Thomas J. West Music

This video, entitled Rethinking Education, came acrosss my PLN today via Brian Wis at Teaching Music in the 21st Century. It is yet another great video showing quite plainly how professional educators need to wake up and start changing the way that they do business.

Michael Welsh is an accociate professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Kansas. This video is the latest in a series of videos that take a very pro-active stance, calling educators of all levels, but espeically higher education, to do exactly as this video's title suggests, rethink the way that we teach students. You can see his other videos on his YouTube channel.

Welsh provided very compelling information on cloud computing and the democratization of information, stating "We [our culture] are only starting to figure out the implications of this." At the end of the video, Welsh makes a statement that resonates well with me. He challenges teachers to "turn your careers just 5 degrees." This sounds very much like Dr. Joe Pisano's challenge to music educators to "spend just 10 minutes a day doing online professional development."

In the current climate of economic recovery, budget cuts, and political initiative to reform education, the educational professionals themselves need to start doing things differently and show our culture that the mass media presentation of "teachers are the problem" is unfounded. If we don't begin to change, their profession is going to be changed for us.

If the recent revolution in Egypt has taught us anything, it is that information is power and real change can come in a rapid fashion when people work together with a common goal.

Posted by Thomas J. West on February 12, 2011 at 9:46 AM

191 Views