Photo of the Week

This week, instead of a photo, I'm actually suggesting a video that I was shown this weekend and which I will be showing to my students in Advisory this week. You can find it on TeacherTube or by searching for "Did you know" on YouTube. This video talks about population increases as well as the fast-growing development of technology in our world today. It is definitely applicable to any class and deals with a debate I have found myself involved in several times over the past week. How can we get our students prepared for a technology-driven world when they (and our schools) don't have the resources to buy computers, nor do the kids themselves have the knowledge to use them if they are available? How do we, as teachers, create a more tech-savvy population? And is it necessary for us to do so?

In addition, this short video can help students reflect on ideas in many subject. Certainly the issue of increased technology is a gateway into a discussion about the tools and methodology of science, but the issues of population increase and exponential growth can easily be used in math and to discuss migration and development in a history class. The video even mentions that there are currently 5 times the number of words in the English language than there were in Shakespeare's time! Such a fact could easily begin a discussion of how and why languages evolve in an English class.

Even if you don't show it to your kids, I highly recommend watching it. I certainly found it to be an eye-opening experience.

Comments

[Observer]

Interesting! There was one statement that seemed inaccurate though. They said the amount of technical information is doubling every two years, and then claimed that half of what a student learned in a first year of college would be out-dated by the third year. Of course this is not necessarily true. The new information that is coming up does not necessarily render old information obsolete. For example, new strategies developed to play chess don't render the old information useless ... they ADD to it! Similarly, new technical information may be adding to the existing info. People may get the wrong impression from the video ... they may think, if what I am learning is going to become obsolete so soon, what's the point of learning it?

[Teacher's Diary]

Thanks for your comment. I agree that many people might feel that way, but at the same time, much of the technology from even 5 years ago is now obsolete. The point of learning about it is to understand how technology works and how it is evolving. Right now, many of my students can barely use a computer, so what will they do in a few years when new features are added? Will they be able to take advantage of them? Yes, new information often builds on what we know, but unless people are computer literate, they will not be able to function as computers keep getting more and more powerful.

I would certainly not show this to my students and let them walk away. I would use this as the beginning of a discussion about exactly these issues. It is important, in my opinion, for students to understand that what they know now is only a fraction of the information that is available and that the known information is only a fraction of information that is still being created and discovered.

[Observer]

Plus this whole discussion points to the need to teach the principles rather than just the practice ... how to think about problems and their solutions rather than just how to solve particular problems.