I apologize if I begin to sound like a crotchety old man in these posts, but I am having trouble getting very much of this information through my overly cynical mental filters.
Warlick
First off, I appreciate David Warlick's dedication to improving education through the integration of technology over the last three decades; it is to be commended. That said, even though he is only giving an informal synopsis of his longer talk, I cannot imagine increasing the length would make it anymore comprehensible. The talk seems to be a bag of poorly conceived ideas, unconstrained by the strictures of reality, thrown together in a haphazard fashion. I bet that he actually has some interesting things to say about the subject, but like so many popular educational thinkers nowadays, he frequently overstates his points and tries to wax philosophical without the required logical arguments. Let's look at his main points.
He believes there are three converging conditions that are going to have to change the way we view education.
1.) "We are preparing kids for a future we cannot clearly describe. This is the first time in history where we are facing a situation where we do not know our children's future. We do not know the future we are preparing them for."
I sure hope that David is (was) not a history teacher (he wasn't). If he was, he would realize that we have never known or could predict the future (technologically, economically, socially, nationally, or otherwise) with any good degree of accuracy. Here is a PBS Technology Timeline. What events in this timeline were predicted twenty years before hand, with accuracy? Why is today any different? We prepare students for the every changing present and the immediate future, adjusting instruction along the way if needed.
One of the problems with these talks is that no one seems to understand how to structure an argument or present a proposition with nuance. If he were to say, "The future is more uncertain today than it ever was in the past because of (insert premises from which the proposition can be inferred) " then maybe I could agree with his point. But the world has been progressing pretty darn quickly since the Enlightenment, and the pace of progress is surely accelerating as complexity tends to build on itself (plus, as the population grows larger, there are so many more lives being lived in a given amount of time). But, again, there has always been uncertainty and I can think of no reason why this next generation is going to experience change drastically different than the few generations preceding it.
2.) "Our kids are different...They spend a lot of time online, their playing video games, their engaging with online communities. And they have come to understand information differently than my generation. "
I don't believe students have fundamentally changed in one generation. Yes, they are online more than we were at their age, but does this imply they are fundamentally different and need to be instructed differently? I don't buy it. My dad's generation watched a lot more TV than his parents' generation, and they in turn listened to more radio than their parents. Either way, every generation still gets their information from reading, listening, watching, and doing. I have not yet heard of students having infrared binary information beamed directly onto their retina.
Students certainly have more access to information than previous generations could have ever dreamed of, but the saturation point was exceeded long ago, before the Library of Alexandria burnt to the ground. That is, we have had way too much information for any one person to process for thousands of years, and piling on more information does not profoundly change this dilemma facing us as individuals.
He speaks as if this new generation experiences the world in some strange, wonderful, or magical way. I could almost guarantee they process the world the same way we do, but without the memories of how difficult it used to be (in hindsight) to access the vast information our species has acquired. Information is still a product, but an increasingly free product. And it is still manipulated in pretty much the same way it always was. What does he think students are doing with this information that is so unique? Talking about it? Writing about it? Sharing their ideas? Combining different insights? Generalizing?
[added by edit] I think I was wrong to say that students are manipulating information in same way as previous generations. While I still think this is true with regard to the content conveyed by the information, i.e., they are still just reading it, critically analyzing it, discussing it, etc. albeit more extensively and easily, what is innovative is how they can organize this information into personalized taxonomies. These taxonomies can then evolve in tandem with others'.
This will not only provide an external framework for storing, retrieving, and sharing information, but can also provide a new and interesting internal framework for the same purpose. This is essentially what it means to understand something, i.e., integrate it into an internal hierarchical framework to add context and establish connections with other information. Whether the distinction between content conveyed and its organization can be justified, I am not sure. If not, then it may be perfectly legitimate to say that they are actually changing knowledge by adding descriptors, tags, hierarchies, etc.
Is this a good thing? I am not sure, as there are already well established frameworks ("tags,") for retrieving this information that was developed by experts while the content itself was being developed. For instance, if someone tags a Lubber Grasshopper as a "bug," it will true in the colloquial sense, but not in the entomological sense. Maybe it would be better for experts to organize their information, and for amateurs to learn how to navigate their frameworks; as I mentioned earlier, these frameworks are probably continuous with the content, so having an improper framework is deleterious to comprehension. [/added by edit]
3.) "The information. We have this thing called Web.2.0...the very shape of information is changing. The information is more of a conversation...Now we are increasingly going to the community to get the answer."
