragement of technology. Students want their professors to embrace Facebook and use it as a help site. They would like for smart boards and other technology that makes learning interesting, to be welcomed openly to the classroom and the learning setting. As future educators it is our jobs to make this happen. It is our jobs to remember that we were once struggling college students and that the cost of education alone is a penny pincher and the cost of books only increases the debt that we were once in. We have to becoming the driving force that can find alternate solutions for the traditional textbooks. Maybe we can send PDF files of the 20 pages that the students need from the 300 page text book that we would usually assign each of them. Maybe we can become more of a blended setting that meets only once a month to make sure that everyone is on track with everything. Maybe incorporating these changes can boost the excitement of education and the learning experience overall.

A Vision of Students Today was a great YouTube sensation that made me really open my eyes to the direction that education and technology is headed. Technology is indeed taking over the learning experience and it is time that students, teachers, administrators, and school systems as a whole began to embrace them for what they are: Educational Boosters!