Education and Technology,

I thought Winner's video was good but typical. I tend to watch such things during my leisure time. I do believe we are certainly headed where Winner thinks we are going with the comical video and the equipment he has shown related to the future of education.

Why do we seek the need for technological education (distant learning)? Since I come from a different nation Im more exposed to experience because everything around me is different than my own culture and I can relate everything that I learn in my courses to the so called "real world." Why does the education not seem so interesting to a native American student and why are they disinterested? It has become a systematic teaching method. Most students are craving to gather information that would relate to the real world and help them out once they complete their education. In courses like Ethics and Technoloy, many are interested because computers are something we are exposed to. There are various courses as such on the one hand but there are other courses that are based on technical, memorization based concepts which you can not attach to the real world and therefore make it something interesting and useful. Another good question to ask is do we have the leisure and the time to learn courses that are systematic and memorization based just for the fun of it? I would say no because my life might be so much different than somebody else, I might be rich and other person might be getting education so he can have a diploma to survive in the real world.

It always interests me that education and the real world are totally to different worlds of institutions. What you learn in school can not be applied to "real world" in most cases. Once you are out of school, you start a new school so called the "real world" I do think that education is based on experiences and the risks you'd be taking (Dreyfus) but one can not deny the fact that these risks and experiences are a lot different in the so called "real world" and one has to learn the language of that world. Even in our school think of how many students are business majors and why not so many are philosophy or communication majors or even art majors? Some of the questions I receive from peers are what will I do with my communications and philosophy degrees? I really do not think I should be able to do anything with them rather than grow my own personality and most importantly my human nature. In fact, I will not do anything with any of my degrees but will apply them to my life so I can communicate with other beings and use my philosophical knowledge to shape my life in a peacful state. They will be great treasures I have gathered by taking huge risks which are traveling and exploring new thnings in a new culture.

One must ask where education is headed? Grading systems, systematic course requirement to get a diploma, professors or teachers who enjoy teaching the subjects or are just teaching just to teach and for their own survival. Im not saying our education system is bad but students need to be exposed to exploration and traveling a lot more so they can be more interested in what they are learning. Once we limit their perception or what they are exposed to they will not seek to need to learn the points many philosophers and communicators are making about today's world. They will continue to be locked up in their towns or houses without a passion. We will see more of the computer based distant learning. How can one expect college students to deal with the problems of the world if they do not learn much about it or provided the passion to do so? The simple answer comes out we just do not care and its their problem! With education, lets do it without thinking and some will survive and others wont and they will absorb the so called distant learning.