Response to UTube Video "A Vision of Student's Today"

In the UTube video, "A Vision of Student's Today" created by Michael Wesch and the students of Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Class of Spring, 2007, Kansas State University, he and his students bring to light an interesting but provocative problem of today's educational environment in respect to the age of technology. The video first starts off with a quote from Marshall McLuhan which expresses his opinion of how stifled, structured and bewildering education is to today's child (student). Please keep in mind that he expressed these thoughts back in 1967. The video then proceeds to conduct a survey by his students, which happen to number around 200, and see what their main concerns and thoughts are about today's education and how the educational environment pertains to their situation. In other words, what is it like being a student today? The video then goes from kid to kid holding signs of their thoughts or complaints, mostly complaints, of how sitting in a cold, boring classroom is not helping them in the least. They are more concerned about what they personally do. Can technology save students from the old chalkboard type of teaching? Perhaps the teaching methods of the "educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects and schedules" is outdated for the student of today who spends 3 1/2 hours online, 1 1/2 hours watching TV, 2 hours on the phone, etc. Wesch's video gives the impression that students are bored, have lost interest and focus on other wandering ideas instead of the education at hand. If walls could talk, what would they say? Would they say "Hey, you've lost them" or "They don't care", or would it be, "These kids are interested in learning?" By the looks on the faces of those young adults and the messages they held up, I would have to say, "Hey, you've lost them!"
Is technology to blame? I would have to say yes. It hinders creativity, imagination and most of all distracts from the tasks and problems at hand. When answers to difficult questions can be found instantly on the web, there is no need for thought or deep concentration. Everything is instantaneous. Creativity is something lost in the world of technology. Jobs that could have been created, have been taken over by technical machines, as in the example in the video where a girl holds up a sign that says, "When I graduate, I will probably have a job that doesn't exist today."
We are enveloped in technology, there is no turning back. The real question is where is technology headed? Will there be less communication, will students even need to go to a classroom setting to learn? What lies ahead is anyone's guess.

Technically yours, Dustan Wilson
English 100