Too Much Noise (in Education and politics)

I don't know about others, but the amount of wireless noise promoting this technology over that technology is overwhelming.  If noise were to be the judge, technology is teaching our future citizens and not teachers.  And, to boot teachers are part of the noise as they search for the latest technology to help them better manage their classrooms (online or live).  Point being that in all the noise I feel like students and the teachers interested in mentoring students are lost in the noise.

And another kind of noise:  For instance parents and students worry and complain about the cost of texts.  Understood.  Agreed. But, the larger problem isn't textbooks its tuition.  We elect state and federal officials who have slowly but surely cut funding to higher education with the result that what we now have is a form of taxation not without representation, but in-spite of representation, and it's called tuition.  And those same cuts force into existence every larger and larger classes that on the one hand make up the lost revenue but because of class size less and less learning takes place... while tests report that American education is falling further and further behind the rest of the world.  While we fight two wars that have gone on for twelve years at a cost of billions and our congress shuts down the government over healthcare for everyone, it doesn't seem money can be found to make education better, just bigger.  (I can't help but think those conditions and the loans that support them make Wall Street bankers smile.)

But in the midst of all the noise — ideas are sometimes lost.   Ideas that can and do improve learning. Two nights ago I heard a lecture by Scott MacCloud. Scott pointed out that "comics" are capable of imparting vast amounts of knowledge visually and in small spaces.   Scott wasn't talking about funny cartoons, but the techniques and ability of "comics" to tell educational stories; complicated stories of physics, sociology, etc.  And he is right.  The work of Richard Mayer and the research around Vizi Courseware support Scott's ideas.  Actually, its pretty simple.  Our eyes are capable of taking in vast amounts of information and in a digital age we should be looking for ways to take advantage of that human capability with the capabilities of digital technology.  Now, there is a real revolution without blood and the noise isn't all that loud.