Today a student asked me about what was required of a practicum exercise.

We are going to be reporting on the 2nd Global Media Ethics Roundtable using social media tools.

The students question was can I post a video and be done?

I suppose but what a waste of time and possibility.

It seems it was and is the possibility that eludes so many people when it comes to engaging in anything.

Can you see beyond the activity?

Can you see how something can, will, should or might be used in another context?

If not the simple problem is the idea has not been frozen long enough, the time necessary for others to get engaged and be brought up to speed.

Which brings us back to education once again.

Are we getting educated just for a grade or for the knowledge we might be able to gain and apply in other directions?

I suspect most students are in it for the grade, too bad.

Good question and one that seldom, if ever, gets acted upon!

Once children leave primary school less and less attention is given to the engagement of the student and more and more is attention is given to assessment of the 1% of  information the student actually retains.

Maybe Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University sketch isn’t that far off

Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University the sketch!

So what do we really need to do to make education work today?

No we do not have to, or want to, eliminate rigor, reading, research the hours of labour over a question.

What we need to do is give serious thought to how to give the student ownership of what they are doing.

And by doing I mean an essay, a TV program, an installation piece, a lab.

Ownership is the key to academic success today and has been the key all along!

Only a handful of people ever figure it out and if you take a good look at those who do the best in University and after University it has a lot to do with ownership of what they engaged in!

I have no doubt that this idea of ownership applies to every level of education and is the key to primary school success.

Along the way we lose sight of the ownership variable.

I am teaching a group of girls at Zayed University who have taken ownership to the extreme and in the process are reaping wild success.

The project is simple, get the information of the day out to students.

In this case a hybrid system of blog and podcast is being used.

The project is called ZU60.

The simple remit is to provide 60 seconds of campus information to students every morning.

This is a student owned project!

The students collect, write, edit, record and upload it all and this has to be done for the morning rush!

The students OWN ZU60 and the results… listen and tell me what you think!

The key to success is ownership.