A Portal to Media Literacy
The more I listen to Michael Welsh talk the more I buy into what he’s saying. He has broken down the education system and completely picked out every one of its flaws. The world has completely changed the way we get our information. Information is at a person’s finger tips at all times now with the mobile web. Why ever ask a short answer question when you could look it up in less than 30 seconds yourself.
The institutions in which we learn are becoming outdated, according to Mr. Welsh’s surveys as seen in the video; over half of the people there don’t even want to be there. Students are forced to sit in rooms and have teachers talk at them.
I love how he says that he actually gets most of his information through social networking. He explains how he stores his information completely differently than just documents. He rules out exams and says that to learn is to discuss, create, and share. The ultimate question is how do we create students who can create significance? People really do care about the information that is told from the people that they care about. He says that he has to find out how to unleash people’s brilliance but to do that people have to harness the power of the internet. Which is completely true seeing as that is the best way to get information; all students are useful at social networking but do not know how to use it to find information.
His portal for social networking seems to be the future of technology. Everyone on the web who is interested in the social media world would buy into his type of learning. Seeing how everyone is on social media it could completely change the idea of learning and education. His ideal of creating wikis for students to put their own notes on to cause them to search for their own information and to share it with others is the future. More and more people are starting to do online school and classes. This is how they will begin to learn thus causing people at college to do the same. I never knew that YouTube was only started in 2005, it seems like it’s been around longer.
Welsh’s idea of a network instead of a mass is genius. It nearly proves that people participating together and sharing their own information is better. His project with having his students creates their own world and history is excellent. I t caused everyone to engage with one another and bounce Ideas around. They even formed their own sort of hierarchy and economy. He shows how all people have to do is join together and make smart changes causing everyone to come together. He talks about how if 200 of his students are forced to make decisions like this that if one good idea comes out of it then it’s worth it. I do believe that this is the future of learning and that all trends point its way.
