Today Wired Campus posted the above video with a story titled Class Produces Parody of ‘The Office’ to Highlight Challenges of Teaching with Technology. Wired Campus explains:
Students at the University of Denver created a parody video essay — in the style of the popular TV show “The Office” — to show their frustrations with technology in the classroom and urge professors and students to work together to make classes more lively. . . .
Never is any learning content mentioned in the video. The internet is only alluded to when the bored students use their laptops to check their Facebook pages — showing that the internet is, indeed, available in the classroom. Content is not brought in from the interwingularity. Instead, the professor prepares a Powerpoint presentation — which becomes a substitute for his writing on the whiteboard that had disgusted the students early in the video.
These are students who have sat through classes for over twelve years (K-12) where the internet was not allowed in at all, or only with major limitations. They seem as much at a loss as to how to use the technology as the professor.
Here is a suggestion for an in-class project. Give the students ten minutes to go online and select webpages that provide solid descriptions of technology that could be used in classrooms. Then project on the screen at the front of the room the selected webpages one-by-one, with the students who chose them describing their content and its relevance and importance. Have a back channel open on Twitter for other exchanges of ideas and quipping.
Great job by these UD students in depicting the real world of underwhelming tech learning.
