Davidson and her colleagues distribute iPods among Duke
students as an attempt to find the education potential of new technology. Most
schools across the country taught in terms of last century technology and
mindset. The school system is focused on “standardization” and assessment, both
of which do not measure every form of education. America spends more money on
education than the current number 1 in high school diploma rate, South Korea,
but the education system in the US is still failing because it is not capturing
their attention. Both excelling students and failing students both agree that
the current system is boring and lacks rigor. Students want engagement at
school and Davidson believed using iPods was a great way to use something that
students are interested in to engage them in the classroom and out. A lot of
students lose interest in high school when they can’t afford to go to college.
One way to avoid this problem is to engage them in other ways, like the iPod. Great
teachers with whom students have a vested interest so that they want to do well
and succeed, despite not wanting or not being able to go on to higher
education. Davidson wanted the students to find new ways to use the iPod for
education, and the students did find ways to use, not just the iPod, but the
internet as well. Thanks to them, podcasts were created to share knowledge,
which are the precursor to TEDTalks, and iTunes U was made to share the knowledge
of all higher learning so that even without going to a specific university, one
can learn from there. Making education more democratic and closer to the needs
of future is what any country needs to succeed. As long as America refuses to
change its “assembly line” style learning, the children are losing other ways
they can flourish other than choices A, B, C, or D.
I like how you extended Davidson's argument to the mediums we see today such as TEDTalks and iTunes U. Though I do think you could have spent time on analyzing her argument in regards to crowdsourcing, the idea of creativity and making a more interesting education system is equally important.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assessment of how most students do not find the typical school day interesting or engaging as it could be, however, I do not believe that the iPod usage itself was the sole reason for how quickly the students at Duke jumped on the experiment, but rather because it was a break from routine and allowed them to use as much creativity as they could. Also, I agree with Salman, that you should have summarized Davidson`s arguments other than just the part of the passage dealing with the experiment.
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