Monday, March 2, 2009

Wildcard

Wildcard: For this prompt, come up with a response addressing
moments that resonated strongly with you in the film (refer to your
notes). Consider relating what you saw to your own high school
experience. Did things look familiar? Radically different? Naively
outdated?
I am going to discuss the wildcard and talk a little bit about prompt 4. The moments which resonated strongly with me were mostly about interviews on Kep. Kep, who is an immigrant, through going to Tech high, really achieve the goal of crossing the divide. I think being an immigrant means you need to adjust yourself to the new environment and at the same time learn a lot from it. So I am very happy to see that Tech high provides a place for immigrants like Kep have the same opportunity to catch up with not only the new technology which is very useful in the workplace but also develop the other useful skills like leadership, teamwork.
This film was made probably at least 7 or 8 years ago(I forgot the exact date), but compared with my high school experience, their extremely high accessible to the new technology still surprised me a lot. Maybe because I went to high school in China which does not have as same as the facility or capability in America. It seems that they almost spend everyday in computer room, while in my high school, most of times the class is taught in classroom. The good side of Tech high is after graduating, everybody has a great confidence in using computer, I mean applying the new technology in workplace. However, when I graduated from high school, I seem to lack this kind of confidence. Actually, I began to learn most technology in college. Then when I was doing an internship in my freshmen year, I felt really frustrate at using new technology. So I think it is very important to teach the students new technology in high school because if students can not go to college they may not have chance and time to learn it. However, I do not support that all high schools should be operated like Tech high which do not have foot team or library. Tech high, in my mind is more like a training center not a really high school. I also remember some comments from the film talking about that the goal of education is not about teaching students how to find a job but how to be a person, I totally agree with it. I think students in Tech high are very lucky to learn more about new technology but at the same time their high school education is not completed. Maybe they learned a lot about using computer but he do not have a chance in high school to develop other skills or interests like music or chemistry. Although watching a football game in high school will help you find a job, the enjoyment brought to you is a wonderful and necessary experience.

4 comments:

  1. I agree with the last part of your response. I felt that the students at New Tech were so focused on technology, that they lacked the rest of the education experience, such as sports and other core subjects. It also seemed as if they did not have much leisure time.

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  2. The new technology high school also struck me as not being a complete high school experience. I think it really embodies the essence of our two year universities. Skip the useless junk and let's start teaching you stuff that you are going to use for your job. In high school I also spent probably 95% of my class time in the classroom with the other 5% being spent in the computer lab (usually to type up papers, not really to learn how to use technology).

    I think the new technology school would be an extremely good idea, just not as a high school. It would ideally be a pit stop between high school and getting out into the real world to find a cushy job behind that new piece of technology that you trained on.

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  3. I definitely agree that New Tech was a success because the people attending wanting to specialize in the field of technology, but I don't think the idea should be adopted by other high schools. I went to a fine arts school in middle school which was a great experience, but similar to New Tech, it's focus on the arts deprived us of what other middle schools around the city had (things like sports and school dances). When I reached high school, I was finally able to experience all the things I'd been missing out on and it felt good to have a more well-rounded, widespread education rather than one main focus. That's not to say that I didn't appreciate the narrow focus of my arts school, I just think it's important that people our age are able to be exposed to many different ways of learning and expressing themselves in order to figure out what career path they'll eventually take.

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  4. The scary thing is, technology is changing so rapidly it's hard to keep up. Rather than just teaching current technology at my previous college, they focused heavily on teaching you to adapt to technology and change as it changes. So often things are updated or changed and it's hard, especially older people like my mother, to adjust. I'm quite lucky that I was able to take classes that teach adaptability, rather than teach you one program edition through and through and call it good.

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