I had to watch this video twice. I felt like the message was too big for me to grasp with my first viewing. This video is of Michael Wesch. His ideas of the classroom are very realistic. Students sit in chairs and are expected to pay attention, focus on the teacher in the front of the room because the teacher is the expert, the person in the room with the knowledge. This video brings to surface that these same students sitting with their computers are not engaged in what is happening in the classroom. They are exploring and communicating with social media. We as educators need to move our classrooms from teacher centered to student centered. We have all seen the impact of social media, the first example that comes into my mind is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which has it's own Wikipedia page! This was a social media craze that brought a lot of attention and awareness to ALS, a lot of good positive awareness. The point of me bringing this up, just like he did with the "Free Hugs" to to highlight the impact of social media. As educators we need to find ways to harness this social media and this awareness for our students to collaborate, share, and provide a platform for our students to access this huge space we call the web. Moving our classrooms from a scantron focused test to a test that challenges the problems of our plant. The big open-ended questions that can and will make an impact on all of our lives-that the teacher in the front of the class doesn't have the answer to.
Tara
Tara