Categories
Uncategorized

Received wisdom, education, & technology

For me, a central concern in technology and teaching today should be: what does intelligence mean?

Is someone intelligent if they can locate the right answer?
Is someone smart if they can derive the right answer?
Is someone smart if they can synthesize the right answer?

Is someone smart if they can ask the right questions?

Of course, questions of what intelligence is have been with us for decades if not centuries. And the answer is very likely: there’s different kinds of smart.

But what do school optimize for?

Do they optimize for retention? For synthesis? For investigative skill? Or for sheer intellectual horsepower that powers through tough learning challenges? And, of course, we haven’t even talked about any of Gardner’s physical or musicla intelligences yet, or Goleman’s emotional.

None of this is clear.

What is clear is that teaching someone to be smart in a networked 21st century is a different proposition than teaching someone to be smart in a paper 18th century … just as that was different than teaching someone to be smart in an oral 5th century AD.

But sheer intelligence … has that changed at all?

Going to the oracle of Delphi, as a teacher I interviewed referred to Google, doesn’t make someone smart. And blind reliance on canned answers might be as dangerous and prehistorical obedience to cryptic priestly incantations. But distributed memory and cognition is surely and aide to the wise.

It strikes me that we don’t understand these issues as well as we should.

By John Koetsier

I’m John. Glad you stopped by.

I’m an English major who got interested in technology a long time ago, spent four years leading a web development team, led product development for a major educational services company, and am starting up a Canadian office for EasyBits. I’m also finishing a master’s degree in educational technology.

Sparkplug 9 is a conglomeration of all my previous blogs. The archives go back to 2004, but I was blogging on other platforms (one roll-your-own that I built as an experiment) since before the word blog was invented.

View John Koetsier's profile on LinkedIn

On a personal note I’m 36, married, and have three kids (Gabrielle - 12, Ethan - 9, Aidan - 5). We live near Vancouver, British Columbia, though I work on both sides of the US-Canada border.

I get passionate about aesthetics, design, and usability, and wonder if those three words are really just one concept. And I get excited about new ways of doing business and marketing … ways that respect people as people, ask more than answer, listen more than talk, try to serve, and, most importantly, create absolutely amazingly awesome stuff.

I play ice hockey, among other sports, and read history, science fiction, and just about anything else. I like pieces in just about every genre of music except rap, hip hop, and death metal.

There’s always more: people are only simple at a distance. Up close they’re granular, craggy, and complex.

But I’ve used the word “I” way too much already. So that’s all I’ll write here.

Have a great day, and God bless.

One reply on “Received wisdom, education, & technology”

It’s interesting you mention “going to the Oracle at Delphi” when referring to Google. It appears that for many searches, pretty much anyone can find the information they want through Google, but for searches which includes common search terms, the number of results returned can be a bit overwhelming.

I’d say that part of the ‘intelligence’ required there would be knowing how to ask Google in such a way that you limit the results to ones which are relevant. This is similar to making sure one phrases one’s questions in such a way that the Oracle at Delphi gives you the response you want. Isn’t there a fable about a king who asked if the following battle would be a great victory and was told us, but failed to verify if it was his victory or that of his opponent?

Personally I think schools are still mostly preparing students for the world of the 1970s and 80s, the pre-internet time, and much more needs to be done to prepare students for the future. See my blog post about some reshaping that needs to happen in the teacher education programs of today here:

http://davidwees.com/content/reflection-our-course-discussion-about-use-technology-classroom

Comments are closed.

Spam prevention powered by Akismet