Shiv on Learning

I wonder if I surveyed parents from all over the world what they thought the most important thing for their children was what they would say.  What if I surveyed a different group, perhaps some university students trying to find a job in a recession what answer would they give me? And what about politicians trying to get re-elected, could you guess what their response would be?

Well I have my money on education. ‘Education, education, education’, didn’t someone say that once? So how does all this pre-occupation with education translate into something useful and tangible? Well in technology terms apparently not very well. 

The BBC have just run a story called “SuperPower: Visualising the internet”. This visualises the top 100 internet sites according to Nielsen.  There is not one education site to be seen.  It appears that photo sharing, adult entertainment, social networking, online dating, retail and gaming are all more important that education.  

This saddens me. I think that although there are some great companies providing education online and some creative people trying to work out how to make education engaging, interesting and useful nobody has had the ‘Facebook’ impact yet.  To make sure educators don’t end up at the bottom of the pile again or even get a mention in the top 100 internet sites, schools, universities, governments and private enterprise have to start being a bit more creative and stop boring people to death.

Jessica Driscoll