William Dent's Page

First, I loved the style of the video. I thought the music, mixed with the signs, was a very effective and artistic means of communicating the message of this video. One of the ideas that stuck out to me was the idea of multi-tasking. I think high school students find some way of cramming 30 plus hours of activity into a day. I have had students tell me about how they can't just read a novel. They have to be listening to music, watching a TV show, chatting online, and texting on their phones while reading the book. This leads me to think that we won't have too many more years of paper books. With inventions like Kindle and iPad, I assume ebooks will be used in high schools within the next five years. Because of this need to multi-task, I try to give my students multiple assignments at once. I have watched in amazement how students can go back and forth between reading a book and writing a paper within a 30 minute time period.

I was also intrigued by the signs that mentioned students training for jobs that don't even exist. This leads me to believe that students need to always be improving their higher level thinking skills, so they are able to be plugged in to these new jobs. I think that less curriculum will be taught and more emphasis will be put on ways to find the information and how to solve problems. Students are always asking why we need to read this or write that. I am beginning to question a little bit why we are reading books and plays that are 300 plus years old. If identifying themes and the author's purpose can be done using a modern text, it seems logical that this could be more effective teaching.

The end of the video did consider me where it showed signs of students texting of facebooking through college courses. While technology is important, I think students do have to have some sort of attention span, even though it might be small. I am worried that students think since all of the information is available at the click of the button, they don't have to actually learn anything. Students become so instantly gratified that they have no persistence when it comes to trobuleshooting and problem solving. They just simply restart or make excuses for why they couldn't complete an assignment.