Season 119 Episode 4369

016 How Students of Today Have Changed – Ruffin & Hoffman join Madelyn

It’s Time to Think
“How is it we have so much information, but know so little?” –Noam Chomsky
We are awash with pieces of information. Post the query in Google, ‘the rain in Spain’ and you will be barraged with links that range from the rainfall in Spain to the George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion. When I did this, I realized that the song about the rain in Spain is even more important than the weather – based on the relative placement and number of responses I read on the first page of results. How does this impact our students and their ability to turn information into knowledge? In other words, their learning? How does this affect teaching? How can it be leveraged to prepare students for their life’s work? The list of questions goes on.
How Students of Today Have Changed
You have to reach students of any age where they are, and you have to offer a reason to do the work of learning. If you are thinking that that only applies to children, think again. If you are healthy, you learn when you want to learn.
In this week’s show, we will be talking about learning in today’s environment that no longer looks as it did 30 years ago. That no longer has the same incentives. That no longer is without interruption. That now offers infinite resources of information at one’s fingertips but with constant interruption. The days of assuming a good job once you are educated are no longer. At the same time, the desire to go to the right school has placed enormous pressure on young minds. It’s a different world. Which is why, I have invited two colleagues to join me.
Ed Hoffman, PhD will be my guest. Many of you already know him from his prior appearances as guest and co-host. On this show, he and I will be joined by a special guest, Joel Ruffin, one of our previous students. Joel today works for Goldman Sachs, and will give some reality check to the conversation. I think it will be most interesting to see how three minds explore the topic of students of today and how they learn. I hope you will join us.
Joel Ruffin, Sr