There is little doubt that today's popular culture has strengthened areas of our IQ. Video games, television, and many other forms of media have made our minds get more involved in our daily entertainment. These activities a couple of decades ago were seen as harmful to an individuals development. Now with advancing technologies and overall sophistication of the media forms we consume, the brain is being developed greatly by these platforms.
If you ask me, schools have already made great strives to incorporate technology into daily studies. When I first attended college in the fall of 2000, the classrooms were void of these forms of media. There was a textbook and an instructor at the front of the class boring you to the point of insanity. There was nothing in place, aside from the drive to succeed in school, to keep a student focused and engaged in the learning process. Now, schools have projectors tied to computers where they can use multiple forms of media to not only get more in depth with the lesson they are teaching, but to present the material to the student in a way that keeps the students attention. Unfortunately that is only half the battle.
Only half of the students learning takes place in the classroom. The other half takes place at home. Yes sadly homework still exists. Once the teacher releases the student from class they send them home with an assignment which still relies on the student to go home sit at a table and read a textbook. That textbook the teacher sends them home with has to compete with video games, television, and social networking to get the students attention. I have to tell you, everything in my home is better than a textbook So what point am I making here? We don't need anymore technology in the classroom, aside from turning the class into a big video game, we have done everything we need to do there. We need to find a way to keep the students just as involved in their studies at home and a way to compete with the forms of entertainment these kids have at home.
I'm not saying we should eliminate textbooks. Reading is a very important part of the brains development. I am saying that an additional form of media should be introduced at home to help teach and apply the lesson. At Yavapai College, Guidance Helicopters has developed a way to take the sting off of going home and studying. Rather than sending a student home to bury their head in a textbook for hours upon hours at a time, they use video lectures. An hour long video that uses illustrations to better explain a lesson that would take hours to read about. There are still textbooks but they are there to reinforce the video lecture. I'm willing to bet if you compare the overall grades in these courses that apply this method compared to a program that sends a student home to study with a textbook, you would find the video lecture method to be much more successful.
Media in the classroom is a great idea. I do believe that many students are gaining very much from having these technologies in the classroom. Half the battle is already won. However, it seems that not enough attention being brought to studying at home. In fact, I couldn't find a single program online that had the same emphasis on using technology to making homework more interesting. Something as simple as a video would greatly increase the students knowledge of a topic and make it more bearable for the student to actually sit down and do it.
I leave you with this one piece of propaganda. You can decide what world you want to live in.
