After watching Dr. Michael Wesch’s talk on internet culture, I totally agree with him that students do not find learning fun. Education is not teaching students what they need to know. Unless it is a class they are totally interested in, they are just going through the motions to pass their class. There are some classes that students feel are not necessary to take, but as a requirement for their degree, they are forced to do so. If there is going to be a class that a student has to take, make it fun and interesting. Some professors make it boring with PowerPoint Presentations that have no light in them, just a whole bunch of words put together for the student to remember. I remember when I was attending Strayer University, I was taking my first accounting class and I had a question for the professor. I cannot remember what the question was, but I remember his response, “It’s in the book”, I was annoyed and responded back,” If I seen it in the book, I would not be asking you this question.” He was just sat there and said, “If you still cannot find it, I will show you after class.” That was not a good example of a professor that wanted to make his class interesting and fun.
It was an amazing story how Dr. Wesch made his first video and how much you can see how the media watches videos. I also agree that social media is a distraction; I have seen so many people that cannot put their phones down for one minute. They are either texting, tweeting, or are on Facebook posting something. Dr. Wesch has taught students so many different ways how technology works and how fun it can be. He mentions a quote from Gardner Campbell, “move from information literacy to meta-media fluency to digital citizenship connect, organize, share collect, collaborate, and publish to anyone in the world to create a better world.”
Ds106 is all about creating, narrating, posting, tweeting, and sharing information with other students all over the web. Even though I get frustrated with some of the different assignments we have to do for this class, but I know it is necessary. If you want to advance in technology, I believe this is one way to get an idea of what to expect if you want to go deeper into social and digital media. This is the power of the media and it is not going anywhere and I know I can pick and choose to be on certain social media websites or post blogs outside of this class. Now that it is a requirement to be on several social media websites, create my own domain and blog page, create videos, photos, I can see how much it means to be more educated. There are so many people that are stuck in the past that new technology scares them. That makes me think about when I first started working at the Federal Reserve Board in 2009, they were so behind in technology and they use a lot of paper. I wanted to scream because I felt like I was going backwards in technology. I was so used to doing everything electronically. When paper was introduced back in my life, I was so irritated. They are getting better, but they are still behind in technology, they just started using YouTube and twitter. How funny is that? .
I am still trying to get a better understanding of this class and I have had some bad days this week where I have not been able to get nothing done. I think I got so frustrated that I was not able to really understand what the assignment was telling me to do. It is a learning process and I am praying I will progress as the weeks go by. I loved two quotes that Dr. Wesch mentioned, “This is the main purpose of education to give people the opportunity of not ever being bored,” Mary Womack (1978). “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has,” Margaret Mead (1901-1978).
The world is changing whether we get on board or not and there is no way to fight it because you will lose.
Yvette's Business Adventure 