Monday 20 September 2010

A Vision of Italian Students Today (Our Thoughts)



The video above shows the fantastic response in 2009 by Seth Dickens' students to the video by Professor Michael Wesch, which I showcased in my blog post here. What impressed me most in this Italian version is that the students hope that their future "will be positive".

A high percentage (75%) of the students in the video wanted to see more ICT in the classroom. This is interesting to note. As teachers we have a duty to bear this in mind when teaching the tech-savvy youngsters of today. Could the traditional chalkboard soon become a thing of the past? Have computers (and hand-held devices) increasingly taken on a more pivotal role in education? As teachers, is it our absolute duty to prepare our students for their digital future? How do we really, really feel about this, though?

Watching this video made me reflect that teachers can no longer afford to "rest on their laurels", as maybe happened in some contexts in the past. Technology has changed the traditional form of static learning forever. Methods of teaching are evolving at a fast pace and students are definitely more aware nowadays of how they want to learn.

Thank you Seth and all your students for making and sharing such a fantastic video. I really enjoyed watching it.

2 comments:

Seth Dickens said...

Thanks for posting this and I'm glad you enjoyed it Janet :-)

It was the culmimnation of many weeks' workon behalf of the students and lots of effort, too. They drafted the questions, chose the ones they wanted, adapted them for an online surveyu, wrote the script for the film, filmed it and wrote the "posters" for it all themselves.

I think think they did a pretty darn good job :-)

Janet Bianchini said...

I absolutely agree with you, Seth, that your students (and yourself, of course), did an excellent job on this amazing video.

The collaborative work which was involved in the making of the video must have been very exciting for you all.

In addition, the task of actually creating a video from scratch was a very useful and realistic preparation for future life skills projects.

Well done to the whole team!!