To see what today's students really look like, we first looked at a study done in a university setting. In this study done by Anthropology professor Michael Wesch, the students of his class participated in a survey to show how they really spend their days. He chose to show these results in the following video:
Some of the more important findings are that students in a university class will read an average of 8 books, 2300 web pages and 1281 Facebook profiles in one year. It is obvious that students will receive most of their information online rather than in a printed form.
In addition to reading, students write an average of 42 pages for class in a school year, but over 500 pages in email. Not only are students reading online, but they are also writing online. Clearly, students engage in more online material than in printed material. But what does this mean for educational institutions?
To better comprehend what students today are going through from a student perspective, here is a video of a 16 year old Andrea recording herself while she writes an essay:
It's a rather painful moment when you find out Andrea has gone through that much effort for two pages. Although Andrea is probably acting out because she knows the camera is rolling, this may not be too far off of what a student would look like while doing homework. (I know I've been guilty of a few of these moments...) But what does this mean?
In Carr's article, he complains that online information is making him lose his attention span - something that may be evidenced in Andrea's video. But if students are reading more online, perhaps they should be interacting online in an educational sense. Could it be that concepts like "The Essay" are old fashioned with today's youth? Perhaps if more courses allowed students to formulate their ideas through forums like webpages or blogs, students would once again be interested in their education, and become motivated by information online.
Return to: 2.0 A Vision of Students Today
Next Page: 2.2 Reading Online versus Print
Sources:
"A Vision of Students Today." Michael Wesch. Youtube.com. Oct 2007. Link.
"Andrea Attempting to Write a Paper." Andrea Russett. Youtube.com. April 2011. Link.
