Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World

Part Two Transforming Institutions

5 RETHINKING EDUCATION THE NET GENERATION AS LEARNERS

The video is called A Vision of Students Today. One of the hottest hits on YouTube in early 2008, it begins in a gray, empty classroom. The stark room suggests that nothing much has changed since the early nineteenth century, when the blackboard was introduced as a brilliant new way to help students visualize information. But this was made in 2007, and suddenly we see, in full color, the room fill up with students who look bored. One after another, they hold up signs that reflect the views of the 200 students who collaborated on the project, via the Net, at their schools. In less than five minutes, they deliver a stinging indictment of the education system: ...