A vision of students today

In the video called “A vision of students today” by students in Michael Wesch’s Anthropology class at KSU. The video suggests that the designed education today is useless. The video is silent no talking only reading signs students hold up making the video feel sad or as though they are presenting bad news. Students are able to spend so much time and money on education but get nothing in return besides an opportunity for a new career for themselves. We go through patterns in school, pay for class, go to class, do homework, and take exams. Students are able to take short cuts using technology in their benefit so students don’t pay full attention. Students are professional multitaskers because the fact is most students don’t see a benefit of doing a bunch of busy work. Once a class is finished a student might relate 26% of the course to actually life, the other 74% is forgotten about and will have no effect on their world or any other humans life. Even though a student is not fully challenged school is completely time consuming and while going to school there is no extra room for a student to go extraordinary.  

A Vision of Michael Wesch, by Adam D.

This video “A Vision of Students Today” by Michael Wasch, is about how college students see themselves in their educational careers. It is presented in a shaky point of view that makes the user follow the dialog on notecards that the students hold up. The students view themselves from their own point of view as well as the point of view of other people around the world. They show signs that show themselves in shallow ways, such as “I spend hundreds of dollars on books that I never open,” and “I spend much of my class time on Facebook.” The way that they show humility is signs that say “This laptop cost more than 1 billion people will make in a year,” and “more than a billion people make less than a dollar a day.” But the exact message that they are trying to get across is elusive. I don’t know if they are calling themselves shallow or the schools. The whole thing is covered by eerie music that just adds to the drama. Maybe someone else will have better insight as to what the main idea is, because I am still confused.

-Adam D.

What What Socrates Say Response

My assigned portion of he essay "What Would Socrates Say?" was the 'Future Is Here-Almost' and 'What Would Socrates Do?'. The author of this essay, Peter W. Cookson wrote about how technology is used and how it affects people here and now inthe 21st century. He also talked about how the philosopher Socrates would feel about the way we are learning. In 'The Future Is Here-Almost' Cookson focuses on teachers, school, students, and the curriculum. He believes that a new curriculum called the LearningSphere should be used. The LearningSphere is a program that makes it so learning takes place in and out of the classroom. Cookson expresses how important he feels this currriculum is when he said, "There has never been a time in human history when the oppurtunity to create universally accepted knowledge has been more of a reality. And there has never been a time when education has meant more in terms of human survivaland happiness". He knows that technology is an important part of this century and instead of hating on it, he tries to find a way to embrace it and have it help people and society. He feels that Socrateswould fully approve of this curriculum and the use of technologyl. Cookson then goes on to talk about what Socrates would do. "I think Socrates would embrace the new learning area with all the energy he had". Cookson uses his thought that Socrateswould approve of the curriculum to catch people's attention and say what he thinks needs to be done. In his opinion, we need to "stop thinking of schools as buildings and start thinking of learning as occuring in many different places, we need to free ourselves from the conventional education model that still dominates our thinking". Overall, he is saying that we need to keep up with the times. The big deal of the 21st century is technology. We need to embrace technology and work it into every aspect of our lives. If we work it into the school curriculum, he feels that we will greatly benefit and that the future will be better and more promising. I am inclined to agree with Cookson on this. If we embrace technology instead of fighting it, good things are bound to happen.

-Heather Williamson

WWSS

In a densely packed article titled "What Would Socrates Say?" by Peter W. Cookson Jr. students and teachers alike are welcomed into an eye opening argument centered around the expansion of an already existent, albeit crumbling, educational system.  Cookson centers his argument around the idea that global access by means of blending computer programs with classroom activities would be an effective and concrete solution to a failing, outdated education system.
Just as before as knowledge was spread through generations by way of mouth and story telling had found itself replaced by written ideas and instructions, today information is finding itself passed on by electronic means.
We are at the dawn of a new learning era.  Fast paced, multi-directional stores of knowledge no longer reside solely in enormous volumes of text.  Cookson puts forth the idea that we must be "built to build".  We can no longer rely on only one, outdated way of supplying today's youth with knowledge.  He suggests that teachers must integrate with new ways of teaching their students by using the tools available to them in an effective manner.
As Cookson goes on to describe a realistic scenario involving learning students thirsting for knowledge he points out that a curriculum "would be a blend of classroom, community, and online activities".  He strives for a learning environment rich with the acceptance and blending of technology to bring in a global understanding, a global community of students and teachers working toward being hands on in their homes and communities. 
Being hands on is, for the most part, helpful for kinesthetic learners who need that stimulation to provide a well rounded and articulated learning experience.
He suggests that students should do more than discuss, more than just think and talk about a subject.  He suggests following up with these by involving students and even teachers in the community.  In a global community in a hands on, more involved way with teaching aids including quizzes, games, lessons, activities. 
Teachers must not only have their students talking the talk but walking the walk.  It must be a collaborative effort put forth by teachers, students, families, and communities.

