The first time I saw this video was on the blog post Learning in a Participatory Culture: A Conversation About New Media and Education (Part One) from Henry Jenkins Weblog. It was Spanish; but luckily, both Henry Jenkins and Sir Ken Robinson can speak English and even better - I can understand English!
The video and the comments made by the two education professionals are quite interesting, not just because the video was funny. It makes you wonder about what school is really about and why do we go to college? Do the world really need more and more university professors? Proyecto Facebook, translated as Facebook Project was an experiement and a demonstration of collaborative learning. Sir Ken Robinson commented in that video "The Internet is based on collective intelligence. We learn from each other." On the other hand, as shown in the video, school should be about 'real learning' - not to make everybody look 'good' or the same like robots.
It is amazing what you can find on the Internet these days - almost everything you want to know! or should I say, it is everything? These are the results of collective intelligence of people all around the world. Wikipedia, being one of the greatest inventions ever as I'd like to think so, has become something quite big. When I talk with my friends and if we come up with something that we are curious to know or just not sure, we look up on Wikipedia. It is usually quite satisfying for our curiosity and we always find out more than what we want :)
Although it has its possibilty of errors and inaccuracies, Wikipedia is evidently a quite powerful tool for learning. Being in the 21st century and as technology is rapidly evolving, schools should make their ways towards the future of eLearning (of course, not all places can afford that.)."Schools need to prepare young people to use these new resources creatively, effectively, and responsiblity" (Henry Jenkins, 2010) - creatively, because creativity makes great things happen; effectively, because the world spins quite fast; responsibily, because not all things you see or hear are always true.
Thanks for that clip on facebook, it is a catchy one! It is eerie how logical the points are that Ken Robinson makes, yet the world still subscribes to the almost traditional view of schooling. Just illustrates that we, as a society, do not always learn from our mistakes. Although we can endeavour to change this somewhat in schools, we are still bound by the same old ropes like naplan and the likes of the myschools website.
ReplyDeleteThe quote in your last paragraph by Henry Jenkins sums up your post really well. Not to mention that those three elements (creativity, effectiveness and responsibility) should probably be applied to everything, not just new resources!
ReplyDeleteThat video is very interesting too - good find!