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To find out more about how today’s school kids are different from the generations prior, Bored Panda spoke with Redditor Riot55 who has been teaching middle school technology/video journalism for the last 13 years. In response to this thread, Riot55 wrote that “Kids have gotten way less creative in terms of shooting and editing video. The TikTok/YouTuber generation of the last 5+ years has led to more 'point and shoot' filming with little else. No creativity in terms of shot composition, writing a script, trying cool editing techniques.”
He added that today’s kids seem to have “lazy and uninspired efforts and little drive to learn anything new or try anything that steps outside of their comfort zones. This goes to other artistic/coding projects we do in tech, not just videography.”
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The teacher told us that there may be a lot of things to blame for this current situation he sees in the classrooms. “The landscape of YouTube has changed dramatically over the last 10-15 years. It used to be hobbyists making fun creative videos that took a lot of time to produce but it has changed to more ‘talking head’ vlog style stuff and the algorithm has shifted to producing stuff faster, prioritizing quantity over quality,” he said.
Riot55 added that “it makes it look like you can just 'set it and forget it' in terms of camerawork and editing sometimes.”Another new thing that the teacher noted is a streamlining of technology. “We just switched from laptops to iPads as a school, and while they have many benefits, the apps we use are just more limited.”
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According to Riot55, “most families nowadays don't have personal computers in the home anymore either, replacing them with phones. All the technical software gets streamlined into easier, less feature-rich options and student projects all start to look homogenized because you can't change stuff outside of a handful of presets,” he explained.
Meanwhile, academics aren't too different from a decade ago, most likely, Riot55 said. However, he argues that it seems that now “kids are more okay with just getting 0s and never turning things in.”
Moreover, e-learning really exacerbated this mentality too, Riot55 explained. “Though we are slowly getting back on track, I think (though I think we will see the ripple effects for another few years at least). It mostly comes down to parental involvement to make sure kids do well, but these days I'm more worried about parents being over-involved and pushing their little political conspiracy theories everywhere,” he told us.
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According to the teacher, new challenges that academics of today face include the ever-increasing need to compete for attention. “We have made it a huge point this year to constantly remind them that phones will be confiscated if out at all during the day, and it has definitely helped the climate.”
“The presence of social media and phones and constantly checking it seems to make for higher drama in the halls and more conflict. At least I don't have kids secretly doing TikTok dances in class all day anymore - social media is the worst,” Riot55 explained.
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The teacher who has been teaching a solid 13 years shared some insightful advice on nurturing creativity in children. First off, it’s important to try a lot of different mediums, he says. “Draw, do 3D modeling, write stories, code an app, etc. It's all tied together and benefits each other,” Riot55 said.
Moreover, the biggest thing that can be hard depending on the school is to just find room to let kids fail and not tie grades to everything, Riot55 argues. “If everything is going to be some big project, kids will want to take the easiest route to a safe A. Kids have more pressure than ever to get good grades and will do the bare requirements to get their grade.”
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But the teacher believes that there needs to be an atmosphere set up where kids aren't afraid to try something new, “and have it crash and burn (at least have the possibility of re-doing the assignment and trying again as many times as they want).”
“It's important to show them example projects/work that will tease them enough to get them excited and thinking but not enough to tell them exactly what to do. I'm not sure there are any magic ways, unfortunately, besides trying to create an atmosphere where students feel like they have opportunities to bring in their own personality and style to a project and feel comfortable or motivated enough to ask questions, which only happens if they feel their teacher is interested in their success and there's a positive relationship there,” the Redditor concluded.
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On the last note, the teacher said that he will be leaving teaching at the end of the semester to go do creative work with 3D architecture rendering. “It’s a skill I've taught for years but only recently started to freelance, so it's been a real ride these last 13 years.”
“I was pretty down on the overall student climate the last few years, but this year has been a bit better and I'm hopeful for the future decade as many students get back to normal after a few tumultuous years of e-learning,” Riot55 said.