Live-blogged. Please excuse misspellings and awkward wording!
I’m sitting in a meeting room in Burlington, Vermont for the LEAD IT Summer Symposium. Jim Moulton and I did an unconference style session this morning about school 2.0. We started by showing the EPIC 2015 video and then asking participants to brainstorm about their fifth grade daughter, who will graduate in 2015,
- What do you hope they know?
- What do you hope they know how to do with what they know?
- What do you hope they care about?
Then we discussed, as a group, what should be happening in their schools that would lead to that knowledge, skills, and attitudes. It was a good conversation.
Now (1:30 PM), we’re sitting in a larger meeting room, listening to Alan November — and he’s in top form. He claims that Wikipedia is a better source of information than Encyclopedia Britanica — and, he adds, “Many of our schools won’t even allow students to use the Wikipedia.”
Interestingly, one of the teachers in our morning session told us about a group of her students who came up to her, as she was looking something up on Wikipedia. They cautioned her, “You shouldn’t be using Wikipedia. There has been a rash of hacking attacks on Wikipedia where people are changing the facts.”
OK, why did the students know that, and the teacher didn’t?
Added later: Does anyone know of a recent rash of Wikipedia hacking?
The TA for my class showed us the “Plagiarism” page. Three days ago it was edited and replaced with the “f-bomb”. The entry was corrected in three minutes.
The Wikipedia outrage is great theatre, but even unfettered encyclopedic knowledge represents the most superficial aspect of learning.
I’ve said it a million times, but if the dominant metaphor for using a computer is looking stuff up, then kids will look up in appropriate stuff and adults will behave badly.
Did they distribute crystal balls in Vermont? Why are you engaged in predicting the future when there are things every educator can do today, that have been understood for a century or more, that will make schools better places for children immediately.
Any conference speaker arrogant enough to talk about the future of education should be required to publish their plan for reforming ONE school, complete with supporting arguments and references.
Dr. Stager,
Isn’t education all about trying to predict the future? After all, what are we educating kids for? The world is changing so quickly and education is falling dangerously behind.
Typically, education has lagged about 20 years behind the research. Change is a slow and difficult process. Should we all wait for research to find its way to our universities, then have our teacher preparation programs make changes, wait for these new teachers to graduate and get into the work force, and then change educational practices to meet the needs of our 2008 students?
If we wait all wait for someone’s plan to reform a school, complete with references, supporting arguments and data, maybe our schools will be ready for 2010 – in 2025.
Sandy,
I did not mention universities at all. While theory is indispensable for describing and supporting practice, there is a body of thoughtful literature on teaching and learning by innovative practitioners.
We would be well-served by giving some consideration to why we have ignored what Rousseau, Dewey, Holt, Neil, Postman, Kohl, Postman, Sizer, Meier and others taught us about how to educate children decades or centuries ago.
I recently read and have been recommending “A Schoolmaster of the Great City,” (http://tinyurl.com/2cpc4x) by Angelo Patri. Patri outlines and solves most problems facing educators today, but the book was first published in 1917.
I’m reminded of a CNBC program, “The Business of Innovation,” that aired last year. “Experts” who wrote books and teach courses on innovation talked of how they teach the lessons of Richard Branson and Bill Gates. Co-host Roger Schank asked which books or courses on innovation did THEY take to be successful innovators. I suspect that a sound liberal arts education was good for people 50 years ago and will be good for you 50 years from now.
We would be much better served by considering the powerful ideas of Patri than ridiculous web videos designed to frighten us or waste time during a conference presentation.
Gary
PS: I wrote more on this subject here: http://www.stager.org/blog/2008/07/thats-all-i-can-stands-i-cant-stands-no.html
True enough! The conference tricks and cute or moving videos cannot rival the wisdom, insight, or research that is available. It can however draw our attention to issues, spur us emotionally to seek out innovation, examples, and resources, and possibly even drive us to actual change.
Unfortunately, you are right. We have known for a long time how to improve, yet still we struggle.
I know great things are being done in at least some places. Teachers are being taught how to use technology effectively in order to teach in the 21st century. Some of us are even catching on!! My head is spinning a bit after only 3 days in a class on tech. integration in the classroom. I am learnig so much my head won’t stop spinning. Thank you, and keep the conversation going.
Hi David,
Your post here about Wikipedia started a conversation here in Maine in a technology integration course for teachers that I’m taking: http://sites.google.com/a/mikearsenault.net/epc508/. Most of us were under the impression that Wikipedia was an invalid source that we shouldn’t use with our students, but our instructor compared it to print that can also be wrong. He used the example of how a print encyclopedia’s entry on Pluto from 2000 would be incorrect whereas Wikipedia’s entry would be updated. We could use the site with students and be sure to emphasize how to read with a critical eye and how to question the source of the information. Of course, the students have already been telling us this!
I agree Jamie, I think with whatever source we use, we should read with a critical eye. While we are trying to teach students to evaluate their sites and other sources, it is difficult to keep up with hackers. An excellent source today may have errors in it tomorrow so it makes the learning that much more difficult. Maybe the students who realized the site was bad and pointed it out to their teacher, will one day find a way to eliminate the hackers. Until then, we need to watch out for misinformation.
I admit that I was one of the teachers that discouraged using Wickipedia as a primary resource when doing research papers. However, I will revise my instructions to include additional sources rather than exclude Wickipedia.
Another comment, I have a friend who spends a lot of spare time reading Wickipedia and making corrections. I’m not certain how he make these corrections but that is the water cooler talk when he finds what he deems an error.