What Students Want?

So, listening at Professor Michael Weschs lecture definitely made me want to say something. I find it quite interesting that he bases a lot of what he says (at least it appears that way) on a short survey he gave his class. So what he found out was that over half of his class does not like school but everyone likes to learn. The first thing that hit me was; I do like school. I belong to the minority who likes school. And guess what, I feel provoked. Professor Wesch is talking about how to engage students and keeping up with the media and technology in our world. He says; “Hey, let’s make facebook more available to the students!” (Let me add, he admitted at the end of the lecture that he had seen that facebook being so available wasn’t the best idea!).

Well, he’s not completely of track. I have to admit, listening to the rest of his lecture he made a decent handful of good points. Yes, the media is an important part of our world and an extremely important place to find and share information. But is the media all? Does it mean that we should forget what’s in the textbooks? Maybe it’s just me that’s old fashioned. I like my textbook. I like my pen and paper. I like sitting taking notes from a teacher that’s engaged and exited about whatever he or she might be talking about. 

Professor Wesch gives an impressing presentation about how he uses Web 2.0 in his classes and how the students work hard and share their work and notes. For me, this sounds nice in theory, but I’m not so sure this will work in every class. I might even call it a bit naïve. From own experience I have learned that in most cases where collaboration is involved, a few people do all the work. And how fair is that really? We live in a world where competition means everything, knowledge is power and competence will get you the job. Why would the smarter students want to share? I know this might sound selfish and stupid. It’s not like the smarter students can’t learn anything new or valuable. But I still think it’s the weaker students who have most to gain, especially if they don’t do any of the work. So why shouldn’t it be allowed to be a bit selfish? We live by “every man for himself”. 

I do think that Weschs ideas about how to use the media in classrooms are a good place to start. But it needs more that good ideas. It needs the right, easy, simple tools to use. Not a hundred different once that in fact do the exact same thing. It’s important that these right tools are used at the right time and not as an easy escape for a teacher who’s not in the mood to teach. But the two most important factors to make a project like this work are that the students want it. They have to want to do the work and share their work. And the teachers have to have the competence that’s necessary. It can’t be an option to do this half way. And it’s certainly not ok to turn the back on the “old school” methods of teaching and learning before the new media era is good enough to give the students the competence they need to “create this world”.