What about the children?
Despite some really good sessions and speakers, even some that sparked controversy, no one here is talking about the sad state of our educational system and how the next generation of voters is poorly prepared to make the judgements they will need to survive the world we are giving them.
If Andrew Keen is arguing that our children won’t know the difference between real sources of news and hearsay, is it the fault of the Internet or the fault of our schools? The Internet is just a tool, a medium and a place. It’s neutral. It can’t teach us anything more than what we put into it. And yet no one is talking about that.
Andrew Rasiej did bring up wiring our schools in his discussion of the techPresident campaign. I can’t argue with that. But what are we doing with those computers in the schools? Every child should be connected, as the techPresident manifesto says, but connected to what? Most school administrations are woefully ignorant of the basics of social media and networking.
There’s got to be a better way.
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concur dave, i’m constantly shocked by some in academia who are firmly stuck in the past - “the internet is all bad” mindset and yet don’t have a clue when it comes to the upside potential of very simply things online offers such as e-learning and exposure to global multi-cultural issues…
however, no one should rely on a school system to educate their kids - that’s our job as parents, and frankly the generation that our kids fall in is so much more aware of the varying aspects of who, what and how online than our generation (as a whole) is - ask any teenager how they can tell the difference between a “real” online persona and a “fake - creepy - troll” persona - most will laugh and tell you how obvious one is from the other…
we are at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to online community progression - the youth of today are growing up owning it and will leave us in the dust - that’s a good thing especially for the progression of things such as tolerance and awareness, the village shrinks positively onward generation by generation and the network has a lot to do w/ it
as for andrew keen - troll’s should be ignored at all cost, any kid will tell you that…