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Guest Thinkers — February 16, 2011

Single-media schools, multimedia world

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If a picture tells a thousand words, then the two images below from a recent report by the Global Information Industry Center at the University of California, San Diego are of interest. The first image shows the average American’s hourly information consumption per day. Note that the small yellow wedge represents printed text, which of course is the overwhelmingly dominant information medium in P-12 schools.

The second image shows the decreasing prevalence of printed text in our lives since 1960:

These data represent average Americans. I’m sure they would look different if we just looked at our younger generations.

It’s simple, really:

How long are American schools going to get away with these kinds of expansive disconnects between how we consume information in schools and in our daily lives?

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