FutureWatch 1

The first video I watched was called, "A Nation In Crisis: America's Education System Is Broken." This 9+ minute-long video really did not make a clear point--It wanted its audience to join the "Learn to Learn Revolution." Huh? The video did not once explain what that is.

To support its cause, the video presented information like, "today's high school graduates will have an estimated 8-15 careers in their lifetime, even with the same company." This does not make sense to me. It also made the point that content changes over time, so students need to "Learn how to learn." I agree with this statement, however, there was no explanation about what this looks like. What would an education that teaches how to learn consist of? This video also presented U.S. rankings in Science, Math, and Reading. In comparison with 30 other countries, we were 17th in science, 24th in math, and 16th in reading. But, it did not share with us which countries were ranked highest and how those countries' education systems differ from ours.

The video says that the following 21st century skills are needed for our childrens' success:

1. Creativity and innovation
2. Facility to use ideas and abstractions
3. Self-discipline and organization to manage work and drive to success
4. Ability to strategize and think independently
5. Function well as a team member

But what type of an education system would produce these results in students? The video offers these solutions:

U.S. Education Problems:

• Test-making companies are high-profit
• Government is too concerned with special interests

U.S. Education Solutions:

• "Parent Revolution" with teachers and administrators
• Stop labeling students by test scores

One of the issues I had with the video itself was its complete disregard for one of the essential principles of learning efficiency stated by Clark et. al., which is that cognitive overload should be avoided. In this video, quotes were continually placed on the screen which were then read by the narrator. This redundancy in content is considered a poor form of delivery for leaning efficiency. I think the video was too long, and after realizing it was an ad for: http://www.learntolearn.com/, I know it was way too long for an ad. Once I went to the website for http://www.learntolearn.com/, I realized the target audience is parents and that the goal is to have parents find options to educating their children outside of our school system. I think the goal is to create statewide systematic change by causing a huge revolution of parents finding alternatives to public schools for their childrens' education.

The second video I watched was called, "Evolution of Technology and Teaching." I immediately liked the efficiency of the delivery. Within a minute, just by using photographs of classrooms and technology from the 1950s to now, the evolution of 60 years of education and communication was summed up and followed with this point:
There was not one live human voice, however, the message of the video became inherently clear that there is strong argument that the future of education is through distance learning. The video culminated with a quote aimed directly at teachers and the need for teachers to keep up with the needs of our time. Finally, it turned out to be an ad for tdsolutionsonline.com which appears to be a company that trains teachers for today's classrooms and the needs of today's students. A convincing ad, I went to the tdsolutionsonline website. I think this company has the potential to affect both school-wide and district-wide systems. I like the concept which would train teachers on creating an online course. Is the training content-centered or skill-centered and if the states don't adopt this concept of education as mainstream, what does the future hold? My remaining questions are: how many teachers will pay for this training on their own? Who are the clients? Districts? Teachers? Why would a teacher pay for this training? A district?

It is nice, however, that after working so hard to earn an MA in Educational Technology, I do feel that as times change, I am staying ahead technologically.