No Hyperlink.

What happens when education isolates from the world's dominant, interactive media culture?

A hyperlink is an embedded attachment which, with a click, can take you from one page to another. The tool implies respect for intellectual property, forms connections between communities, and maximizes the information within media. Hyperlinks are a byproduct of a media-saturated world, one where collective conscious is materialized in endless digital posts, articles, videos, music, and art. Today, the world offers eager engagers connectivity, social awareness, expertise, and expression. 

We struggle, then, in an education system with no hyperlinks. 

Schools have taken on a very conservative learning process. We teach students how to play basketball by first explaining the rules and history, then by watching experienced players, and finally by interviewing an actual player about how to play basketball. We do, often, forget to ever put a ball in their hands and bring them to an open court. 

Education systems seek challenge, play, innovation, and problem-solving within a learning process that innately rejects that. No one gets better at basketball by playing a rigorous, enjoyable basketball trivia game. 

An education model like this is challenging because class time would be mostly spent away from activities that correlate with standards. It forces us to view mastery as yet to come instead of something achieved after a unit test. It retreats against the war with distracting technology, allowing student's to become even more immersed in it. It tears down the castle of math, science, reading, and history that is modern schooling, stepping into an education that happens within relevant reality. 

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This could be difficult if students are unable to work with media or technology. But, while inequality typically bites minority schools, the participatory culture model actually favors those students!