Finished David Weinberger's new book Everything is Miscellaneous while doing the ten hour journey home from Kuala Lumpur. This is a great read about how we need to rethink knowledge now that technology allows us to access it differently. The sequential way of viewing knowledge previously no longer fits with the way knowledge can be viewed via the internet especially through latest Web 2.0 technologies.
If our view of knowledge needs to change then it fits in with my thoughts about how we need to change the teaching of knowledge away from the standard sequential learning processes relevant for the industrial age. These views have great importance to schools and have been talked about for decades but still have had little traction. The miscellaneous nature of knowledge which technology now demands may be the driver to push schooling forward.
Now reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. this again challenges our thoughts about the predictability and causality of knowledge and our intrpretation of events.
If we were to be doing our job as educators we would be teaching about 'Black Swans' and Miscellaneous knowledge as these ides seem to really where it is at.
About Me
- Brian OC
- I am a Physics teacher in Phnom Penh, Cambodia having previously worked in Uzbekistan, China, Bangladesh and Australia. Prior to that I had a career in New Zealand education and I was fortunate to establish an innovative secondary school in Auckland.
2 comments:
Agree with you about The Black Swan - is a fabulous read - Taleb has an introduction to his thinking in The Edge - I have linked to it in a recent post on how we understand and misunderstand the key competencies.
The Edge article is perfect as a professional discussion starter for staff
I saw your comment on weblogg-ed and thought I would drop over and wish you luck. I, too, am reading Taleb's book. Very slowly. I find that there is much in it that recommends itself to education. One of them is that almost none of us will see education's black swan. I suspect we have already seen it, but not recognized it. Reminds me of Peter Weir's The Last Wave and all the implications in it. I will watch your site in future and wish you luck with the blogging.
I teach in the US in Kentucky. I am at the university level teaching composition, intro to lit, and research classes, but before that I taught middle school and high school English, drama, media studies, and arts and humanities for fifteen years.
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