Michael Wesch: Knowledgeable to Knowledge-Able

Michael Wesch seems to be on his way of having everything pertaining to using the web to learn, all figured out… or at least almost all figured out. He knows what really goes on in the classroom, definitely not what should. Laptops are not typically used for notes, rather than for Facebook, twitter, YouTube, etc. In a classroom of 200 students, vast majority have zoned out and the teacher has lost them for the entire lecture. A lot of that has to do with, what some teachers may see as “evil” due to taking their students away from the lecture that is going on. Wesch, however, sees how the internet, worldwide, is a great place to embark in a new way of education. The internet alone has become such a necessity to people globally, why not add education, which would make it that much more useful? Being in a classroom, he had come to conclusions that students think: to learn is to acquire information, information is scarce, trust authority for good information, authorized information is beyond discussion, obey the authority and follow along. All that information adds up that students feel as if no matter what, they need to follow along and just obey instruction. Wesch finds how learning is far more than being inside walls of buildings, taking notes of PowerPoints and listening to lectures. The internet is used for so many ways for education, why not jump on them and actually use them instead of the standard set and stone classes in universities.
His ideas definitely have me thinking. Using the web to learn is an amazing opportunity. With classes online, such as our ds106 class, there are thousands of ways to embark on learning from your peers, getting constructive criticism that only helps each student to move forward, using different media sources to complete assignments and even going far beyond the assignment by maybe even creating a YouTube video explaining where an idea came from. The actual idea of helping your classmates online is not frowned upon online as it is in the classroom, which from a first-hand point of view, is upsetting. Not being able to collaborate with your classmates makes assignments extremely difficult. Considering at times, I personally connect with students and understand their explanation better than a teacher’s explanation. A good example of getting knowledge-able of different media types is how we have a daily create opportunity. When I complete the daily creates, I try and use different sites to complete the task in order for me to learn different media types, and go in depth to eventually learn the ins and outs of them to create an outstanding final product.