The main point of this video was to make us think about the incredible technology we have at our fingertips every single day of our lives, and about the progress of technology. Its pace is ever increasing in such a way that what we will have a generation or two from now will almost certainly be unimaginable, just as today's smartphones would literally seem like magic to people living just a few decades ago. Not to mention the fact that what we have today will seem antiquated and obsolete before we know it.
I think the audience the video was intended for is really anyone. Older generations will see it and be able to look back at the incredible changes they've seen over the course of their life. Teachers will look at it and see a reminder that the world we live in is very different from the one they grew up in. Kids will look at it and be amazed that things could have really been so different from the world they live in. As a parent, it made me think how fortunate my children are to be growing up with such access to knowledge and communication with people across the globe. It also makes me think how important it is to make sure my own children know how fortunate they are.
If found the video to be very effective at achieving its aim. It was very well done, with excellent acting, especially the young girl reading "the essay". The music really accentuated the message and added to the sense of awe that you get when you really stop and think how amazing it is that we have more access to information and to the world than anyone living in any other time and place on Earth. We can look up just about anything at the drop of a hat and share our own ideas with people all over the world in a matter of seconds. When I think back to myself as a child (or even myself 10 years ago) what we have now was truly unimaginable!
In this second video, I think the main point is that the internet has fundamentally changed the way we interact and learn in the 21st century. Since the internet is a network, it makes sense that it's all about being connected and collaborating. That's what computers and now smartphones have given us, and there's no turning back. My children will grow up in a world where I'll have to explain the presence of all sorts of obsolete objects and concepts, like phone booths, encyclopedias, disposable cameras, the TV Guide, and MTV.
I think the intended audience of this video is educators. It seemed to me that it was trying to get teachers to think outside the box and realize that the same old tricks are not going to be as effective as they once were. Educating students of my own children's generation will be a very different job (possibly almost unrecognizably so) than my own generation and those of the entire 20th century. Many of my own children's teachers are fully on board with this change and have embraced it in the classroom. For many, I'm sure this revolution is scary and unwelcome in some ways. But any teacher who tries to get their students to use an encyclopedia to look something up might as well ask them to save their project to a floppy disk or record audio responses to an 8-track.
I thought that this video wasn't quite as effective as the first. The scroll and zoom effect was pretty eye-catching at first, but became a little redundant after awhile. It didn't have the same emotional appeal that "The Essay" did. Overall, it seemed a little dated as well and I did notice that it's over 10 years old. Some of the messaging seemed to paint a picture a little too utopian than the current situation we find ourselves in, where corporate profit motives are very much a major factor that is controlling what content gets shared and advertisements are being targeted to each user in a very Big Brother way. Our online identities don't seem nearly as secure as they did just a few years ago, and children (and adults!) have trouble sorting out what's real and what's just noise. The freedom the internet has given us is wonderful in so many ways, but it definitely has produced some unintended and unanticipated consequences along the way, which will be a challenge for my own kids to navigate as they enter secondary school in a few short years.
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