Students today are different! Not just because of the clothes you wear, not just because of colour and style of your hair, not just because there’s a tendency to pierce, tattoo and cause extreme pain to various parts of the body, but rather you have grown up in a different world than many of us here tonight
You are products of a new industrial revolution where knowledge is more important than physical labour. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, moodles, you are wired for multi-media. They have also created a research science to study you – Neurosciences. From this we learn that many of you already access, absorb, and process information in different ways than in my generation.
I know I’m dating myself here, but back in my day communications were simple, long distance phone calls were very expensive, letters took ages to arrive and even longer to respond to, telegrams were used instead of e-mails and some of us didn’t have TV until the 70’s. Information was limited, we had a few radio channels and fewer TV channels, world events were often heard about long after they happened.
The point is that the world of today is very different than the one that many of use grew up in and this holds a profound implication for parents and educators. Our students are completely comfortable with the visual bombardment of instantaneous images. Multi tasking is, and some of you may say unfortunately the norm, doing homework, talking on the mobile, listening to music, surfing the web, chatting on line and it’s a wonder that you still complain about being bored!
We live in a world that’s constantly on the move. As Albert Einstein said:
‘The world we have created is a product of our thinking.
It cannot be changed without changing our thinking’.
Our thinking as educators must also change with the times as we work with students who interact in different ways, the majority being visual learners. We educate students for careers that we don’t know will exist in the future.
Being the future leaders in a globalized world calls for a new mind set; a change. But remember all technology is double edged. If used properly it will be highly beneficial, but there is a tendency for some to snatch at ideas, like instant noodles you just add water and wait for results. Dumb ideas can seem clever if they come quickly and you don’t take time to process them intelligently. Just one more quote a writer called Jesse Shena played upon the words of Coleridge and observed.
“Data, data everywhere, but not a thought to think.’
Have the ability to question your own knowledge of things and separate observation from interpretation. Accept new challenges, show perseverance and commitment keep alive the spirit of enquiry, and above all be active, principled critical thinkers. |
