Alexandria's take on "A vision of students today"

“A Vision of Students Today”, is a video created by Michael Wesch and his 200 students he surveyed in 2007. The video gives a voice to the many questions that are still out there concerning whether or not technology and education can peacefully coexist. The video makes you question if human relationships are suffering from this new rise of technology and if it separates people. Many people have become annoyed with the ever persistent saying “technology is the down fall of man”, but can there really be some truth to this saying?
The video’s introduction starts off with a text describing how even in the “19th century our educational environment still demands order and repetitious schedules and subject patterns”. The camera scans an empty classroom with writing on the walls and chalkboard. The sound track playing is very eerie and has a lonely melody to it. Then the classroom fills up with students, holding up cards that talk about the difficulties and facts they go through in everyday life because of them trying to balance education and technology. One student holds up a card that says “I will write 42 pages for class this semester and over 500 pages of emails”. This seems to be a demonstration of what Clive Thompson in his essay on “The New Literacy” was describing. Thompson main argument was that more people today write more lifetime writings then formal papers (1). Another student’s card says “18 % of teachers don’t know my name”, illustrating that with the rise of technology, many teachers are not doing there job of teaching or bonding with their students. This makes another question, is technology to blame for this educational pit we seem to be in? Or is it that teachers haven’t learned to use technology to their advantage? The video continues with how little time in a day there is to accomplish the demands students have thrust upon them. It also shows because of how accessible technology is, it has made it easier for us to zone out in class and not learn the material being taught to us, instead we find ourselves looking up face book in class. The video has left me feeling that there needs to be more of a structure when using technology to help in educating students. I believe students need to learn to balance their time better and have better discipline when using technology. I also believe that if teachers and students learned how to use technology to their advantage, we could grow stupendously in the educational environment. There needs to be time where technology can help educate students and time for hands on learning from an instructor that can relate to students. In my opinion, what our educational environment truly lacks is balance.