Business, Society - Written Friday, July 17, 2009 by Kevin Morris - 1 Comment

SchoolTube: Kids explain their passion to technology

Earlier this month, nGenera announced a partnership with the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) with the goal of researching the strategic use of Web 2.0 in classrooms to improve teaching and learning.

While browsing the CoSN website (which, by the way, is loaded with resources for educators looking to bring technology into their schools), I came across a really great video called “Learning to Change, Changing to Learn“.

The video itself is simple, interviewing a handful of young people about the impact of technology on their lives. What’s amazing is some of the insight in their answers.

Here are some of my favourite quotes:

“If I didn’t have computers, I would say a lot of my hobbies that make up most of my time, I wouldn’t have. Because, well, I learned Japanese, and I learned a lot of that through the Internet.”

“That’s the cool thing about technology. You can change things whenever you want.”

“When you have access to everything, you learn how to know yourself better because you are forced to decide what to use and what not to use.”

“What we’re doing in gaming – coordination and communication – is very similar to what we’re doing at school. In the game, we have to talk to each other, we have to coordinate what we’re going to do in order to make sure that we do it well.”

And my personal favourite:

“I would say that being able to experiment with technology, is really what makes it technology. If people didn’t sit there and experiment with test tubes back in the days of Newton, nothing would have happened. It’s paving the way for us to move forward as a species and a civilization.”

The video can be seen here.