this is an amalgamation of everything lumped into one, it's not a "typical" response, but isn't that what these readings are about? doing things that fit the person best, not what's "best for everyone"?
The basic/general fact about education, especially education of grade school and high school kids, is that it's behind. My entire grade school and high school experience was lugging around huge-ass books that had old, out-dated text in them. It's pretty darn hard to keep a 500 page textbook constantly up-to-date. Coming from someone who loves making books, and loves the history behind them, it makes my soul sad to say that physical textbooks are dying, but not fast enough. Everything read and watched before writing this points out the blatant fact that we live in a world unlike that of even five years ago. We are constantly being bombarded with so many different types of streams of information, that a textbook is now the most analog and old-fashioned of them all. Why, in an age when everyone(except myself) has twitter, facebook, email, and the entirety of the internet connected to their phone, would someone be equally or more excited about a textbook than everything else. That just doesn't make sense. Ignoring new forms of information gathering is ridiculous. Don't fight the inevitable. The way to keep students engrossed with what's going on in the classroom is to embrace what's distracting them and use it to engage them. Moving to digital devices and using the internet allows the learning to become individualized to what works best with each student, and constantly up-to-date. Why, in an environment where almost everything is at your fingertips, would you restrict learning to be the same for everyone, when one isn't everyone. Format the learning to both what works best for the student, and what interests the student. Like in the video "kids learn to navigate the multimedia world" if you can learn, study, and enhance your writing and english skills through making videos just as well as reading and writing papers, why not choose the more engaging and exciting method? It's a different way of thinking, but it's not a bad way of thinking. In fact, it's an excellent way of thinking. By embracing the excellent ways of learning, it makes it more fun, which interns makes everyone smarter. The faster we embrace new ways of learning, the more educated our entire society will be. No longer will school be a drag and something we have to do. It'll be something that people want to do, and can't get enough of. I've always believed that the best type of learning is when you don't realize you're learning. Take the emphasis off of the information you're trying to teach, and onto the way you teach it, and they will learn faster and be more engaged. It may sound sneaky, but at least it's sneaky in a good way.
By taking learning digital, it also opens up the possibility of group learning. Make it a discussion between students of the same grade all over the country, or all over the world. Make the information the students are learning an amalgamation of hundreds of textbooks. Give them access to different variations on the same topic. Help them to think on their own. The more information the students learn, the better they will be at this. Help them make sound choices and decisions. "Web 2.0 is all about harnessing collective intelligence." Harness the intelligence of the textbooks and turn knowledge from a biased perspective, to an unbiased perspective. Teach students every side to a topic to help them fully, 100% understand the topic, and help them make and form their own, informed opinions. Once knowledge learning becomes a collective, and holistic view of everything, there should be much less reason to not be informed.
