Knowledge

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.