Once again, sorry for the late post. I missed work all of last week because of the flu and now am trying to dig my out from under all the things left to do…
Our last class on open education with our guest Jon Mott was very interesting. Quite a few terms caught my attention but I loved the idea of the book-i-fication of TV (and sorry for the obscure tv reference in the title – for bonus points, does anyone know where it comes from? For more bonus points, can anyone tell how to get the theme song out of my head?). I can identify with the concept that people want what they want, when they want it. Just like anytime we want to read, we pick up a book, people want to watch their favorite tv shows whenever they want – and with todays tech, it’s quite do-able! Not really a problem for people (except advertisers who get cut out of the pirate downloadable versions on tv), but isn’t this trend also expanding rapidly into other areas of life? Can’t wait to see a movie at the theater – download it, too impatient to research an essay – download it, want information - google it. Check sources? Who has time for that? I still laugh at the student who could not understand why he got a failing grade on an essay he handed in, but I found written word for word online in an article. “I didn’t plagiarise it, I got it from my friend at another school!” Guess they both should have failed…
I guess I’m just wondering if with all this instant access to whatever we want, are we losing our ability to do the required work, do we just look for a quick solution, or is the problem that the skills and values we teach todays students haven’t caught up to todays technology? Don’t get me wrong, I love the open access to information we have, but I agree with the statement in the class that we need to teach students to be “knowledge able, not just knowledgable”.
OK short rant this week to make up for the epic posting last week…
“See” you tomorrow… (cue the tympani – da da da daaa daaaaa daaaaa da da da daaaa daaaaaaaa)
G
November 8, 2009 at 3:23 pm |
When I was reading your post I could not help but think you were restating a comment my father made to me as well. He was reading my blog post after the same session and I was talking about not teaching trivial information that we could just google anyway. My father said, “we can’t all eat the hamburgers, we need some people to do the work.” It is a find line. I think we do need a baseline of information, but are we spending time teaching information that could just be left to google such as my son’s current events test which asked 6 out of 10 questions about Ted Kennedy. I am not sure why he would have to be testing on that information. On the other hand I like the example if someone were choking in a restaurant, would we take time to google? I think not. I agree that we need to be both knowledgeable and knowledge able. Oh yeah, and we are not allowed to give bonus marks anymore-ha,ha!
November 8, 2009 at 3:41 pm |
Hi Michelle,
I agree with you about the current events test. Not knowing why this material was being studied I won’t second guess the teacher, but wouldn’t it be a great way to test if students know how to access current information if they had access to the ‘net? If your son is anything like me, this kind of info is learned for the test and then quickly forgotten, so what was really learned?
No bonus marks? Really? Where’s the fun in that?
Take care!
G