Thing 5

Before I get started with Thing 5, I would like to go ahead and make my main point now because, well, I just can't think of a better way to get this one started.

Web/School 2.0 IS the future of education because the internet has been the future of everything since the first website was launched in the early 90's. And, as far as all this hate of fonts is concerned... GET OVER IT! PLEASE!? It's a font. As long as it's readable, does it really matter? Yes, there are some situations where certain fonts really should or should not be used , but, fonts like Comic Sans are better than fonts like Zapf Dingbats which, when I tried to copy and paste it onto this post from Microsoft Word, the computer pulled what I call a "Google girlfriend" on me and interpreted it and posted what it thought I meant. It didn't do that to Comic Sans, did it? No, because, compared to things like Zapf Dingbats, Comic Sans, is a sight for sore servers. As my friend James just said, "people have too much time on their hands" if they are going to spend their time worrying about the evils of the dreaded Comic Sans. With that much time on your hands, why not do something productive and talk about the new direction of education? 

Now that I'm done with my rant, I have a few points to make from it. 

To me, School 2.0 is the next evolutionary step in education. Rather than teaching students how to find information, over the next few years, the goal should be teaching them how to interpret the information and make sure it makes sense. I think that Steve Hargdon makes a good point when he says that in order to understand this pile of information called internet content, we must add to the pile with our own content. I see this as his way of explaining the difference in fact and truth. Fact is empirical while truth is subjective. The only way to make sense of it all is to look at it and delve into what we think it means. If at the end it doesn't make sense, we start over and go from there. Or, we shift gears in the middle and do something else by pointing out the flaws in our own logic.

However, in order for students to point out their own flaws in their own logic, they must be taught how to reflect on their own logic and not be hypercritical of themselves to the point of discouragement. Steve makes another good point in saying that the the search for information has been taught for decades, but, it now needs to change to interpretation and thinking skills. Some might say that what college is for. Well, guess what. Not any more. Students these days are bored of sitting in a classroom and having facts preached at them from the front of the room. As aforementioned, facts are readily available these days. Sure, some of the same things will still need to be taught in the same factual ways, but, the bulk of most subjects will need to be taught from a real world perspective rather than just being pounded from pulpit in a "BECAUSE I SAID SO!" kind of way. It didn't work for me when I was in school, and, that trend seems to be catching. Now is the time to catch up completely before it's the students that leave us behind.

I think that being a new educator fresh out of school will be beneficial to our first students because we will be a breath of fresh air assuming we play our cards right. Young minds change as the times change and the times change as technology changes. Given that technology changes in the blink of an eye, their minds will change just as fast. In order to make sure that the facts they are looking up are correct, it will be up to us to guide them through the never ending barrage of information and show them how to tell what is real and what is really as stable as a house of cards in a hurricane. Are facts important, yes. But, what matters in the real world is how we interpret those facts and apply those interpretations in life. But, before all else, it's up to us to make sure they are doing their own interpreting and not letting someone else do it for them.