A vision of students today

OK, this doesn't really have anything to do with student newspapers, but I thought it was an interesting use of video technology for transmitting a message. And the message is certainly one of interest to students of media and the educators who teach them.

So check it out.

The video was created by Professor Michael Wesch at Kansas State University and the 200 students enrolled in his ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course in Spring 2007.

"It began as a brainstorming exercise, thinking about how students learn, what they need to learn for their future, and how our current educational system fits in," Wesch writes on the class Web site. "We created a Google Document to facilitate the brainstorming exercise, which began with the following instructions:

… the basic idea is to create a 3 minute video highlighting the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. We already know some things from previous research (and if you know of any interesting statistics, please list them along with the source). Others we will need to find out by doing a class survey. Please add whatever you want to know or present.

The video was posted on YouTube, where you can read comments from viewers around the world.

Hat tip to Sylvia Fox of Sacramento State University for turning me on to this video.