WWSS?

Kay Lindell
Blog on WWSS


“What would Socrates say?” is an essay written by Peter Cookson Jr. in 2009. It is a very informative piece with the interesting twist of trying to understand what Socrates would have to think about of growth of technology in today’s world. Cookson says that his greatest fear is similar to that of the infamous philosopher “My fear is that instead of knowing nothing except the fact of our own ignorance, we will know everything except the fact of our own ignorance.” With Google and other means of quick resource information we are teetering on the edge of thinking that because we have all this information at our fingertips it’s the same as knowing it. To actually claim the knowledge of something though, we have to be able to really understand it, to the point of being able to teach it to someone else. With the vastly large information super highway easily accessible though we tend to filter information in and out of our brains without retaining much. Why should we? We can always look it up again quickly. Cookson recognizes this need for information came from two key points in our history: the European enlightenment, and the industrial revolution, without these advances we would never have come to the point we are at today. We are standing with our feet on either side of this line of new and old. We mustn’t forget what got us here. The decline of hard tangible newspaper sales is an ominous omen to something that we might not be able to reverse if we go too far.

21st century mind

In this section Cookson is discussing the 4 elements of a 21st century mind; Critical Reflection, Empirical Reasoning, Collective Intelligence, and Metacognition. Cookson says, "The 21st century mind will need to be successfully manage the complexity and the diversity of our world by becoming more fluid, more flexible, more focused on reality, and radically more innovative" (p9)

What he means by this is that, our minds in the 21st century need to be able to handle all of the information we are receiving and in order to do that and function like someone from the 21st century we need to adapt to the changes. In order to adapt to the changes we need to change how it is we learn and throw out the old ways that hinder us.

We must Critically reflect on what it is we are seeing/ hearing to decide if it is real or not. Cookson brought "Manifest Destiny" into his essay. That should really be enough said about.

We must break away from the supernatural and use Empirical Reasoning. We need to keep our theories for everything rooted in fact and logic and not blame everything on a supernatural presence or spend 100% of our effort praying for the situation to be fixed.

We must use Collective intelligence to get the job done. Cookson said, "None of us are educational islands unto ourselves." (p16). What he means is that, while we may be able to learn a little by ourselves we can't and never will be able to learn everything we know alone. People have pooled information over the course of human history, we should probably continue doing that.

Lastly we must use Metacognition which kind of sounds like a super power. Which in a way I suppose it is because without it we wouldn't be able to problem solve... so we never would have found a use for fire... never would have made the wheel... never would have done anything. Yup, Metacognition is the super power of higher brain function allowing us to turn a problem over in our mind to look at it and decide the best approach for it.

And that is a 21st century mind. It's nothing alien or robotic it is still very human. Just taking out a good portion of the stupid decisions that caused some serious shenanigans to happen through out history.

Understanding of Cookson’s idea

In his article “What Would Socrates Say?” Peter W. Cookson Jr. states that world-wide revolution in learning has shifted the conventional schooling to a new electronic learning environment. With this change, people globally are able to get genuine knowledge through internet technology as Cookson points out Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (par 21). As we are moving forward to accessing knowledge through the immersive technologies, ideally, we share knowledge freely. In Cookson’s example of the “Water for the World” project, he is surely right about with internet technology, “something educationally revolutionary would happen: Students and adults would connect in a global, purposeful conversation that would make the world a better place” (par 28). Basically, his vision is that if teachers and students around the world would be able to learn, share and discuss issues and or exchange knowledge in a concrete and productive way, we more likely to increase our chances to find solutions for the future generations. Most of us can agree this world moves forward peacefully only if people can work as a team. I admire Cookson’s idealism and positive attitude. In fact, in a perfect world as he is hoping for, learning, discussing and sharing knowledge without boundary is definitely possible. Technology empowers us to communicate so effectively no matter where we are in this world. If we can use the tool that is available to us and use it carefully, we will benefit from it enormously.