The Hon. Mr Kirk takes the floor...

Today my task is a huge one: I have to imagine I’ve been made the ‘Prime Minister of the Net’ and decide how I will run things, and what platform I’d use.

Now that, dear readers, is tricky.

How do I begin to imagine managing something that is so vast, and which continues to become more vast by the second? In one of the presentations I gave on the necessity of integrating technology and teaching, I listed some of the facts about how technology is growing. I’ll spare you all the stats now, except for one: more footage is uploaded to YouTube every month than the three major television networks in the United States have produced in the last sixty years. Sure, most of the footage is of cats or people falling over things, but that’s beside the point. What is important to note here is the quantity of what is available. I don’t know if you’ve ever set yourself the task of trying to ask Google a question it didn’t have an answer for, but if you haven’t, give it a go. I’ve still not managed to think of anything.

However, this is digressing from the main point of this post. To return, I’m going to add another little anecdote about a philosophical question I often ask people who are complaining about something like the national health system or, more relevant to me, the education system. When they complain, I ask, ‘Ok, if you were made minister of X tomorrow, what’s the first thing you do?’ That’s really hard to answer in my opinion. In South Africa, where there are so many things which need addressing, where do you start? What gets to go first?

This is the same sort of maelstrom that starts in my head when I think about managing the internet. I mean, where would I begin?

I suppose the first thing to look at here is the presumption that the internet is something that needs managing in the first place. As it functions currently, it’s very organic. Sure, there are thousands of companies that provide some kind of hosting or publishing service, but there’s no real central approval point on the internet. Anyone can do pretty much anything they want to, and there’s bound to be someone out there in the ether who’s interested in what they’re doing. I think that’s a fantastic thing.

Of course, that means there’s plenty of junk too.

Yesterday I wrote about selecting reading material and how if something doesn’t grab me on the web, I’m unlikely to spend time reading and looking at it. Anyone who has spent time looking for things online knows that one seldom gets what one is looking for on the first go. My standard practice now is to open the first six Google results in separate tabs, read all of them and then create an amalgamated solution in my head. This has become almost unconscious, but I can see how this would be problematic for those who are new to the net, or who do not yet know how to discern good information from bad—a skill that should feature prominently in every curriculum in my opinion. Maybe if there was a central management point, content could be moderated for accuracy or for usability. Then again, try to imagine setting up a team to manage that task. You’d have to have thousands upon thousands of people who are able to research everything from aardvark farming to Zzyzx Road real estate sitting at computers and taking hundreds of thousands of requests every day.

So I think what I’m getting at is that in the event of my being elected to manage the internet, my first act would be to abdicate immediately. There’s no way I could begin to control the uncontrollable beast that is the World Wide Web, and I think that’s the way it’s meant to be really.

What I would change is the way students are taught about this incredible and most powerful resource. The Internet has already changed the way humans live more than I think we realise and this is a trend that is not going to change anytime soon. Despite this fact, very little is being done to help students learn how best to make use of this tool, and I use the word ‘tool’ very deliberately. Using the internet correctly and in a way that makes a meaningful difference to life is one of the most important skills any student should be learning today.

And I don’t just mean knowing how to research or being able to organise their documents on Google Drive properly; I mean we should be teaching students how to make social media work to promote them. It’s one of the most powerful resume tools that exist and yet to most of us it’s just a fun distraction, a way to interact with others. I also think students should learn how to create content that engages and draws others in. Why are they still making posters about an historical event when they could be designing websites or curating online exhibitions and developing interactive eBooks? All this stuff is so accessible and so ready to be made into something amazing, but very few educators actually ever get there.

The reason I teach is to make a positive difference in the lives of others so that they will want to make a positive difference in others’ lives too. I believe that equipping them for the developing world is one of the best things I can do, and that’s what I spend my days working towards. Perhaps I’m misguided, but somehow I don’t think so.

If you agree with me on any of these points, then I hope that if ever a day comes where I might be up to be elected into a position where I can make these kind of changes, that you’ll vote for me. At the rate things are happening today, who knows, that might not be such a crazy thought after all.

Till tomorrow…