From what I can understand with regard to this segment, David is saying that people are collaborating more in order to find out the answers to questions that no authorities can help with. I can't disagree with that, but information is not changing into an open conversation for all fields. Yes, at the cutting edge of knowledge, where David thinks he is, the internet allows more collaboration at faster rates and the information gets modified more quickly. But for most of what students are learning, the knowledge is still the product of thousands of individuals over thousands of years; it is not new and developing.
The video starts getting really strange at this point. He tries to define a new definition of literacy in the age of information, but simply states goals that have always been important in education. He states the new literacy is defined by the ability to:
1.) Expose the truth: i.e., critically evaluating information, which dates back, formally, to at least the Greeks.
2.) Process and employ information: how is this only applicable in our new world of easily accessible information?
3.) Express ideas compellingly: Ibid.
4.) Use information ethically: Ibid.
Weinberger
The David Weinberger podcast was a little more restrained and I really couldn't disagree with much except their armchair philosophical claims that the nature of knowledge is radically changing.
The hyperlinking phenomena is great, and does show explicitly the limits of trying to demarcate knowledge. But still, we do need to demarcate it for any practical purpose. I think one of the best uses of this new accessibility to information (hyperlinking, videos, forums, etc.) is the interactive, multimedia e-book. Some things are best shown in video format and/or through the use of an application, and e-books can integrate this seamlessly into a text. For instance, Carl Zimmer's evolution textbook Evolution: Making Sense of Life and Richard Dawkins The Magic of Reality both employ various multimedia and hyperlinks to convey their information. Once this art is perfected, I predict it will make learning the material that much easier for the students.
David and Alan also discuss the fact that the act of learning is becoming more public as students participate more in online blogs, forums, and chatrooms. I would have to agree that this is something new and interesting. Learning should become easier if students can get most questions answered immediately by referencing previous online discussions about the same query. It will be a great resource, but I think its just going to expand upon classical methods of learning, not fundamentally change the game. (Or "change the nature of knowledge as we know it") Who knows though?
Thank you, Justin, for a passionate and interesting perspective. It opened my eyes to yet another way of looking at these topics. I am sorry you only saw a snippett of Warlick. A few of you in the class were irritated by his statement about the future, and I want to, perhaps, provide you with a little more context. I'll see what I can dig up. A couple of times, Warlick, himself, has commented on previous EDU618 students' blogs...who knows....maybe he'll do that again.
ReplyDeleteHumoshi,
ReplyDeletePlease thank Susannah Azzaro for bringing your blog post to my attention. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify and defend the points that I try to make in that particular talk. I'll add here that your attention to the logic of my arguments impresses me. I often feel like I was the last American to take a course in the art of argument. Rhetoric is an element of classical education that our society truly misses.
I can not defend the statements made in what was apparently an abbreviated version of the talk, which is most often entitled, "Harnessing the Perfect Storm." I can try to clarify the three points made in the talk, which was originally designed for education leaders. It's goal was/is to help them factor the complexities that are driving the retooling of education down into a three bullet list of conditions – an elevator pitch. As much as this might seem to trivialize the realities of classroom and school management today, one of the greatest challenges for education leaders is communicating needs to a public whose support our institution desperately needs.
Condition 1, preparing children for an unpredictable future.
You are absolutely correct that we have almost never known a time without change. When I entered the classroom as a "history" teacher, the personal computer didn't exist. I learned to use a slide rule while in high school, because there were no calculators. Of course, change also happened from the time that my father graduated from college in 1947 and his father (I think it was 1916) – but nothing barely approaching the rate of change that we've seen in the past 35 years.
When I was young, the functional intent of schooling was to prepare us for current times. I left education school ready to teach in 1976, and do it pretty much the same way for the next 30 years. I had no reason to imagine that I might be making a living, doing a job that did not then exist, solving problems that weren't imagined and using tools that hadn't been invented. Nothing in my education prepared me for that, because we weren't thinking about change so rapid.
