This little student video project on the disconnect between the university classroom and its students is worth a watch for many reasons. First, it’s compelling — presenting the student research on the subject in human terms. Second, it’s collaborative, showing just a piece of what learning and expressive opportunities are available to our universities if they could break the often-rigid structures that guide classroom life.
Third, it’s a mirror issue for professional nonprofit arts. The opening scenes of an empty lecture hall are frighteningly similar to the traditional theater, symphony, or dance spaces, in which our audience is also asked to sit quietly and observe.
Reflecting on the order of the statistics and the sentiments presented in this artful exploration of college culture, I’m left wondering about the role of “technology” in the students’ minds. How do you interpret the trajectory of the different technologies presented or judge them? I’m not clear on whether there is a desire in this class to unleash more technology or reign it in. Do the students feel technology is an adequate antidote to the anonymity of the sprawling classrooms and outdated texts? Do they hunger for even more? There is something tantalizing and subversive in the innuendoes if I could just put my finger on it…
Thanks for the video. I oversee a teen liaison program at The Children’s Theatre Company and we constantly struggle with ways to get messages to teens. They live in electronic worlds and have electronic friends. This is not odd to them. This is how they’ve grown up and it’s what they know. Carrying around multiple electronic devices and having a constant connection to the web is just life for them. I’m incorporating this video into their blog assignment. It should be posted in the next few weeks at http://www.ctc4teens.org.