by William Grant
Executive Director, PRIDE & NY WEBCenter
During a recent office visit, the doctor pulled out her Blackberry. She wasn’t taking a call. She was consulting a database regarding a minor medical condition that hounds me.
I found it reassuring and honest. Information doubles – what, every other heartbeat? No one can keep the encyclopedia of their profession in their head.
So, teaching urban high school students in the 21st Century: do they need to know it, or do they need to know how to use it? Do they need to memorize the phases of the French Revolution, or is it okay to punch “French Revolution” into a browser and access more info on the topic than any teacher could want? And what does the French Revolution have to do with our world today?
Classroom teaching is skewed toward “know it,” and maybe it should be. But let’s recognize that culture and the workplace are skewed toward “know how to use it,” and today’s students are often caught in-between.
The NY WEBCenter (NYWC) stands on the “know how to use it” end of the spectrum. We present students the fast-as-light communication tools that are revolutionizing our world. They may look like studio mics, video cameras, sound boards, laptops and high-end graphics software applications, but they actually are the way information and knowledge will be transferred, nearly exclusively, as the next generation takes over. The New York Times says soon it will be a digital publication, not print, and its reporters will have to shuttle between keyboards and video-journalism.
NYWC’s work has the most impact when it combines “know how to use it” with “know it.” For African American History Month we’ve challenged students to come up with poetry and rap songs that put their sentiments into words. For some, it is the first time they’ve grappled with the legacy of leaders who are just names in a history book and attempt to connect them in some way to their own experience.