My point is that in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, we didn't know we were preparing students for such rapid change and there was little in the institution designed for such a task. Today we do know that rapid change characterizes our children's future, yet, too much of today's educational practices continue to be based on the assumptions of a half century ago. If we truly understood this one fact, that we can not describe the future for which we were preparing our children, then it would have a profound impact on what we teach, how we teach it, and the very roles of teacher and student.
Condition 2, a new generation of learners.
You make good points about the changing environment of today's children, and an excellent comparison with previous generations. My generation watched TV (I consider myself privileged to have grown up in the golden age of TV). My mom grew up reading comic books and listening to the radio. Her mom read books and her's made dolls out of corn cobs. Each of these and other changes in environment helped to shape our generations.
What is different about today's child-culture is not in how they access information, but what they do with it. First of all, they write more than any generation before. Granted, it is in short (140 character) spurts and usually inconsequential. But writing is a critical form of communication for them, and writing what one knows causes them to process what they know in a different way.
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ReplyDeleteBut perhaps even more critical to my point is that they interact with information in a brand new way. I speak most specifically about video games. Video games are about information. Some of it is text. Some is imagery and motion, and some of it is sound. But they take in the information, process it, construct plot from it and then react –– and they learn in the process. Of course its not life-enriching knowledge they gain and it is often only temporary knowledge. But mastering a video game is almost entirely about learning, and in a real way, video games are almost about pedagogy.
This is my point to educators, that the children who are coming into our classrooms are part of a culture that is defined, in part, by information-based pedagogy. It's how they play. It's an opportunity for us, if we understand these pedagogies (which is another presentation).
Condition 3, a new information environment
I agree that as more of the information we use comes from conversation and more of it is only available through non-traditionally published content, much of it remains authoritative, tried and true. But should what and how our children learn address only the authoritative. Even as textbooks become digital, we still insist on content that is authoritative. The result is that we are teaching our children to assume the truth of what they are reading, when, in fact, we should be equipping them with the skills to prove the authority of the information they encounter.
I promote teacher constructed digital content for instructional support. When the teacher constructs the content, then he or she must defend it, on a daily basis if necessary. This way the act of evaluating and proving the relevance of the information becomes more than a skill. It becomes a habit.
When I was in school, I was taught the difference between fact and opinion. It was a lesson that lasted two days in the 6th grade. Because of today's prevailing information environment, the skills and habits involved in asking questions about the answers that you find are as critical as the ability to read them. I do not promote redefining literacy. I do believe that our notions of basic literacy need to be expanded, and that certain skills need to be promoted to the level of basic literacies.
You have to understand that there is an entirely different presentation and even a book devoted to my ideas about literacy.
Arithmetic expands for two reasons. First of all, we typically do not solve problems today with a dozen numbers on a piece of paper. Today it's a thousand numbers and they're digital. There are new skills and tools involved in processing these numbers that I maintain are as important as the ability to add, subtract, count and measure.
Secondly, all information, today, is made of numbers. Text, images, sound, video, animation – it's all digital. It's all defined by numbers. I suggest that the ability to work that information by working the numbers that define it, may well be as useful to our children as the ability to "add, subtract, count and measure." Of course this is not up to your math teachers. But the knowledge that one can manipulate information for good (and evil) is part of being an information user today – and that's all because of numbers.
Writing? Well no one can deny that we're all overwhelmed by information. You imply this in your blog post. Therefore, information must compete for attention. In a world where you must compete for the attention of your audience, you must not only be able to write, but also communicate with images, sound, video, animation, etc. Express ideas compellingly.
(continued)
David was unable to post the last part of his response and asked me to do it. Here it is:
ReplyDeleteThe forth one, ethics, well that's obvious. I grew up in a world were we were mere consumers of information. Today, our children will be (and are) participants in the information landscape. With this comes responsibility and the ethical use of information should be part of what we think of as basic literacy.
Again, I appreciate the opportunity to expand on some of the ideas and to assure you that much of this comes out in the larger presentation and the Q&A that often follows.
Great luck to you on your future, old man ;-)
P.S. Not sure why Google is calling me "Developer" I'm David Warlick