Michael Wesch, A Vision of Students Today

Michael Wesch shows in his video, A Vision of Students Today, how students work during a class and how the class will affect them. He shows in his video students holding up signs displaying what an average class is like. He gives examples how students spend more time with technology then with the classwork. One student holds up a sign saying that her average class size is 115 students and only 18 percent of her teachers know her name. This shows that there is no one on one teacher student relations so students don't get the best possible learning experience. Other signs held up by students indicate that the stuff that they learn in class has no meaning to them and will have no influence on what they do after school. In his video a student holds up a sign that says that she reads 49 percent of the readings assigned and that only 26 percent are relevant to her life. Wesch also points out how when students are learning the skills that they need to go out and get the job that they want, the job will probably be gone by the time they finish their college education. Throughout the whole video it compares how much actually reading and writing on paper is happening with the students and how much reading and writing is being done with the internet and online. It also compares how much time is being spent at school and doing schoolwork and how much time is being spent facebooking or other leisure activities. I think that this is an interesting video. It points out some of the views that students wouldn't think when going to college for the first time. I wouldn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on text books and tens of thousands of dollars on school if it didn't teach me anything that was going to be relevant in my life after my education. I don't understand why the college professors would assign readings that didn't have anything to do with the way that the students wanted to be taught. It surprised me that one girls average class size was 115 students. I always thought that the smaller the student body in a classroom, the better they were taught because there was less students for the teacher to go around helping. That way there was more one on one learning and the students actually learned the subject. If people know that that is the best way to teach a class full of students, why do they shove 115 students into one class? Also in the video it gave examples that the students spent more time on their laptops doing random things then paying attention on class. This is partly because they realized that the subject had no meaning to them. I think that students shouldn't have to pay for books that they never even read or do assignments that have nothing to do with what they want to do after their education is over.

Michael Sperry