We have watched and analyzed your video Students helping students , which we found to be an interesting way of recording and advertising a school project. This video shows the immense potential of YouTube as a tool to broadcast not only the project but the message within, making a statement for both the youth and the teachers. This is also a way to make everyone involved (the students as actors) heroes by their own right. We can see that YouTube is consciously used to generate a movement of social and civic consciousness, because the author and the students know that this media has a wider audience throughout the globe and it is very likely that young people will watch and share the videos. Based in these assumptions they may mobilize the youth globally to solve a socio-economic problem that affects them and which can be solved by themselves. By doing so they take on the initiative and the responsibility of solving this problem and present themselves as examples to follow.

Fernando, Margarida, Helena, Denyze and Joaquim

We are a group of students of the Master of Elearning Pedagogy , at the Universidade Aberta, in Portugal, and we had the opportunity to watch the video “Students Helping Students” when we studied the changes caused in education by the new network society. We considered this video very interesting because it drew our attention to the ease with which young people can create a community and engage in something as significant as helping those in need.

At a time when many people consider that, because of the isolation that the Internet causes, youth lost community values that have always existed, this video has proved the opposite. The Internet was used precisely to promote these values. This example clearly shows that YouTube can be more than a repository of entertainment videos, created and viewed only for personal satisfaction. It can be used also to appeal to the spirit of helpfulness and, given the capacity that Youtube has to influence the society, maybe this video will create replicas in other institutions. Maybe it will influence more students to help others. If this happens, then it will bring out the best of our network society.

Congratulations for your initiative.

Ana, Isabel, Emanuel and Manuel

We are a group of students taking an online Master Course on E-Learning Pedagogy at Universidade Aberta, in Portugal. The teacher of Education and Society on the Web assigned us the following task: analyze and publish a post with a comment on your video.
First of all, we would like to say that we found your presentation very appealing and full of pertinent content and the ideas presented on the notion and the search for the authentic self fascinated us!
So here are our analyses as well as our post:

Your 4.53 minute video shows the true sense and meaning of altruism in a very appealing way. In this video, students from Kansas State University organized themselves to receive the new coming students and to help the ones in need. A campaign is developed based on the selling of T-shirts with the symbolic word “proud”, from which a dollar reverts to help the students in need through scholarships that contribute to keep students in school. When we reach the end of the presentation we are also asked to contribute and in this sense to nominate a student in need and to make a donation. Besides this question, there is also the title of the song - “I need, want it”- that accompanies the video, which reinforces the message regarding the need to achieve what is suggested – helping others in need. At the end, when you see an online order requesting the assistance of any network user, it opens horizons and enables us to interact without boundaries, extending social and cultural sphere, creating effects in the lives of the people because they are led to a situation in which they acquire knowledge and to which the community intervention is sought.
This is a way to learn to help and contribute to improve other people, with whom we can (or not) come to have contact, but we know that, somehow, we helped them … This idea is not new. However it is adapted to a new era of digital media, since the application is part of an online publication. It is thus a way of living and coexisting in the network society, where the spirit of mutual cooperation is always present and companionship too. The video shows us that it is possible to stop being individualistic and begin to be cooperative and collaborative. All the attitudes shown by students may be moved to the virtual world and the virtual society. Whether in the classroom environment or at university, we can get over all this virtual reality and do some e-help for students who sometimes are forgotten or ignored.

Thank you very much for having published your work and for giving us the chance to comment on it.

Marina, Paula and Telma.

I’m posting a comment to your interesting video that was written in a group work by the students that are attending the Masters in Elearning Pedagogy of Open University in Portugal (www.univ-ab.pt).

I’d like to inform you that if you decide to answer us, it will be posted in the discussion forum of our virtual class.

Best regards,
APedro

Here’s our comment:
This video is striking the theme of cooperative and it is interesting to see how these young ones work together to assist each other in various tasks. This behaviour seems newness to us but not so much for students who attend that university. What is new? So fast is formed a group, as then it fells apart, and it seems no one shows surprise at this “phenomenon”. Wesch wants to show the necessity to pass inside classroom this type of experience (the cooperativism) and therefore, this researcher understands perfectly what the cognitivist movement of modern school poses as the foundation of education: THE PROCESS. In this video it is perceived the involvement to make something of the educational community, through its mode of action that denotes the organization, planning and significance. We are much more closer together when we strive to accomplish something. Thus it reinforces the idea of group, the sense of belonging and the interaction between everyone who is in the network; and a space is opened for collaboration and cooperation, focusing mainly in the community aspect. But have these students learned these attitudes / behaviours from their teachers? It seems that in this university the knowledge is primarily builded by the student community.

-JHS MassComm Class

For the past 25 years, my colleagues have focused on collective intelligence and wisdom - particularly how to nurture it. It has been our belief that it is critical for the “system to see itself” to make these collective capacities sustainable. I was very moved by the simplicity and power of your approaches to recognize needs and resources, and to put them together for good.

I am curious about one thing - and that is whether there is any shared religious or spiritual foundation that you share. For many people, one of the easiest ways to recognize that we’re all connected is to also appreciate that there’s something bigger than all of us that provides that connection.

I want to thank you for the wonderful example you have provided (and shared) about what it means to be a human being in community in today’s world. I hope we’ll see more “proud” initiatives everywhere!

After speaking with Robert for over an hour tonight (by video on Skype no less!) about how the K-State PROUD campaign started, what the challenges have been, and its immense benefits, I am convinced that we should emulate this project at our schools. Personally, I am no longer a university student, I graduated in 2007 from Brandon University (Brandon, Manitoba, Canada) but I work closely with students, alumni and student groups at BU and the University of Winnipeg.

Prof. Wesch, thank you for accepting the role as Honourary Co-Chair, I may never have found out about this campaign if you hadn’t. We’re going to follow K-State’s lead and inspire our fellow students to action and fellowship, but for now, we’ll pool some money together to donate to the K-State PROUD campaign. Students helping students right?

Cheers,
Charlie