Comment on Mark Federman's lecture

http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?video?BI_Full_20081129_834108_MarkFederman

Very nice and interesting lecture. Good points of view presented in an appealing and charming way.
But watching again the video of Mark Federman's lecture, I couldn't help feeling sad and a bit angry about the education system in my country... The other day I talked to my friend who has just finished her studies of Russian language, I remembered this lecture and realized just how light years away we are from what this man is talking about. Not only that we are not encouraged to explore the possiblities of education through sharing and connecting, it seems that our educators try to prevent us from expanding our knowledge. Being narrow-minded (which is one thing educator must certanlly not be), they transfer their inertness to their students as well. I don't know how the new generations deal with this, but mine didn't benefit from that. We seem to be the "middle generation", we were not taught to think critically, we were demanded only to repeat what they dictated us on the lectures. Year after year they would deliver their lectures in the same way, not even bothering to change something...
I may sound bitter, but I can't help wondering, if my working environment hasn't been such as it is, would I ever discover this whole new world of opportunities on my own? Would it ever occur to me to search information on the web the ways I do now? I look at my friends, and I am the most PC literate of them all... Why is that so? They have computers, but they don't know how to use them in their full potential. Nobody showed them. My friend told me that she learned from her colleague about russian web sites she can use. God forbid that they were given that information on the actual lecture by the professors. And it didn't occure to her to try and find them herself. Now that she knows, she searches and finds stuff with no problems at all. The whole new world that she didn't know exsisted, opens to her now.
There's no Serbia on iTunes... How long will it pass until our Universities see as a perfect natural thing to put their lectures on iTunes U? I don't know...
Anyway, I did enjoy Mark's lecture (even though it was a bit long :)), and I am happy to know there are so many possibilities of learning which we can use better then ever before, as a life-long learners should :)