4Real Forums: Info in the palm of your hand

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Philosophy of Education
4Real Forums : Philosophy of Education

Topic: Info in the palm of your hand

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Connections
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Posted: Dec 21 2009 at 11:24am \| IP Logged

I recently took my first look at some of the available apps for ITouch and IPhones- lots of information available in the palm of your hand.

When I took a look at the periodic table of elements, I began to think about how these little devices could alter education.

I began wondering...

Should these devices change our current philosophy of education? If so, how?

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Tracey

lapazfarm
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Posted: Dec 21 2009 at 12:09pm \| IP Logged

This is a really excellent question, Tracey.
I think what it means is that education will be less and less about "filling the bucket" (because of the ready access to so much info, less memorization will be necessary) and more and more about not only "lighting the fire", but teaching the skills for finding and *using* all this info.
I still think that memorizing the basics (mult tables, etc) will always be valuable, but the ready access to so much info should allow more effort (and brain space LOL!)to be spent on tasks higher up on the hierarchy of learning.
Are you familiar with Bloom's taxonomy of learning?

Bloom's Taxonomy
I think we should see education focusing more and more on the higher cognitive levels, which IMHO is a good thing. Seems now that in most schools we rarely see progress past the first level (knowledge acquisition/recall), which does not make for much of a quality education.

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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
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Sarah M
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Posted: Dec 21 2009 at 4:15pm \| IP Logged

lapazfarm wrote:

I think what it means is that education will be less and less about "filling the bucket" (because of the ready access to so much info, less memorization will be necessary) and more and more about not only "lighting the fire", but teaching the skills for finding and *using* all this info.
I still think that memorizing the basics (mult tables, etc) will always be valuable, but the ready access to so much info should allow more effort (and brain space LOL!)to be spent on tasks higher up on the hierarchy of learning.

What she said.

Willa
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Posted: Dec 30 2009 at 3:45pm \| IP Logged

I read something about that recently -- wish I could remember where, so I could quote instead of paraphrase.

The idea is that we need some knowledge in order to know what we need to know, and to make good use of what we need to know.   Basic knowledge is even useful in finding out more.

I don't know anyone who still has the Periodic Table by heart unless they are practicing research chemists but having familiarity with it by having learned it in younger days gives you a start -- in finding it again, in using the information well.

That's just an example of course.

It's interesting, because until about Enlightenment times, education was more a matter of reasoning than of knowledge per se.   In other words, it wasn't thought so important to know a bunch of physical facts -- it was more a matter of being able to get beyond the raw material presented by our senses, to deeper questions.

Even less was "second-hand" information thought of intrinsic value.   There are a lot of things out there that we take as truth but don't really test for ourselves.   A lot of education nowadays is like that -- learning to take an "expert's" word for things you don't really know for yourself.    But this in fact is what people in earlier times thought of as "belief" -- not real knowledge, but second-hand.

I do think nowadays there is so much information that we do need to learn to know how to deal with it -- how to weed out credible from non-credible, how to find out what we need to know to become basically informed -- just as Theresa said

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Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
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