As I came around and did my talk at each building this year, I referenced a research study done about recall of factual information and how it relates to technology. Here’s the source article. This reinforced the idea for me that the value of information is deteriorating rapidly. It’s really the same phenomenon that we see happening in our everyday lives. How many of us bother to remember phone numbers of addresses anymore? I can only speak for myself, but I find that I do a lot less of this. My iPhone does all of this work for me now. I just enter the number once, look through my recent calls, or look up the address. When I admit this, my initial inclination is to feel somewhat guilty about this fact that I’m relying so heavily upon a machine. It feels lazy. Of course, this is a function of my age more than anything. I’m pretty sure younger people who have always had devices to store and access this information have no qualms about it. When I really reflect upon it, it seems like a pretty silly thing to feel bad about. After all, technology has been doing this in human society throughout our entire history. While there are tons of examples, the one that always strikes me is alphabet. Really, that’s just a technological invention, too. Before we could capture language in written format, we had to rely upon the oral tradition to relate ideas across time. Reflect for a moment how much richer and sophisticated our thinking and ideas are now that we can capture them in a timeless state. Before written language, all knowledge had to be rigorously standardized so it would not be forgotten or changed. A great deal of effort was exerted to commit the full, standard version to memory as well. Individuals could add very value in this process. Deviance from the standard was noise in the system. With the advent of the written word, individuals had a method to quickly expand upon knowledge. What was once noise was suddenly of great value. This is essential premise of all academic pursuits – adding to existing knowledge. Of course, all of the effort to memorize was no longer necessary either. We could use those thought cycles for new and different things.
It sure looks to me that we are in the middle of another tremendous change. The Columbia study just reinforces it for me. It’s not lazy to utilize a tool. It really makes me wonder what will be next in an era when static information will be so devalued. What’s also interesting is that, like invention of written language empowered the individual, we are also clearly moving that direction again. Everyone can now publish to the world. And, while there is a lot of noise being created. We’ve also seen concretely how this new individualism can be used for good and ill. The Arab Spring and recent violence and chaos in Britain are examples. But, putting all of the big picture stuff aside, what I really wonder about is how this next phase of things this impact teaching and learning. What does effective instruction look like when information is essentially worthless? It’s easy to bandy about terms like critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, etc... Of course, the conundrum is, as any good teacher will tell you, that it’s impossible to teach processes like critical thought without high quality content. And, content requires context. The kids need to know something about the content and have certain depth of knowledge before the learning will be meaningful and rich. So, of course, as common sense would dictate, a balanced approach is necessary. But, the devil is in the details. This takes a different approach to instructional design. And, to me this would be the real, new work of the 21st century educator: creating learning experiences that are simultaneously rich in content and process skills. Project, problem, or challenged based learning designs are one of the ways to do this. Of course, that it’s not the only design that will do this. But, I think it’s pretty clear that using the same models for designing learning experiences for kids that we did even ten years ago are now very out dated. With every change like this, there’s also a significant opportunity as well. I’m so excited by the prospect of working with our 21st Century Learning Institute and Total Instructional Alignment groups on creating some of these new experiences for kids this year. We had some great successes last year. I’m sure we can keep that momentum up this year as well. I’m looking forward to sharing some of our successes.
